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theRegister >_ Yahoo! and Microsoft have removed Iran from the country lists of their webmail services as stronger US sanctions against the Islamic republic begin to bite.Google has kept Iran as an option on the Gmail registration page, however.
The US administration stepped up economic pressure on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eccentric government less than two weeks ago.
A Yahoo! spokeswoman told The Reg: “Yahoo! continually reviews its business operations to ensure compliance with these restrictions. Consistent with this policy, we cannot accept registrations from countries subject to these restrictions.
So essentially, you can’t choose Iran as a country option because we are restricted from conducting business there – all US companies must comply with this policy.” She was unable to tell us exactly when Yahoo! applied the rules.
Microsoft said it was unable to comment on the issue. (more…)
By KEVIN J. DELANEY, ROBERT A. GUTH and VAUHINI VARA
October 25, 2007
Microsoft Corp.’s $240 million investment in Facebook Inc. — a three-year-old company with more promise than profit — represents a huge bet that the online advertising boom will continue and the popular social networking site will be among the biggest beneficiaries.
The software giant said yesterday that it will buy a 1.6% stake in Facebook, beating out Google Inc. after intense lobbying. The deal places a $15 billion valuation on the closely held Palo Alto, Calif., startup. Facebook, which runs a site where people set up personal Web pages, expects to break even this year, on a cash-flow basis, with revenue of $150 million, according to people familiar with the company.
SearchEngineLand >> Reports have been coming in that people trying to reach Google, Yahoo and Microsoft from within China or via Chinese ISPs are being redirected to Baidu.
Some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but we think it’s likely that China is upset with the US over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama and is retaliating by hurting US-based search engines.
Back in 2002, when China was upset with Google, it similarly redirected traffic. From a Reuters article at that time:
Some users in Beijing and Shanghai were redirected to Peking University’s no-frills search site Tianwang, the little known cj888.com and the German-invested Baidu.com, among others. Users in Guangzhou were rerouted to the local portal 21cn.com.
Information Industry and Internet officials had no comment on the move. Sites gaining exposure from it denied any role in the reroutings. “It is definitely not done by us,” said a Baidu official. “We have no idea where it comes from.” (more…)
VentureBeat >> Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer just said at the Web 2.0 conference here in San Francisco that 
the software giant will acquire 20 companies a year for the next five years, ranging from $50 million to $1 billion.This steals from the playbook of News Corp, the media company that generated excitement among Internet companies after it acquired MySpace and others. There’s a tactic here: By declaring you are hungry, you get entrepreneurs coming to you to show you their wares — letting you get a glimpse of emerging technology even if you’re not going to buy it.
Google and to a lesser extent, Yahoo, have also acquired dozens of companies over the past few years, with Google much more acquisitive recently. Google has acquired at least 10 companies over the last year (there may be more than we’re unaware of), compared to Microsoft’s four. Yahoo has also acquired four. See list here. (more…)
“Not content with running your computer, Microsoft now wants to read your mind too.
The company says that it is hard to properly evaluate the way people interact with computers since questioning them at the time is distracting and asking questions later may not produce reliable answers. “Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions,” the company says.
Instead, Microsoft wants to read the data straight from the user’s brain as he or she works away. They plan to do this using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to record electrical signals within the brain. The trouble is that EEG data is filled with artefacts caused, for example, by blinking or involuntary actions, and this is hard to tease apart from the cognitive data that Microsoft would like to study.
So the company has come up with a method for filtering EEG data in such a way that it separates useful cognitive information from the not-so-useful non-cognitive stuff. The company hopes that the data will better enable to them to design user interfaces that people find easy to use. Whether users will want Microsoft reading their brain waves is another matter altogether.” [[Source:newScientist.com]]
Monday October 8, 6:52 pm ET
By Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer
Google’s Stock Price Surpasses $600 Per Share for First Time, Extending Monthlong Rally
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc.’s stock price sailed past $600 for the first time Monday, extending a monthlong rally propelled by the lofty expectations surrounding the Internet search leader’s upcoming third-quarter earnings report.
he Mountain View-based company’s shares traded as high as $610.26 before slipping back to $609.62, a gain of $15.57, or 2.6 percent. It marked the sixth time in the past 12 trading sessions that the stock has reached a new peak, indicating investors are confident Google’s third-quarter profit will be impressive. The results are scheduled to be released Oct. 18.
The latest milestone served as yet another reminder of the immense wealth created since Google went public in August 2004.
The shares have increased more than sevenfold from their initial public offering price of $85, bringing the nine-year-old company’s market value to $190 billion — eclipsing bigger, more mature businesses like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Coca-Cola Co., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp.
It took 10 1/2 months for Google’s stock to leap from $500 to $600 and more than a year for the journey from $400 to $500. The shares hurdled $300 in June 2005 after passing the $100 and $200 thresholds in 2004.
Analysts began predicting Google’s stock would reach $600 at the start of 2006 when the shares were still hovering around $420. Some analysts already are predicting Google’s stock will hit $700 within the next year, but the average target price for the stock is $614.64 among analysts polled by Thomson Financial. (more…)
