After he was appointed the new president of Microsoft’s important Server and Tools Division from his top engineering post at its come-from-behind Bing search unit, Satya Nadella now finds himself a leader of a business that also needs to keep catching up.

In a wide-ranging interview with BoomTown yesterday, Nadella talked about both his four-year stint at Bing and how he looked forward to the challenges of his new job.

Nadella got the nod, he said, after CEO Steve Ballmer went through a process of what was Microsoft’s “position in this business and a certain set [of ideas] about who should come in next.”

Interestingly, almost 20 years earlier, after working at Sun Microsystems, Nadella had started in the same area of Microsoft he will now lead.

Quoting the famous T.S. Eliot lines–”We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”–Nadella was an evangelist for Windows NT.

Eventually, his career brought him to the search arena, most recently to the most aggressive and expensive effort yet by Microsoft with Bing to try to eat into the massive and lucrative lead of Google.

“Those were fairly dark days for us,” noted Nadella, pointing out that any market share gains by Microsoft seemed impossible.

But, according to numerous surveys, it has been only uphill for Bing, especially after it started to really spend and also inked its search and online advertising deal with Yahoo, a partnership that Nadella was a key player in striking.

“We have, depending on which one you look at, grown five share points,” he said. “But behind that, I am most proud of launching a brand and a product that is delivering.”

Of the recent controversy in which Google accused Bing of lifting its results, Nadella borrows another quote, this time from Gandhi.

“‘First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win,’” he said, noting Bing has always said it uses toolbar and other public user data. “The real debate is whether we are better.”

In any case, as Nadella sees it, the Bing experience has helped him prepare for his new job, noting he was in charge of building a 200,000-machine grid to serve the various online services at Microsoft.

“I have been CIO of a cloud platform where there are only two of that size,” he said. “So, I know what it is like to be a customer of those services.”

His hope for his next job, he said, is to make it the next-generation cloud platform, while also serving the needs of current customers with its current product.

‘We have a product and brand that are really foundational, but there is a threshold to it,” Nadella said. “We have to serve the needs of our existing customers, while also moving them to the cloud and building a next-generation offering.”

At Bing, he said, “every day is upside, since we came from so far behind, whereas in server and tools, we are the leader.”

Big competitors are different and the same too, when it comes to the cloud.

“Amazon has done a good job, but not in the same game as us,” said Nadella, ticking off Google, Oracle and VMware as rivals in different ways too. “It’s a nascent marketplace.”

Acquisitions, he said, will also be important. “We are always looking at what opportunities there are,” he said.

His overall view?

“I think that the challenge is how to operate in a space where we have a $15-plus-billion-dollar business and we know the paradigm is shifting and managing that shift where we are the disruptors and also the leaders at the same time.”

In other words, between a rock and a hard place, a place Nadella knows well from Bing.

“We can’t be stuck in current paradigm,” he said. “And we can’t shoot too far ahead of ourselves either.”

To get a good sense of his style as he moves from consumers to enterprise, here’s a video interview I did with Nadella back in mid-2009, just after the Microsoft search deal, and another I did this past summer at one of his regular search updates for the media.

However, added sources, Google is fighting hard to counter the Twitter offer, so Pichai could easily stay with his current employer. At Google, which he joined in April 2004, Pichai is a VP of Product Management.

If successful, the hiring of Pichai would be a major raid for Twitter, and mark its place next to Facebook as an up-and-comer in the race to entice away top Google executives.

More importantly, Twitter could use the product help.

The San Francisco microblogging company, which just raised a massive funding, has done relatively little product development recently, in large part because its focus has been absorbed by overwhelming growth and infrastructure problems.

Pichai certainly fits the bill as a head of product for Twitter, given his job at Google. The well-regarded tech exec heads the Silicon Valley search giant’s high-profile Chrome browser and Chrome OS efforts.

Pichai was front and center at an unveiling of Chrome OS plans in November, and touted the Chrome browser’s 40 million users only a year after its debut in 2009.

But not everyone is so sanguine. Paul Buchheit, founder of Gmail (and FriendFeed) predicted a very short life for Google’s still-in-beta Chrome OS, noting–on Twitter in December–that he thought the product would be axed or fused with Android in 2011.

As Mobilized’s Ina Fried wrote at the time:

Google originally hoped to have Chrome OS-based computers for sale this year, but has run into some delays. Last week, the company released a beta version of the software and distributed to testers an unbranded laptop running the operating system. However, it’s worth noting that in doing so, Google has hardly made the strongest hardware case for the operating system, using a relatively bulky netbook with a reliable, but hardly power-sipping Intel Atom processor.

The idea of merging the two operating systems has some merit. Doing so would pair a top-notch browser with an ecosystem that already has a lot of applications and developers.

For now, the operating systems are distinct, with Android running hundreds of thousands of applications and used largely on phones, along with a few tablets, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. However, Google VP Andy Rubin confirmed after his appearance at last week’s D: Dive Into Mobile that the company is working on a new version of Android, known as Honeycomb, that is geared exclusively to tablets. (The full video of Rubin’s onstage appearance was posted on our site earlier today.)

Acer and a couple of other hardware makers have said they plan to do Chrome OS netbooks next year once the software is ready.

If hired, Pichai would fill an open spot left by the departure of longtime Twitter VP of Product Jason Goldman, who stepped down at the beginning of December.

The attempt to bring on Pichai to lead product brings into question former CEO Evan Williams’s role at the company. When he stepped down as CEO, Williams said it was in order to focus on product strategy, and when Goldman gave up his position, many assumed Williams was the natural substitute.

While Pichai would be a strong choice for the job, he has not been an active user of the product.

Until recently, that is.

Pichai’s own Twitter account has a grand total of 118 tweets, with about a third of them posted in the last month.

Yesterday, in an interview with BoomTown’s Kara Swisher at D@CES, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said some product goals for Twitter included a better experience for passive users and a more “agnostic” experience across platforms.

Costolo also mentioned a new zero tolerance policy for infrastructure problems, and said that Twitter does not consider itself a “platform company,” but rather one that has APIs.

The Google-Twitter connection is strong, and not just on the we-want-to-buy-you front–Google has often cast its acquisitive eyes at Twitter and still does.

And many Twitter employees were formerly Googlers, although not all in the same era or area.

Costolo himself came to Twitter after being at Google, which had acquired his last start-up, FeedBurner.

Other former Googlers include many on Twitter’s product team, such as Othman Laraki and Elad Gil, who were product managers at Google Mobile Maps and Google Toolbar before joining Twitter through its acquisition of their geo start-up Mixer Labs.

In addition, last year, Twitter nabbed Google lawyer Alexander Macgillivray as its general counsel.

And, of course, Twitter co-founders Williams and Biz Stone had worked at Google after it bought Blogger. They created Twitter after they left the company.

It’s possible that Pichai leaving Google might have something to do with the company favoring the Android mobile operating system over Chrome OS, but seems more likely that the Twitter role would just be a compelling opportunity for him.

Twitter declined comment, and Google has not responded to an inquiry about Pichai.

Until this nail-biting talent raid has a resolution, here’s a video of Pichai talking at the Web 2.0 Summit in 2009:

We’ll also see what they have to say about the Yahoo search partnership and its efforts to catch up with Google (and trip them up with antitrust headaches).

Liveblog

Okay. I’m onsite and nearly caffeinated. Yes, there are donuts, but Mobilized is going for the savory option.

10:03 am: Still waiting for things to get started here.

10:04 am: Microsoft search engineering head Satya Nadella comes out. “Okay, let’s get this thing underway.”

10:06 am: First up, some momentum stuff. Share is at 11.8 percent per comScore numbers released yesterday, up another 0.2 percent from October. Overall up 48 percent since launch. “We’re very, very happy with that growth.” Now over 90 million users, but the big deal, he says, is more heavy searchers. “We never had the fans of Bing and the heavy users,” Nadella says.

10:08 am: Nadella says Bing is still getting a larger percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds than its share of searchers as a whole.

10:09 am: “These are footholds that we have in the marketplace,” Nadella says.

10:11 am: Continued focus on specialized verticals (like travel, music, health, image search etc). Overall, such searches account for five percent of all queries, but specialized search makes up of 10 percent of Bing’s searches.

10:12 am: Partnerships: Yahoo is obviously the big one, but Nadella shows slide with Facebook, Twitter, Verizon., BlackBerry, Apple, Android, Foursquare and other logos.

There ave been 5.5 million downloads of the iPhone app.

Nadella says the toolbar deals are also important: They just give us a shot at acquiring the users. They have another one coming with Conduit. Also, they are now at least an option on iPhone and Firefox.

10:16 am: Nadella says the engineering team is focused on three areas, beyond the “arms race” of overall search quality–increasing the visual organization, task-centered nature and social elements of search.

“We’re neck and neck in terms of search quality and we are able to maintain it,” Nadella says.

10:18 am: Lots of talk about the ins and outs of search tech. Nadella says Microsoft has moved from a “neural net” approach to “boosted decision trees.” (No idea what that means.)

10:22 am: Effort to make search more social is important, but just beginning. “This is a journey we are at the very beginnings of,” Nadella says, but says social will change search in terms of how results are discovered, formulated and answered.

10:24 am: Nadella is talking about the importance of visual highlighting to call out various results as well as boosting interactivity, such as including forms within results so users can take action.

Still waiting for any new stuff, but we’re told it’s coming.

Nadella says the company has broken down a list of the tasks people are trying to do when they are trying to do more than just navigate to a particular site.

“We have a pretty granular understanding just looking at the query stream of what people are trying to get done.”

Microsoft has broken it down to some 150 categories, but here are some of the top ones: 4.6 percent of searches are music related, 1.8 percent clothing and shoes, 1.6 percent consumer electronics, 1.1 recipes, 1.3 percent home furnishings.

10:29 am: On to some new stuff.

New image search launching today, but first Microsoft is talking about visual search for things like finding movies and giving direct answers for some new types of queries.

10:31 am: Microsoft is talking about any sort of non-search result as “answers.”

In one case, an “answer” for the query “let’s make a deal” would be video episodes of the game show.

But Microsoft says that automatically putting it at the top is not necessarily best. What the company says it should do instead is put it below the first two results, such as the show’s homepage, which get more clicks than the video.

10:35 am: Also when a user searches flights from Denver to Las Vegas in June, Microsoft pre-populates the fields in a flight search with a guess at the dates, in this case the first weekend in June.

10:38 am: New image search represents first major changes in a year. Biggest shift is white space is gone with just a ton of tiles of images, with some categories at the top.

For example, search “Casablanca” and you get an option for the city in Morocco, another for the movie, a third for the style of wedding dress and another for the Casablanca Lily flower.

10:40 am: On to shopping. Quadrupled the number of products in its database.

10:43 am: Bing is adding a new focus on places as “destinations” with all the potential content from booking a flight or hotel to maps and attractions.

Which is nice, because I’m ready to go on a vacation right about now.

They use weather data to show times to go to and times to avoid a particular place.

10:45 am: Microsoft is beefing up event listings with partnership from FanSnap and other partners. You get ticket info, diagram of stadium, etc.

10:50 am: Back to social. Nadella says search can change by using one’s social graph to influence search results.

First example, you will start to see when your Facebook friends “Like” a page that is in search results.

For now, such results will only come up fairly infrequently, but Nadella says it will be a big deal when you do see pages that your friends have liked.

Search allows the data your friends share on Facebook to come to you when you actually want the information.

“In a way you are taking your friends with you,” says Microsoft’s Paul Yiu.

An example is when you are shopping for a product or going to visit a place–that’s a time when you really want to know what your friends think.

(Seems pretty cool, but wondering just how infrequently this will show up.)

10:57 am: Another example Yiu gives is a search one might do at 3 am for what will make your baby stop crying. There are lots of results, but one that your friend likes might be worth trying first.

11:00 am: Bing is also using one’s Facebook social circle to rank results in people search–i.e., if you have a friend in common, it will rank that “John Doe” higher than one you don’t know.

11:01 am: Nadella is back to talk about local and maps and how that integrates with mobile. Behind him Blaise Aguera y Arcas is pulling out several phones to do a demo. (And they look like iPhones.)

11:03 am: Aguera y Arcas takes the stage to show some changes coming to maps, first on the desktop. He notes the recent shift away from putting its most powerful map features on a Silverlight-powered site. Now it is moving that all to an HTML5-based site that needs no plug-ins.

11:07 am: Bing is bringing the “tasks” concept to searches within maps. A search for a restaurant now brings up not just a map, but more info on the eatery and also the ability to make reservations via OpenTable.

11:09 am: Aguera y Arcas switches to the iPhone. Shows how people can add their own panoramas to maps using a cellphone.

11:13 am: iPhone demo over 3G is going really slow. Aguera y Arcas asks how many of the reporters in the room are using 3G.

11:15 am: Although its going painfully slow, looks like Bing app starts to recognize a restaurant search and pops up options like types of cuisine and price. The goal is to save keystrokes.

Other options are things like get a map, make a reservation, menus, etc.

Still R-E-A-L-L-Y S-L-O-W.

“This bandwidth situation is really going to suck for what I have to demo next.”

He switches to a first-person StreetSide view, but all we see are dots.

“This is so sad,” Aguera y Arcas says, lamenting that we aren’t able to see all the cool stuff. There does seem to be some new StreetSide view stuff on the iPhone app that could be neat, assuming it runs faster on the street than inside this demo room.

11:23 am: We’ve reached a new low. “Close your eyes and imagine….” Aguera y Arcas says, and then describes what the app would do if we could see it.

11:23 am: And they have switched to Wi-Fi. “This is so exciting,” Aguera y Arcas says. Now he’s going back to StreetSide. “That’s so much nicer.”

As for directions, Bing now has bus directions with schedule info in addition to driving and walking directions. “It’s about time,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for this one myself.”

Another feature reminds you to do something when you reach a certain place, like call someone or check-in to FourSquare or Facebook.

11:29 am: Aguera says we are in Search 2.0–where you do more than just search and get results.

Image search is an example. Shows the coming ability to search for something by using a camera to start a search. Basically you can shoot a picture of a page and use any of the terms there to start searching (It uses character recognition in the background).

Questions and Answers

11:32 am: How big a deal is Google Instant?

“We are absolutely studying Google Instant,” Nadella says. Says they could match it. It’s a question of whether it makes task completion easier. “Is it a value or a distraction?” Doing studies and so far Microsoft’s research says it is mixed at best.

“It’s not a game changer. It’s a nice feature at best.”

He hedges a bit on whether it is something Microsoft needs to match.

11:39 am: Mobile features were demoed on iPhone. So when will they come to Windows Phone 7 and other platforms?

Nadella says they now have software for most major phone operating systems, including Android.

“The different devices have different schedules,” he says.

11:42 am: And we’re out of here….Thanks for tuning in.

In an interesting move in the search space, Conduit–a fast-growing start-up that helps publishers make and distribute apps using Web browser toolbars–has entered a strategic partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search service.

In doing so, it is leaving its existing search deal with Google and will instead offer Bing to its network of 260,000 publishers and 200 million users.

It’s a solid win for Bing, which has more incentive to draw customers of its search products and services away from Google.

And every little bit helps as Microsoft strives to put even a chink in the overwhelming dominance of the search giant.

In a blog post today, Conduit said, in part (the rest is below):

“As of January 1st, 2011, our publishers will provide the full Bing experience to their users. Users in the Conduit Network will get all the features unique to Bing, decision tools that go beyond search, and an excellent browsing experience that is constantly evolving.”

More significantly, under the terms of the deal, Web publishers will be able to distribute apps directly in the organic search results on Bing.

Conduit President Adam Boyden said in an interview yesterday that the deal was struck to offer a better user experience for its customers with search, as well as the “long-term potential for app innovation with Microsoft.”

Conduit, which was founded in 2005 and has 190 employees, is profitable, Boyden said, from customers such as Groupon, eBay, Travelocity and Major League Baseball.

The San Mateo, Calif., company has raised close to $10 million, mostly from Benchmark Capital.

Of the shift to Bing, Boyden added, “There is more strategic potential for us with Bing,” he said. “And the same is true for them.”

Here is a blog post from Conduit today on the changeover, from founder and CEO Ronen Shilo and titled “Bing–It has a nice ring to it”:

Six years ago a small group of us founded Conduit with our own money and a vision of empowering the smaller Web publishers out there by giving them the tools to change the way they interact with their users. Many people were skeptical but we believed that we could truly make a difference.

Conduit redefined the toolbar, not as a search vehicle, but as a powerful engagement tool–the Community Toolbar. With so many publishers understanding this potential, Conduit inadvertently established a footprint for itself within the search market, comparable only to major classic search players.

Six years, 260,000 publishers, and 200 million users later, Conduit has proven to be one of the companies making a difference on the Web. Our product offering has greatly evolved and now includes apps, notifications, analytics and a marketplace. In the near future we will be creating new app distribution opportunities for our network of publishers, hastening the fulfillment of Conduit’s ambition to become an industry standard, to be used by all content publishers and available across all platforms.

Today I’d like to announce the next step in our journey–we have entered into a partnership with Microsoft which we believe will significantly improve our offering to publishers, accelerating the growth of Conduit’s massive network. Both companies are highly driven by improving the user experience, and as such, see a strong alignment in our long-term strategies and are looking forward to a mutually successful partnership.

As of January 1st, 2011, our publishers will provide the full Bing experience to their users. Users in the Conduit Network will get all the features unique to Bing, decision tools that go beyond search, and an excellent browsing experience that is constantly evolving.

I would like to thank Google for four years of partnership, which greatly contributed to the growth of the company. I would also like to express my appreciation to Bing and the Conduit team, both of whom worked hard to bring this partnership about.

If you have questions, ideas, suggestions, we want to hear from you. Write to us at: contact_us@conduit.com.

“We continue to analyze the potential merits of their claims, the potential defenses to such claims and potential counter claims, and the possibility of a license agreement as an alternative to litigation,” the company said. “However, there can be no assurance that this claim will not lead to litigation in the future.”

Well, looks like the claim has indeed lead to litigation, and litigation from a formidable opponent, too: Microsoft (MSFT).

On Thursday, the software behemoth filed suit against Salesforce, accusing the company of infringing nine patents describing things like “Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display” and “System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network.”

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, seeks an injunction against Salesforce and unspecified monetary damages.

“Microsoft has been a leader and innovator in the software industry for decades and continues to invest billions of dollars each year in bringing great software products and services to market,” Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing, said in a statement. “We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard that investment, and therefore cannot stand idly by when others infringe our IP rights.”

An interesting move for Microsoft, which doesn’t typically initiate patent litigation. Though it has been sued many times for patent infringement over the years, the company has only filed a handful of IP suits itself.

That said, Microsoft and Salesforce have been competing more aggressively in the cloud-based CRM space recently.

Salesforce.com declined comment on the suit.

As we have with every change to features and functionality on All Things Digital, today we are writing to give you details about a new Meebo toolbar on this site.

It appears at the very bottom of each page on our site.

The first thing you need to know: You can get rid of it whenever you like.

But we think you will like it, because it enhances our site’s navigation, highlights fresh content and provides instant-messaging functionality, all in one place.

Such as:

– Share Page: Drag the page–or individual page items, such as a headline or image–into social tools or chat tools to share with friends and colleagues

– News: The most recent headlines from BoomTown, MediaMemo and Digital Daily, as well as select headlines from The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Barron’s

– Reviews: The latest product reviews and analysis from Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret

– Hot Topics: Links to our aggregated coverage of recent product launches and timely issues

– Twitter: An “uber feed” that combines all our tweets

Per our All Things Digital Privacy Policy, any toolbar usage information will be shared with Meebo solely for the purpose of using this service or for targeting advertising on the toolbar.

Meebo may use cookies to target these toolbar ads; for more information please read Meebo’s Privacy Policy.

If you want to use a chat tool, you’ll be asked to log in with a user name and password. Again, please see Meebo’s Privacy Policy regarding collection and storage of your IM passwords.

And as I said at the start, if you prefer not to use the Meebo service, click the down arrow at the far right of the toolbar to hide the unit. If you change your mind, click that arrow and the toolbar will reappear.

In addition, below is a video interview I did with Meebo founder and CEO Seth Sternberg about the toolbar addition, as well as his company’s new XAuth announcement.

XAuth is an open authentication effort, which includes Meebo and partners Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), MySpace, JanRain, Disqus and Gigya. As described on its Web site:

XAuth is an open platform for extending authenticated user services across the web.

Participating services generate a browser token for each of their users. Publishers can then recognize when site visitors are logged in to those online services and present them with meaningful, relevant options.

Users can choose to authenticate directly from the publisher site and use the service to share, interact with friends, or participate in the site’s community. The XAuth Token can be anything, so services have the flexibility to define whatever level of access they choose.

Here’s the video with Sternberg:

Comments? Ideas? Write us at feedback@allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100504/meebo-toolbar/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100421/pre-gaming-facebook-f8/ http://allthingsd.com/20100421/pre-gaming-facebook-f8/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:45:30 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=38819 According to popular legend, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once kept two versions of his business card in his wallet–one with the title CEO, the other with “I’M CEO…BITCH.” Seems that before Facebook became the de facto platform of the attention economy, it was a platform for the attention-starved.

Well, there will be no shortage of attention for the social networking phenom today as it kicks off its third f8 developer conference in San Francisco. As in years past, Zuckerberg’s keynote address will include an update on Facebook’s present and future and a slate of noteworthy announcements. Among those expected: A “presence bar,” a toolbar that permits members to use their Facebook identities to log into third- party Web sites that agree to use it.

Also likely on tap: A universal “like” button. Along with the company’s already ubiquitous “share” button, it will allow members to draw more of the Web into Facebook’s so-called “social graph.” Stumble across a page you enjoy, click one of those buttons, and that page will be added to your Facebook stream and the social networking site’s search results.

Finally, Zuckerberg may announce a geolocation feature that associates user actions with the locations where they occur. Similar to Foursquare’s location-based social networking service, this feature will enable Facebook members to note their location while writing their status updates. If it takes off, it will give Facebook a nice little foothold in the local advertising market.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100421/pre-gaming-facebook-f8/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100331/will-bing-sneak-on-to-the-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20100331/will-bing-sneak-on-to-the-ipad/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:25:05 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=17916 Sure, Apple and Google have gone from pals to frenemies to outright rivals. But would Steve Jobs and company really dump the search giant in favor of Microsoft’s Bing?

Speculation about a potential Google/Bing swap on Apple’s platforms has swirled for months, but Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth notes that we’ll get our first real clue in a couple days.

When Apple ships its first iPads on Saturday, lots of Google (GOOG) investors will head straight to the gadget’s Web browser to see which search engine Apple (AAPL) is using as its default choice. Straightforward logic: If Bing ends up on the iPad, then the iPhone–with its installed base of 48 million units–would be next.

Microsoft (MSFT) would certainly like to have pole position, and Anmuth notes that the company has bought Bing some distribution via toolbar deals with HP (HPQ), Dell (DELL), Verizon (VZ) and others. So what does he think will happen this weekend?

Overall, we believe there is a better than 50% probability that Google remains the default on Apple mobile devices–if nothing more because Apple is extremely focused on the user experience and Google’s 65%+ search market share speaks for itself. As a result, Apple may not want to risk disrupting the iPad or iPhone user experience with a shift to Bing.

Shorter version: Google may stay. Or go. We’ll see.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100331/will-bing-sneak-on-to-the-ipad/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100309/yahoo-search-look-out-below-as-bing-gains-again-and-google-remains-as-scary-as-ever/ http://allthingsd.com/20100309/yahoo-search-look-out-below-as-bing-gains-again-and-google-remains-as-scary-as-ever/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:54:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25284

Say this about the toolbar and distribution deals, which Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz keeps saying were too pricey for the Internet portal: They have certainly given Microsoft’s search offering, Bing, a very nice boost.

In all likelihood, it is that and more causing Bing to make solid gains on Yahoo (YHOO), whose market share declined yet again this month, according to comScore’s monthly report of search market share in the United States.

According to comScore (SCOR), Microsoft (MSFT) saw its share rise to 11.5 percent in February, up from 11.3 percent in January.

Meanwhile, Yahoo dropped from 17 percent to 16.8 percent, another month in a troubling run of them. Each point of share lost, according to many sources and analysts, represents about $100 million in online advertising revenue.

Bartz has also repeatedly said Yahoo’s share would improve soon, as the company innovates its consumer search experience in the wake of outsourcing search technology to Microsoft as part of a recent deal.

And it goes without saying, still at the tippy-top as the mice battled, elephantine search giant Google (GOOG) also managed to eke out a small gain, rising to 65.5 percent 65.4 percent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100309/yahoo-search-look-out-below-as-bing-gains-again-and-google-remains-as-scary-as-ever/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100115/the-one-year-report-card-of-yahoo%e2%80%99s-carol-bartz-financials-c/ http://allthingsd.com/20100115/the-one-year-report-card-of-yahoo%e2%80%99s-carol-bartz-financials-c/#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:48:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23102

Yesterday, BoomTown began grading the performance of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, after she gave herself a B- for overall performance for the year since she took over the troubled Internet giant.

But I decided to be more specific, splitting the grades into five categories: Management, financials, product innovation, deal-making and moxie.

For management, I gave Bartz an A-, because she has been a definite improvement on previous leadership in terms of decision-making, speed and essentially grabbing the mantle of control firmly from the start.

Some thought I was too generous and others thought the grade should have been an A+. Which means it was just about right!

Today, let’s look at financials–by which I mean Yahoo’s fiscal performance and its stock price.

In this regard, Bartz only gets a C++ (it’s a techie joke, get it?).

I could have given her a B- here, I guess, but–to me–C+ simply means financials have remained in a holding zone under Bartz, so she does not deserve to be completely decried, or applauded either.

Why? Well, let’s start with the stock.

While Yahoo (YHOO) shares are up about 38 percent for the year, which is a good thing, they still lag those of other Internet companies, as well as the market.

In the same period, the Nasdaq was up about 44 percent, Google’s stock has doubled and Microsoft (MSFT) shares are also up a lot more.

In an interview with Bloomberg recently, Bartz claimed that Yahoo was in the “penalty box” with investors–a hangover from former management, presumably–and this is the reason for its weaker stock gain.

Whatever. But Bartz has been the CEO for a year and Wall Street is still holding out. Thus, she has to fully take the blame instead of pointing at the previous administration.

In other words, former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang and the Yangtanic are ancient history. So, all is forgiven, Jerry (call me!).

Bartz also blamed the recession for Yahoo’s continued revenue decline in 2009, about 12 percent overall in the most recent quarter.

She told Bloomberg, “We came out of one of the worst climates ever. And if you look at growth of Fortune 500 companies, only being down 12 or 15 percent is damn good. I’m not going to apologize for our growth.”

Again, whatever. But she runs a company in a high-growth industry and is not selling hams or socks, so perhaps bragging that being down 12 to 15 percent is “damn good” is a bit of a stretch.

(Microsoft certainly did not crow over its 14 percent decline in revenue in the most recent quarter even though it beat expectations, and its fiscal results rely a lot on something that does get profoundly affected–namely, sales of PCs–in a recession.)

Specifically, in the third quarter, Yahoo’s search advertising revenue was off 19 percent, and display was off eight percent at “Owned and Operated” sites on Yahoo.

Google, in contrast, reported a seven percent rise in its third-quarter results, and its execs projected a mood of smooth sailing ahead and no more econalypse. Financial performance at Amazon (AMZN) was also way up, as it was at Netflix (NFLX) and Apple (AAPL).

Still, Yahoo’s fiscal performance relies a lot on premium branded advertising, so it has remained weaker and will do so until the economy really comes back.

Many analysts are predicting exactly that, with double-digit sales growth in this area ahead.

And Yahoo’s bottom line is likely to get a boost when its costs are off-loaded to Microsoft, as part of the search and advertising partnership Bartz struck with the software giant earlier this year. The deal awaits regulatory approval, which is likely, and will then start to kick in later in the year.

Still, a dark cloud hangs ominously over the persistent search share declines Yahoo has suffered, which Bartz and others attribute to loss of toolbar and other distribution deals that Google (GOOG) and Microsoft picked up.

But query growth rates are also down and that’s a red flag, especially since Microsoft and Google are up a lot.

Nonetheless, depending on how these various parts of Yahoo revenue sort themselves out, along with Bartz’s cost-cutting, Yahoo’s bottom line is most likely to look better in the quarters ahead, so the stock could certainly go up quickly.

And so could her financial grade. Bartz is well known for being great at managing the bottom line and Wall Street expectations, so I suspect it is top of mind for her.

That said, once that registers, everyone will then be looking for not just a return to normal, but for actual growth.

And that can only come from product innovation–the name of the game in Silicon Valley–which is what will be on the grading block Monday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100115/the-one-year-report-card-of-yahoo%e2%80%99s-carol-bartz-financials-c/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091218/what-does-yahoos-search-decline-mean-and-more-to-the-point-can-it-be-stopped/ http://allthingsd.com/20091218/what-does-yahoos-search-decline-mean-and-more-to-the-point-can-it-be-stopped/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:22:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22059

“Microsoft eats, sleeps and drinks search,” said one Yahoo source to me this week. “And we just don’t.”

That was one very stark way of explaining why Yahoo, the No. 2 search player, continues to lose market share in the lucrative online arena, even as Microsoft’s Bing service has been slowly gaining.

The latest proof of this came this week from a comScore (SCOR) report that showed a decline of 0.5 percent, to 17.5 percent, for Yahoo (YHOO) in November, even as Microsoft (MSFT) saw a gain from 9.9 percent to 10.3 percent, and Google (GOOG) had a slight uptick, from 65.4 percent to 65.6 percent.

Yahoo’s share is the lowest it has seen and part of a nearly year-long decline in search for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

That hurts, according to a variety of internal sources at Yahoo, as well as analysts, since each point of lost share represents $100 million to $150 million in revenue.

“We estimate that every one percent search market share is worth approximately $150 million,” noted J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan in an email. “However, it’s a blended number.”

What Khan means is that Yahoo’s revenue per search is a lot lower than that generated by Google. And–since Yahoo has a much lower market share–the average is higher.

Still, no one at Yahoo wants to watch search share seep away.

So, not surprisingly, a spokeswoman for the Internet giant–echoing sentiments of CEO Carol Bartz since she signed the search and online advertising pact with Microsoft earlier this year–said Yahoo is committed to excelling in search, especially in search experience.

The spokeswoman also maintained that Yahoo’s share will change for the better as soon as a series of recent updates to Yahoo search–and as increased “infusion” of search throughout site, such as in email–kicks in.

In addition, she noted that Yahoo’s $100 million “It’s Y!ou” marketing campaign is about to turn its attention to the site’s “hero products,” including search.

Since that is still to come and because many of the other changes “were put into place just in September,” she said, improvements will be apparent in the months ahead and not now.

Lastly, the spokeswoman added, some of the declines are related to the inevitable impact of Yahoo losing “non-economic” toolbar and affiliate distribution deals to Microsoft and Google.

Before the comScore figures came out, in fact, Bartz underscored this particular point at an investor conference last week, and Khan also noted it in a recent report.

“We are concerned by this [search decline] trend, but we think some of the market share loss is associated with the discontinuation of tool bar and affiliate deals,” he wrote. “We believe that many of these deals were uneconomical and were created solely to expand its market share. Thus, we think this market share loss will have a much lower impact on profitability than many investors fear.”

Maybe so, but Bing’s slow and steady gains since the new service was launched this summer is still not a plus for Yahoo.

And while those gains are due in part to those pricey distribution deals, they have also been boosted by Microsoft’s own $100 million Bing marketing campaign and an increasingly hopped-up innovation war with Google.

Yahoo, for the most part, has been missing in action in that loud battle, although the company has indeed released a series of new features, including recent integration with Twitter and an upcoming one with Facebook, to increase more real-time search results.

But both Google and Microsoft have done similar deals and continue to update search on a much speedier schedule.

What this ultimately means to the pending MicroHoo partnership will be interesting to watch, since the deal makes more money for Yahoo the higher its share of search.

As part of the agreement–under which Microsoft takes care of the technology for both Yahoo and itself (using, ironically, a lot of former Yahoo techies it has poached)–the software giant will pay Yahoo almost 90 percent of the revenue it gets from search on Yahoo sites.

Less search share, of course, means less revenue, even if Yahoo is not paying for the costs of delivering that search.

On the plus side, Khan and others have noted recently that a recovery in the graphical advertising business could give Yahoo’s stock a boost.

Since Yahoo does eat, sleep and drink display, this might counter its search shortfalls, until, presumably, Yahoo can stop them.

[Bumper sticker courtesy of Zazzle.com.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091218/what-does-yahoos-search-decline-mean-and-more-to-the-point-can-it-be-stopped/feed/ 10 http://allthingsd.com/20090723/using-private-browsing-in-internet-explorer/ http://allthingsd.com/20090723/using-private-browsing-in-internet-explorer/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:32:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20090723/using-private-browsing-in-internet-explorer/ Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

In your recent Firefox review, you said Internet Explorer has a private browsing mode that doesn’t record your history or tracks while surfing. But I can’t find how to turn it on.

The feature, which is called InPrivate Browsing, is only available in the latest version of IE, called IE8. You turn it on by either selecting that option from the Safety button at the upper right, or from the Tools menu in the Menu Bar if you have chosen to make that bar visible. Once you do, an “InPrivate” label appears at the top left corner of the browser and a page appears explaining that the browser won’t record on your own PC certain records of what you do in that browsing session. There’s an additional privacy mode, available from the same two drop-down menus, called “InPrivate Filtering,” which goes further. It blocks Web sites you go to from saving certain records of your presence there on their own servers. InPrivate browsing lasts until you close the InPrivate browsing window.

When you reviewed the latest Safari Web browser awhile back, you complained that Apple had repositioned the tabs in a way that made them harder to see. A friend said that’s no longer true. Is he right?

Yes. After getting a lot of negative reaction, Apple changed Safari 4’s design so the tabs are displayed in the previous manner, below the toolbar, instead of at the very top. The company also made more visible the page-loading indicator, though I personally still prefer the indicator style used in prior versions.

In your column last week, you recommended add-on software to search documents for key words in Windows XP. Is there any similar software that will do the same for Macs?

It’s unnecessary on Mac because the Mac operating system comes with a fast, comprehensive search system called Spotlight that’s built right in. Windows Vista also has a very good search system built in. The reason I recommended add-on software for Windows XP is that I consider XP’s built-in search to be slow and inferior to those in these two newer operating systems.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090723/using-private-browsing-in-internet-explorer/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090720/yahoo-finally-rolls-out-new-home-page-to-the-masses-and-drum-roll-its-good-plus-screen-shots/ http://allthingsd.com/20090720/yahoo-finally-rolls-out-new-home-page-to-the-masses-and-drum-roll-its-good-plus-screen-shots/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:00:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=16064

Although it’s not news that Yahoo has been readying a new version of its homepage and has spent a lot of time doing so–in fact, it’s gone all Handy Manny with a whole lot of test renovations–the Internet giant begins the massive rollout of it tomorrow.

The official launch of what was code-named “Metro,” which Yahoo had previously said was coming in the fall, will take place on an opt-in “beta” basis for the hundreds of millions of users in the U.S. and will be extended to France, the U.K. and India later this week.

When users log in, they will get a choice–for now, there will be no forcing it–to switch over to the new version, which Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat, SVP of Integrated Consumer Experiences, said in an interview with me today by phone, is the “the most fundamental change to the homepage ever.”

And, indeed, the new look is much different, even than previous launch candidates, featuring an almost complete rejiggering of the look and feel of the most important page at Yahoo (YHOO) and one of the most trafficked on the Internet.

The change is an important one for Yahoo, since its front page is perhaps its most powerful calling card to users and advertisers, as well as to Wall Street. Its homepage gets 330 million unique visitors every month.

Yahoo has redone its homepage many times since its founding in the mid-1990s (you can see the various incarnations of it here), but this new design is perhaps the most dramatic.

(See screenshots of the new regular page and one with a Facebook app featured below; click on the images to make them larger.)

The most striking change is a prominent left-side “My Favorites” area, with 65 specially designed applications that users can customize, including giving a quick hovering glimpse of email, stocks and of third-party sites like Facebook.

Not quite a dashboard or exactly a social networking page, it feels a little as if Yahoo took a browser tab or a toolbar, put it in a vertical format and gave it some great functionality.

Full disclosure: All Things Digital, as well as several other Dow Jones news properties, are in its special alphabetical apps gallery, although I had no idea it would be there.

Yahoo also allows users to create such widgets on the fly from most any Web site and they can have up to 36 apps on the homepage.

There is advertising in the boxes that pop up when hovering over these apps, which is a way of dealing with the issue of purposely sending users away from Yahoo rather than keeping them there. It is a much better version of that trap.

“We want to be the center of people’s lives online and want to do it in an open, innovative way, all while providing a compelling experience,” said Bhat. “It marks the beginning of a renaissance of Yahoo, a renaissance where every pixel matters.”

After looking over the history of Yahoo’s homepages since 1994 (see them all here), it has pretty much told a story of a site with increasingly smaller font sizes and more stuff packed on it.

“It had nothing to do with the user, but what Yahoo wanted the user to do,” said Bhat, rather frankly.

Thus, he said, everything going forward will focus on what the user wants, which, he explained, essentially boils down to a “my world” and “the world” outlook.

In the my-world bucket: Email, favorite Web sites, stock info. In the the-world: General news, search, what’s hot.

But, unlike its highly customized MyYahoo product, Bhat said that Yahoo wanted to make it easier for users to create a page where “there is destination for everything you are about in just a click or two.”

The programmed “Today” module remains, although users can indicate which kind of information–finance, news, entertainment–gets top billing.

The module is also localized, depending on the user.

“We wanted to provide broadcast and narrowcast in one place,” said Bhat.

That includes updating status, right from the homepage, including integration with social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

But–in a very big mistake–there is no ability to update status to the popular microblogging service Twitter on this part of the homepage, as yet. You can make it an app, though, as Twitter can appear in your Yahoo updates.

And there is a big advertising module still on the right, along with a what’s-hot section. And, finally, there will also soon be complete two-way syncing with mobile devices, said Bhat.

Interestingly, although CEO Carol Bartz has often said internally that she does not like the color purple, which has been the company’s signature one since its founding, the main page keeps up the violet tradition with a lighter tone.

“Yahoo’s color is purple and it is known for that,” said Bhat (deftly not taking my delicious bait).

As to why it has taken so long to get its front page redone–it was originally set to debut late last year–Bhat noted that such a major shift of such a trafficked page was, well, complex.

“It involves bringing users along and also rewiring everything within Yahoo,” said Bhat, who gave Bartz credit for turbocharging the effort, since she first arrived at the troubled Silicon Valley icon in January and quickly put the brakes on the planned launch. “Now, we are looking at Yahoo holistically, all centered around the user.”

Time will tell if it is a success, but it is certainly a good and even innovative effort, in much the same spirit Microsoft (MSFT) has had with its new Bing search offering.

And while some might complain that it is not cutting-edge enough, it seems just the right amount of rejiggering and open feel for the mass of users it serves.

For Yahoo, at least when it comes to this one, change is indeed good.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090720/yahoo-finally-rolls-out-new-home-page-to-the-masses-and-drum-roll-its-good-plus-screen-shots/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20090527/little-laptops-with-linux-have-compatibility-issues/ http://allthingsd.com/20090527/little-laptops-with-linux-have-compatibility-issues/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 01:06:06 +0000 Nick Wingfield http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090527/little-laptops-with-linux-have-compatibility-issues/ When the cheap laptops known as netbooks first came out over a year ago, computer makers were able to offer them at low prices in part by shipping them with the free Linux open-source operating system, rather than Microsoft’s Windows. Since then, Windows netbooks have taken over most of the market after Microsoft began pushing Windows XP aggressively to netbook makers and consumers realized Linux netbooks didn’t work well with some popular applications and devices.

Linux on netbooks isn’t going away though. In fact, software and hardware companies have been making big investments to improve Linux netbooks. For the past week, I’ve been using several flavors of Linux running on netbooks — Ubuntu, Hewlett-Packard’s Mi (which is based on Ubuntu) and Moblin, created largely by Intel and not yet available commercially. In all cases, the Linux netbooks failed at some basic functions that any laptop, no matter how tiny and inexpensive, should be able to handle, like working with printers. At the same time, Mi and Moblin have impressive graphical user interfaces well-suited to the habits of typical netbook users, like checking email and accessing social-networking sites, as well as the small screens and low horsepower of tiny laptops. In addition to Linux, all of the computers shared the standard features, or lack thereof, common among netbooks, including compact keyboards and no DVD drives.

H-P’s Mini 110 Mi Edition

The most polished of the products was H-P’s Mini 110 Mi Edition, a new model with a 10.1-inch screen that H-P will begin selling on its Web site for $279.99 on June 10. That’s nearly $50 less than what H-P will charge for the Mini 110 running Windows XP, which will come with a 160-gigabyte hard drive instead of the 8-gigabyte solid-state drive that will come with the Mi edition.

The striking thing about this netbook is the slick graphical user interface created by H-P that runs on top of Ubuntu and first began appearing on H-P netbooks early this year. Instead of a traditional desktop like that found in Windows and the Mac, Mi (pronounced “me”) arranges commonly used applications and content on a screen called the “dashboard,” which looks like a personalized Web page and lists recently received emails, fresh thumbnail images of favorite Web sites, and a Web-search toolbar.

The Mi home screen is a clever way to make the computer seem alive with on- and off-line content, which is fitting since netbooks are designed for on-the-go Internet activities. It’s also tailor-made for the small screen size of netbooks.

A more eye-catching iteration of Linux is Moblin, which I tried out in test form on an Acer netbook; it is expected to ship on netbooks by the end of the year. Moblin has a menu of icons at the top of the screen, the most interesting of which leads to the M-Zone, a home screen that displays calendar appointments and favorite applications alongside snapshots of recently visited sites and a continuous feed from the user’s Twitter network.

An icon called “People” leads to a list of instant-messaging buddies, while another, called “Zones,” let me organize all the applications I had launched into different virtual workspaces, which is useful for hopping between various tasks on a small-screen device like a netbook.

The look and feel of the standard Ubuntu system, without the Mi interface, is more commonplace. I tried out a Dell Mini 10 with a 10.1-inch display and 160-gigabyte hard drive that sells for $349 on Dell’s Web site. The Mini 10 ships with version 8.04 of Ubuntu, which resembles Windows XP, with its desktop, taskbar and pop-up menu system. Ubuntu, in some cases, seemed to overestimate the size of the Dell Mini’s display: A window for configuring wireless-networking capabilities was so large it bled off the screen, and I couldn’t access all the buttons on it. I also installed on the Dell a new version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which works better on small screens. Since a Windows XP version of the Dell Mini 10 sells for the same price as the Ubuntu, I can’t see a compelling reason to choose the Ubuntu option.

All the netbooks I tried had compatibility problems with other external devices. The netbooks couldn’t load the software drivers to let me print to my Canon and Dell printers. I couldn’t load pictures over a USB cable from my Canon PowerShot SD750 digital camera. I was able to get my pictures on the machines by plugging a storage card from my camera directly into the netbooks.

Canonical, the London company that oversees development work on Ubuntu, says it is improving the system’s compatibility with various devices. Intel says it is unfair to judge Moblin until it is commercially available.

Some key applications currently don’t run on Linux, like Apple’s iTunes, which makes it difficult to load music files onto iPods from the netbooks. While the Linux laptops didn’t run Microsoft Office, they came with OpenOffice, a free package of word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications that allowed me to open and modify basic Word and Excel files.

The companies behind Linux netbooks have made great strides in improving user interfaces, but until they can achieve similar breakthroughs in how the machines work with other devices, Windows netbooks are still a better deal.

• Email nick.wingfield@wsj.com. Walter S. Mossberg is away and will return next Thursday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090527/little-laptops-with-linux-have-compatibility-issues/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090416/digg-changes-its-toolbar-amid-publisher-complaints/ http://allthingsd.com/20090416/digg-changes-its-toolbar-amid-publisher-complaints/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:35:17 +0000 Andrew LaVallee http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=10822 Digg modified the toolbar that it launched two weeks ago, a response to Web publishers concerned that it could affect their visibility.

The social-news site released the new feature on April 2. It adds a thin strip to the top of pages submitted to Digg that includes the number of times other users voted on, or “Dugg,” the link, the number of times the page was viewed and other statistics and browsing options. The toolbar also created a shortened Web address, like http://digg.com/d1ooR7, that appeared instead of the original URL.

The changes alarmed some publishers and Web developers, who worried that sites could lose traffic–which can affect advertising dollars–if visitors were bookmarking Digg URLs and not their own, or if the Digg addresses would appear in Google (GOOG) results.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090416/digg-changes-its-toolbar-amid-publisher-complaints/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090414/mining-email-for-contacts/ http://allthingsd.com/20090414/mining-email-for-contacts/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:00:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090414/mining-email-for-contacts/ If you’re feeling guilty about how rarely you update your email contacts, you’re not alone. There are loads of people just like you who would rather not waste time cutting and pasting contact information from emails into digital address books. Instead, they search through email messages for the most up-to-date information, like phone numbers or addresses.

But it’s easy to delete or lose emails. Contacts in a digital address book are more permanent, and they synchronize with smartphones.

This week I tested Gwabbit (Gwabbit.com), a tool that automatically hunts through your emails as you receive them, finding contact information that can be captured — “gwabbed” — and saved in your contacts. It starts on its own without prompting and uses pop-up notifications to tell you that a message has contact information you might want stored in your address book.

Gwabbit comes from Technicopia LLC and uses a pink Gwabbit Wabbit as its mascot, which adds a little whimsy to the dull task of saving contact information. Currently, it works only as a Microsoft Outlook plug-in, but Technicopia is working on a BlackBerry application that will come out at the end of May. Down the line, the company is planning products for the Mac and Web-based email services.

I started with the free version of Gwabbit, which lasts for 14 days or 20 Gwabbit uses, then upgraded to the paid version, which costs $20. Gwabbit’s accuracy — its ability to find the right information in an email and put it in the right field in an Outlook contact card — was usually reliable. The product works by looking for symbols, like “@” to designate email addresses or parentheses to indicate phone numbers, as well as where information appears in a signature.

In most cases, Gwabbit took only a few seconds to work, per contact. It wasn’t always perfect, but worked well enough to make me start saving a substantially larger number of Outlook contacts — and it updated my contacts that had old, outdated information.

Gwabbit installs with a few annoying features turned on. If you’re like me and you get a lot of emails from people you don’t know, Gwabbit’s notifications will pop up often, which could be irritating. If you turn the notifications off, you may not remember to use Gwabbit.

I found it irksome that Gwabbit installs its own promotion in every contact that it creates for you. If you used Gwabbit to make a contact card in Outlook, the notes field will be filled with an announcement that you used Gwabbit, including a Web link for the product — even in the paid version. Technicopia says that it will eliminate this in the next paid version of Gwabbit, which is due out in about three weeks.

Competitors to Gwabbit include the built-in contact grab tools in email clients like Microsoft Outlook (MSFT) and Apple Mail (AAPL). But these programs don’t automatically extract information from all email addresses the way Gwabbit does. Other third-party programs like Signature2Contacts don’t pop up automatically when an email contains information that you don’t have; instead, you must initiate extracting information.

When Gwabbit is downloaded and installed, it adds to Outlook its own toolbar, which can be hidden at will.

When Gwabbit’s auto-grab feature is turned on, a small bubble appears in Outlook when any highlighted email has contact information that isn’t saved in your address book — including people whose signatures have changed since the last time you saved them. The Gwabbit bubble takes a few seconds to appear, which Technicopia says allows enough time for you to read an email. But if you’re scrolling down a list of emails, this bubble will keep popping up for many different emails and can slightly slow down your ability to arrow down through the list.

When Gwabbit can’t find signature information in an email, it creates a bare-bones contact card for the person, and then gives you the option of highlighting the person’s signature block, from which to extract information for the contact card. In my experience, this problem occurred only a handful of times — usually when looking at a recent email in a string of messages back and forth, because Gwabbit couldn’t find someone’s signature buried within the correspondence.

If a Gwabbit notification pops up and you don’t want to save the contact information for the person who sent that email, you can hit an “Ignore this Contact” option in the notification. This sets Gwabbit so it never tries to save that person’s information again. If you want to save information but you’re in the middle of doing something else when the notification pops up, you can hit the “X” button in the notification bubble. This closes the notification but doesn’t ignore the contact in the future.

Gwabbit seems like a simple tool, but its ability to find contact information that you don’t already have — or that differs from what you already have — is a task that you aren’t likely doing regularly. So stop feeling guilty about your contacts and just gwab them.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://solution.allthingsd.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090414/mining-email-for-contacts/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090410/yahoos-bartz-and-microsofts-ballmer-finally-talking-about-search-and-advertising-partnership/ http://allthingsd.com/20090410/yahoos-bartz-and-microsofts-ballmer-finally-talking-about-search-and-advertising-partnership/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:55:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=12076

In early discussions that began in the last several weeks that apparently included a face-to-face meeting last week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are finally talking about search and also advertising partnerships the companies could possibly strike, said several sources with knowledge of the situation.

According to a variety of sources, the talks between the pair (pictured here) and other execs at both companies are preliminary and wide-ranging, focused on what kind of commercial relationship Yahoo and Microsoft could have in the future.

But, cautioned sources close to Yahoo, the discussions are not about a renewed acquisition attempt by Microsoft and also might not result in any deal.

In any case, investors will likely cheer any kind of productive re-engagement between Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT), which has been lacking since a tense takeover effort by the software giant went south last year after an ugly battle that soured relations between the two companies.

“It’s long past time,” said one outsider who had been told of the discussions. “With Google’s huge market share, these two need to work together and the problems they had should be put in the past.”

Both Yahoo and Microsoft declined to comment about the talks.

The change in leadership at Yahoo has helped, especially since Bartz–a Silicon Valley veteran with much deal experience–has none of the baggage from the takeover battle that previous management was carrying.

Microsoft seems to have also moved on, working on a massive redesign and relaunch of its search brand, under the internal name Kumo, an effort that has included the hiring a whole lot of talent in the arena, mainly from Yahoo, in fact.

That includes Qi Lu, a former Yahoo tech star, who is leading all of Microsoft’s online efforts.

All of this means that a relatively green-field approach is now possible.

Thus, sources said, the talks include many scenarios, such as one in which the companies swap online advertising assets and deliver services to each other.

In that interesting plan, Yahoo might take over all of Microsoft’s display and premium advertising business to sell along with its own, while Microsoft would run the search advertising business for the pair.

Such a deal, which plays to each company’s strengths, would bind the two closely together, even though they still compete on many other fronts in the Internet space.

It also joins their forces, creating a sale that is much more attractive to advertisers and allows for better competition against search powerhouse Google (GOOG).

And while Ballmer has publicly said repeatedly that Microsoft is interested in buying either Yahoo’s search advertising business or search outright, sources close to Yahoo said the company is still determined to maintain control of the important search business and the massive traffic and critical data it provides.

That is especially true, given that Yahoo is the No. 2 player, with a much larger share than third-place Microsoft. According to recent surveys, for example, Google has a 63 percent share, while Yahoo has 20.6 percent and Microsoft eight percent.

But it is also in Yahoo’s interest to move fast, since its search traffic could be declining soon.

According to a story by Dow Jones yesterday, citing a comScore (SCOR) report, recent toolbar distribution deals with computer makers Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Acer by Microsoft and Google respectively, will have a negative impact on Yahoo.

The story said that Yahoo “could lose up to 15% of its search traffic over the next 12-to-18 months after failing to renew deals with two computer makers, blows likely to hamper the Internet giant’s efforts to remain a viable competitor in search advertising.”

But even as he directs aggressive moves to put even more competitive pressure on Yahoo, Ballmer has been unusually deferential in giving Bartz a lot of time to come to the table.

Nonetheless, he cannot seem to stop talking about it either.

At a recent conference in mid-March, for example, Ballmer said:

“It’s really about getting the pooled volume, because you actually can improve your product faster if you have more users….If you have more advertisers, you can improve the product as well….There are returns to scale. And putting the scale together is valuable.”

But, in that interview, Ballmer also said that he had only talked to Bartz briefly since she was hired in January–congratulating her on the new job and mentioning that he’d love to talk about a deal.

And, at another meeting with Wall Street analysts earlier, he went even further:

“You all know that I would like to figure out how to pool somehow Microsoft and Yahoo. I’m not talking about doing an acquisition, blah, blah, blah, back to search deals, blah, blah, blah, I don’t know if anything is going to happen. I’ll short-circuit the whole conversation, but the fact of the matter is, these two guys [Microsoft and Yahoo] should somehow figure out how to get together and create more competition for this guy [Google]. And I’m hoping perhaps that that’s a reasonable conversation to have with new management at Yahoo as Carol comes onboard.”

In contrast, Bartz has played her hand very close to the vest so far, at least publicly, often discounting any effort to split up Yahoo.

In fact, at a Morgan Stanley (MS) tech conference in early March, she said:

“I am not going to negotiate with my 55,000 favorite friends….We’re going to negotiate as companies negotiate–and that’s privately. If something happens, you’ll know it then. Until then, there is no comment.”

(By the way, both Ballmer and Bartz have agreed to be interviewed onstage–separately, of course–at the D: All Things Digital conference in late May that Walt Mossberg and I run–so we will be sure to try to get one–not that they would give one!)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090410/yahoos-bartz-and-microsofts-ballmer-finally-talking-about-search-and-advertising-partnership/feed/ 10 http://allthingsd.com/20090410/yahoo-search-market-share-from-worse-to-worse/ http://allthingsd.com/20090410/yahoo-search-market-share-from-worse-to-worse/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:00:50 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=16334

Yahoo claimed 20.6 percent of all U.S. search queries in February, according to comScore (SCOR).

But a year from now it will claim just 17.51 percent or less, its share gutted by the loss of deals that once made Yahoo’s the default search toolbar on new Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Acer PCs. With those spots now claimed by Microsoft Live Search and Google (GOOG), respectively, Yahoo stands to see an estimated decline of 15 percent in search traffic, according to some reports.

A nasty blow for a company with a search volume as long in decline as Yahoo’s. Nastier when you consider that a fair portion of that lost traffic will end up with Microsoft (MSFT), which will also be accruing traffic from a similar toolbar deal with Dell (DELL). And nastier still, because Yahoo (YHOO) is certain to lose premium advertising dollars if its market share dips below 20 percent.

Yahoo, of course, disputes such suggestions. And it insists the loss in traffic it will suffer from its failure to renew these toolbar deals won’t be as high as that 15 percent figure.

We’ll see, I suppose. As one former Yahoo search exec told Dow Jones, “[toolbar deals are] the cleanest driver of market share. It’s a really important way to get in front of people.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090410/yahoo-search-market-share-from-worse-to-worse/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090311/a-stylus-for-the-iphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20090311/a-stylus-for-the-iphone/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:04:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20090311/a-stylus-for-the-iphone/ Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

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I am a Palm Treo user and would like to get an iPhone for the apps. But I have tried the virtual keyboard on the iPhone in the store and hate it. Is there a stylus you can use for better accuracy, or some software trick?

I don’t know if they improve accuracy, but there are several stylus brands made for the iPhone and iPod Touch. They are aimed at making typing easier, especially if you have long nails or are wearing gloves. One example is the Pogo, a $15 iPhone stylus from a company called Ten One Design, at tenonedesign.com.

In addition, there are several iPhone apps that attempt to help typing accuracy by allowing you to compose emails, text messages and Twitter posts using a wide, landscape keyboard rather than the narrower standard keyboard. You type your message in these apps, and then the app sends them to the iPhone’s email program for transmission. One that I have used is called TouchType. It works with email and Twitter, and costs 99 cents.

Another interesting solution is a free app called ShapeWriter, which lets you type by sliding your finger along a keyboard to connect the letters in words. You never have to lift your finger until you are done with a whole word. Messages you compose in ShapeWriter can be saved as notes or shipped to the email program for sending.

Finally, I should note two things about typing on an iPhone. First, it’s difficult to know if you’ll be comfortable with it from just a few minutes in a store, because it usually takes a few days to master. Second, some people won’t ever find it acceptable, and these folks should choose a phone that has a physical keyboard.

In your review of the new version of the Safari Web browser, you said some Web sites were publishing methods for undoing some of the changes in it that you criticized. Can you explain how I can do that?

There are two methods for changing Safari 4 so it looks and works more like the previous versions, while retaining its faster speed. One method involves typing techie commands into the computer. But, for mainstream users, I recommend another: downloading a new free utility called Safari 4 Buddy. It’s available at swoon.net/site/software.html.

Safari 4 Buddy allows you to just check off buttons that can change the placement of tabs in Safari 4 so they’re under the toolbars, rather than at the top of the screen, and restore the blue page-loading progress bar that Apple killed. It also permits users to change other settings Apple omitted from the browser’s Preferences menus. I have tested it and it works.

However, this utility works only on the Mac version of Safari 4. I don’t know of any way to make these changes in the Windows version. Also, there’s no guarantee that Apple won’t make future modifications to the browser that might reverse any customizations Safari 4 Buddy makes.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090311/a-stylus-for-the-iphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081216/organizing-your-web-life-in-one-place/ http://allthingsd.com/20081216/organizing-your-web-life-in-one-place/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:06:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081216/organizing-your-web-life-in-one-place/ If you use the Internet regularly, your activities are likely spread out all over the Web. You might be sharing photos on Flickr, emailing via Hotmail, posting status updates on Facebook, following tweets on Twitter, sending instant messages on Google (GOOG) Chat and keeping a calendar on Apple’s MobileMe. You hop from one site to the next, juggling different user names and passwords.

Last month, Microsoft unveiled Windows Live, its Web-based attempt to consolidate many of these activities. Windows Live can be found at home.live.com and includes programs that cover a lot of ground: Hotmail (email), SkyDrive (online storage), Spaces (blogging), Calendar and Events (online invitations). Four new Windows Live categories — Profile, People, Photos and Groups — create a Facebook/MySpace-like feel by following activities of networked users and sharing that data with others.

If you’re using a Windows PC, you can additionally download a suite of seven free desktop applications called Windows Live Essentials from download.live.com that enhance and coordinate with the Windows Live services. These include Messenger, Photo Gallery, Mail, Writer, Movie Maker Beta, Family Safety and Toolbar. I downloaded the Essentials and enjoyed using many of them, especially Mail, Messenger and Toolbar.

But I focused my testing this week on the Windows Live Web services, which, as advertised, let me control various elements of my digital life in one place with one password. SkyDrive is a simple and approachable online-storage repository that will be truly useful for a lot of folks who want a central place to keep files. The Windows Live Profile offers handsome personalized pages with bright colors and designs; compared side-by-side with a Facebook page, it made Facebook look dull and sparse. I also used Windows Live Photos to upload digital photos onto my Profile and then shared them with friends and family in three quick steps.

New Windows Live programs include Profile, which offers personalized pages.

Microsoft (MSFT) smartly realized that most people already visit a variety of sites for online pursuits and will want to add those activities to their Windows Live Profile. Users can currently link to 12 other sources, including Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, WordPress, Pandora and Yelp — but not Facebook or MySpace. Microsoft says that it’s working to build relationships with Facebook and MySpace and hopes to have related news next year.

But though various Web activities can be added to a Live Profile, this connection isn’t as productive as it could be. Take Twitter, for example. I added my Twitter account to my Live Profile, but on Live Profile I could see only tweets from myself and from people in my Windows Live network. To see tweets from the 50 people I follow on Twitter, I had to go to Twitter.com.

I had a similar experience with Pandora. I added my Pandora account to my Live Profile, and when I bookmarked Keith Urban as a favorite artist, this tidbit appeared on my Live Profile page. But when I listened to Christmas tunes for a few hours, nothing on my Profile page reflected this (i.e., “Katie is listening to Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ ”).

After linking my Live Profile to my Flickr account, I posted photos on Flickr.com, and seconds later, these pics appeared on my Live Profile. But other activities from Flickr weren’t reflected on my Live Profile, such as when my contacts posted photos or when those in a Flickr group of which I’m a member posted photos. To see this, I had to visit Flickr.com.

Microsoft says that in the case of Web activities, the outside companies choose what to show and what not to show. But I can’t use Windows Live as a home base for my other online activities unless it displays useful data that save me trips to other Web sites.

Messenger displays friends’ updates.

Like many social-networking services, Windows Live gives special privileges to those who are in the network. To belong to a Windows Live network, one must first have a Windows Live ID, which anyone can get by signing up for Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger or Xbox Live.

Windows Live also allows interaction with people outside the network. For instance, I can share any of the photos that I upload to my profile with friends and family who don’t have Windows Live IDs by simply emailing a link to them. These people don’t need a Windows Live ID to look at the photos.

When I used Windows Live to share photos with my sister, who has received hundreds of digital shots from me on every photo-sharing Web site I’ve tested, she wasn’t impressed. She correctly pointed out that other sharing sites, like Shutterfly, allow full-screen slideshow views; Windows Live limits slide shows to the size of the browser window.

Windows Live Web services work best on Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser, version 6 and up, and a special quick-photo-upload tool works only with Internet Explorer. This uploading tool doesn’t work with Apple’s (AAPL) Safari browser or the Mozilla Firefox browser; instead, you must slowly add each photo to your page, selecting them one at a time.

If you’re using a Windows PC, the Windows Live Essentials are definitely worth installing. Photo Gallery enables simple photo publishing directly from your computer’s collection of My Pictures, and specific faces can be labeled and tagged in each shot. Windows Live Mail, which replaced Outlook Express last year, is a smoothly designed program that I rely on every day for use with three different email accounts. Windows Live Messenger links into the Live Web services specifically by retrieving the status updates for each person in your network and displaying those in a ticker-like panel at the bottom of Messenger. The Windows Live Toolbar works only in Internet Explorer but shows an at-a-glance view of your network’s updates, along with photos, email and calendar — all in the top panel of the browser.

Windows Live Essentials are still in beta, or testing, mode, and Windows Live Web services will add more partnerships next month. I’ll be anxious to see if these new partnerships operate more productively with the Live Profile. Aggregating content from across the Web isn’t worthwhile unless that content is fully and usefully accessible in its new home.

Still, Windows Live Web services and Essentials provide solid tools that can help you organize your email, messaging, photos, storage, scheduling and social networking in one place with one password. That, by itself, is a relief.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081216/organizing-your-web-life-in-one-place/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081216/yahoo-execs-tapan-bhat-and-ash-patel-talk-about-yahoos-open-and-social-launch/ http://allthingsd.com/20081216/yahoo-execs-tapan-bhat-and-ash-patel-talk-about-yahoos-open-and-social-launch/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:05:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=7704

Here’s a video interview I did yesterday at the San Francisco event where Yahoo finally launched a lot of the new open and social elements that it has long said it was injecting into its most popular products.

BoomTown talked with the key movers of the initiatives: Ash Patel, Yahoo’s EVP of its Audience Product Division, and Tapan Bhat, its SVP of its Front Doors, Communities and Network Services.

(You can see screen shots and an official Yahoo video of the new features here.)

The initiatives Yahoo (YHOO) finally released into the wild have been long in the making, first discussed as just vaporware by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (see that video below too).

Yahoo also hosted a session at its Sunnyvale HQ about its open plans in the fall.

And, after the longest of gestation periods, they arrived yesterday, in an impressive rollout.

The changes include some very deft rejiggering of Yahoo Mail, called a “smarter inbox,” with a new dashboard welcome page, easier ways to make connections, more filtered views, updates and third-party apps integrated into the application.

I thought the changes to the mail product were the most interesting, especially given the hundreds of millions of people using the product. It’s an interesting choice for a social entry point, aiming to give nonsocial-networking types enough of a taste of it without inundating them.

Of particular note were the third-party applications, such as for WordPress and Flickr, that launch nicely right in the email program.

Also cool was one app from Xoopit that surfaces old photos and photo links lost in the musty archives of old emails.

Yahoo also debuted an enhanced version of the homepage (previously announced in September) and My Yahoo, as well as a new toolbar and socialization elements added to its popular media properties.

It remains to be seen how popular these changes will become, especially since many consumers already have their social-networking lives on Facebook or MySpace.

In addition, both Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and Microsoft (MSFT) have rolled out similar social and open changes to their sites recently, making it super-confusing for everyone.

But, better late than never, I always say, so here’s Bhat and Patel talking about Yahoo’s new stuff.

I had to load the video onto YouTube, as Brightcove had snafus (also below is Yang talking about the concepts at CES in January 2008):

Tapan Bhat and Ash Patel

Jerry Yang at January 2008 CES

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081216/yahoo-execs-tapan-bhat-and-ash-patel-talk-about-yahoos-open-and-social-launch/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20081216/a-look-see-at-yahoos-new-open-and-social-launch/ http://allthingsd.com/20081216/a-look-see-at-yahoos-new-open-and-social-launch/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:04:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=7712 Yesterday, Yahoo held a San Francisco event where it finally launched a lot of the new open and social elements that it has long said it was injecting into its most popular products.

(BoomTown interviewed top Yahoo execs Tapan Bhat and Ash Patel about the moves here.)

For a look-see, here is a Yahoo (YHOO) video about the launch and some screenshots of the changes (click on the images to make them larger):

Yahoo’s Official Video on Open and Social Launches

Yahoo Mail Main Page

Yahoo Mail Inbox

Xoopit in Yahoo Mail

Toolbar Notifications

Media Integration in Yahoo TV site

Open Applications

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081216/a-look-see-at-yahoos-new-open-and-social-launch/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20081215/yahoo-opens-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20081215/yahoo-opens-up/#comments Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:20:02 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=9691

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081215/yahoo-opens-up/feed/ 0