Yahoo

In a move to redefine the often testy relationship between online publishers and search engines, Microsoft plans to help European media owners protect and profit from copyrighted material online, the company's top intellectual property lawyer, Thomas Rubin, said Wednesday.

Rubin said Microsoft planned to work more closely with publishers on the development of a new technological standard that would give them more control over what happens to their material after it has been referenced by search engines like Microsoft's Live Search, Google and Yahoo.

Yahoo has won another wireless carrier for its mobile Internet search tool. The company joined T-Mobile in announcing Thursday that oneSearch will be the search utility for T-Mobile's web2go service.

Yahoo said more than 70 mobile operators worldwide are now using its mobile search tool.

T-Mobile said oneSearch will provide web2go users a better Web-browsing experience "by making it easier to view and navigate the Web through a customizable home page," as well a simplified shopping and download experience.

Grouped Results

It comes as little surprise to analysts who have been watching the Yahoo drama unfold over the past six months. CEO Jerry Yang, 40, is stepping down and the company is hunting for a new chief who can pull the Internet company up by its billion-dollar bootstraps and compete with Google.

Yang, Yahoo's cofounder, will return to his former role as chief yahoo and continue to serve on the board. Right now, he seems to be a scapegoat for Yahoo's woes -- but are those really his fault, or was Yang set up from the start?

An Adamant Yang

Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang has resigned his role as CEO and Yahoo's board has initiated a search for his successor. Yang will return to his former role as chief yahoo as soon as the board finds a replacement. He will continue to serve on the board.

The 40-year-old Yang stepped into the CEO role at the board's request in June 2007 to lead the company through a strategic repositioning and transformation of its platform.

Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang has resigned his role as CEO and Yahoo's board has initiated a search for his successor. Yang will return to his former role as chief yahoo as soon as the board finds a replacement. He will continue to serve on the board.

Yahoo's stock price rose with the announcement and was trading at $11.35 at mid-afternoon Tuesday, up from Monday's $10.63 close.

The 40-year-old Yang stepped into the CEO role at the board's request in June 2007 to lead the company through a strategic repositioning and transformation of its platform.

Google is pushing its voice-recognition technology to Apple's iPhone first, before devices running its own Android mobile platform.

The New York Times offered photographs of Google employees Vic Gundotra and Gummi Hafsteinsoon using an iPhone for a voice search. The free application was expected to be available on Apple's App Store on Friday. Google reportedly will soon offer the technology for other devices, presumably including the T-Mobile G1, which uses Android.

YouTube will venture into Webcasting this month in an effort to take the site's popularity to a new level by showcasing the talent behind its most-viewed videos.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, has matured from a Web start-up to a site with loyal fans. But as any good television industry executive will say, it needs fresh content to keep its audience.

On Nov. 22 in San Francisco, it is introducing "YouTube Live," a show featuring well-known stars like the rapper Will.i.Am and the singer Katy Perry, as well as YouTube sensations like Esmee Denters.

While the world waits to see if Microsoft will take Yahoo up on its invitation to make another acquisition bid, Redmond on Monday announced another search deal with a different rival: Sun Microsystems.

Microsoft is chasing both Google and Yahoo on the search front. According to comScore, Google owned 63 percent of the U.S. Web search market in August. Yahoo grabbed 19.6 percent, leaving Microsoft with a mere 8.3 percent.

Google offered its rival Yahoo a marriage of convenience this past summer: an advertising partnership that would have given Yahoo an alternative to selling all or part of itself to Microsoft.

That proposed marriage fell apart Wednesday in the face of opposition from government antitrust regulators, leaving a jilted Yahoo under growing pressure to devise a new plan for growth.

The agreement also thrust Google, which dominates the most lucrative business on the Internet, squarely into the sights of regulators. That could force the company to rein in its ambitious goals for expansion.

If an ancient writer was alive today, he might post something like this to his Twitter account: "Hell hath no fury like a software giant scorned."

For much of the year, it looked like a proposed advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo would bring vitally needed liquidity of about $800 million to Yahoo. The economic downturn hit Yahoo particularly hard, with online advertisers moving away from banner ads to Google's more cost-effective text-based ads.