A few days after the Yahoo-Google deal was finalized, Bilionnaire Carl Icahn commented a rather unexpected remark especially coming from somebody who was opposing Yahoo's decision not to except the Microsoft bid. What's even worst, that someone has even waged a proxy battle to overthrow the current Yahoo board.

Remember the Microsoft's Live Search Cashback rewards program that we told you about not so long ago? It is now working on a direct-to-merchant system with eBay's "Buy It Now" program. That means, you'll start seeing more cashback ads when searching for jewelries to electronics. Whereas previously,

You know that related search suggestions that Google's search offers up whenever you used Google search? Those suggestions offer up a quick and useful link to related search terms which might point you to more relevant search results than what you used. If you're not familiar with it, those are the links that appear right below the search box after you enter a search term. Got it now? Well,

As Loren hinted a few hours ago, Google and Yahoo have finally dropped the bomb )which we were all expecting to happen anyway( - a search partnership which in Google and Yahoo's term is NON-EXLUSIVE . But what does "non-exclusive" mean really? In Google's words: Today, we announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement that will provide Yahoo! with access to our AdSense for search and AdSense for content advertising programs on their U.S. and Canadian web properties.

Among the current crop of social networks, LinkedIn is perhaps the only one which is catering to business professionals but more specifically to the tech-savvy internet professionals. If you're not so much into Internet/Web stuff, chances are you might not be into LinkedIn . Technically there has been no social network that caters to the small to medium business practitioners until now. New social networking site Sta.rtUp.

Google has just updated its "not-so-popular" keyword research tool - Google Trends. For those who may have forgotten about Google Trends , it's basically a tool for finding out how popular search terms are across geographic regions, cities and languages. The addition of a new feature now allows downloading of the graphical chart into a spreadsheet to allow for a better analysis of the search trends for keywords.

As early as now, the Yahoo Board lead by Roy Bostock and Jerry Yang want to make sure that the current Yahoo Board would be re-elected in the coming Yahoo! Annual Meeting happening on August 1. Together with the filing of its definitive proxy statement against Carl Icahn's nominated board slated, the Yahoo Board wrote a letter to its sharehold urging them to uphold the interest of Yahoo by re-electing its current board.

Microsoft's Search and Give program was inaugurated last year with the aim of raising funds for local schools and non-profits while at the same time promoting the use of Windows Live Search. Since it inauguration, the program was able to raise around $230,000 which were donated to some 20,000 recipient schools and non-profits.

Yahoo announced that it has just sealed a multi-year advertising deal with Walmart.com for online ad display and video advertising. The deal would enable Walmart to leverage on Yahoo' s advertising platform while Yahoo becomes the exclusive portal to resell Walmart's display inventory.

The Google Webmaster Central Blog is discussing a pretty advanced topic on webserving techniques. For the novice webmasters, this topic may be a bit on the heavy side, but for the more advanced webmasters, webserving techniques such as IP delivery, geolocation, cloaking and first click free may sound familiar at all.

What was used to be known as Google Custom Search Business Edition is now donning a new name, a simpler and direct - Google Site Search. And with the new name, comes several enhancements aimed at giving web site owners and administrators more control of the Site Search's indexing and crawling behavior. For those not in the loop, Custom Search Business Edition is a hosted search solution which increases site visitors satisfaction and loyalty,

Microsoft has just announced that it has reached an agreement with HP for the installation of a Live Search-enabled toolbar on all HP consumer PCs that will be launched starting 2009. Part of the said agreement involves setting the default search engine in the preloaded browser of the new HP PCs into Microsoft Live Search. Kevin Johnson,

Nothing fancy here really. Just a little observation which I find rather amusing. While I was trying to Google the keywords - "myspace advertising", I clicked on the first search result which is a sponsored link with a heading "myspace advertising". I didn't notice the url first, so I was wondering how come the results brought me to the Facebook Advertising page? I checked again,

Feedburner is announcing that Adsense for feeds will finally be rolled out next week for a few selected publishers, before a full launch soon. For publishers with existing Feedburner Ad Network account, premium CPM ads will now appear alongside contextually targeted ads to fill up the rest of their ad inventory. That means you get the best of both worlds: a dedicated Google sales force that knows how and why to sell onto your content,

After being in stealth mode for a year now, Yahoo suddenly offered the public a chance to take a "sneak peak" at its new software, Yahoo!BrowserPlus. From what we can gather, BrowserPlus is being touted as a tool for "extending the web" via a simple-to-execute web applications development processes. If released for public use and abuse,

In the Google I/O developer conference today, Google is set to announce that the door to its App Engine will now be open to developers. This would be a welcome development for the more than 150,000 developers who were wait listed for six months can now start using the platform now. For those not in the loop Google App Engine allows developers to create their own web applications using the same infrastructure that Google use for its own apps. Now,

A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by law firm alleged that IAC's directory site Citysearch has been defrauding its advertising customers by encouraging click fraud. The lawsuit was filed by Kabateck, a law firm which previously won a click fraud case against Yahoo and was also part of a similar case filed against Google. Kabateck Managing Partner Brian S. Kabatech said that most click fraud cases involve companies that simply turn a blind eye to it,

Here you go folks, comScore has just released its search engine report for April. As expected, Google toppled its competition again, getting 61.6% of all U.S. core searches. It's not really a big leap from previous month's 59.8%, but what is noteable is the fact that Google's search stat went up by 1.8%. And if you will add up all the percent change in the search stats of the other search engines, it simply adds up to Google's gain.

Remember JotSpot which was recently launched as part of Google Apps for businesses, schools and organizations? Google just opened it up to everyone. No domain required. Group sites will be hosted as a subdomain on Google Site's domain. Nothing biggie here really. It's just your old circa 1990's site creation tool. Think of Geocities resurrected for the social web. That's basically what Google Sites is.

I must admit that I almost cringed when I read about Microsoft Live Search's newest strategy to boost its Live Search standing in the web search market, and possibly to attract more users. Microsoft is about to announce its Live Search Cash Back promo, I mean program. Call it desperate measures or whatever, but no matter how you would look at it, this new program is simply humiliating. Maybe, it's just he old fashioned me who has high regard for the search engine industry,