As Yahoo continues to urge its shareholders to support them in the coming annual meeting and to prevent Icahn from influencing their decision, here comes Legg Mason Capital Management , one of Yahoo's biggest investor pledging their support for the current board. Legg Mason Capital Management, on behalf of its clients, is the beneficial owner of approximately 60.7 million shares of Yahoo!, representing 4.4% of the outstanding shares of the company.

Whatever Google's intention and purpose were for buying Russian contextual ad company called ZAO Begun is, only them knows. But we're free to speculate, it's a free web after all. So for those who are not in the loop prior to reading about this news )that includes me(, ZAO Begun is part of the internet portal called Rambler. More specifically Rambler owns 50.1 percent of the Begun, so it needs to buy the 49.

A lot of numbers relating to earnings, revenues and search advertising have just went out for all of us to consume. First we have this report from Efficient Frontier saying Google's share of the search ads for the Q2 has reached 77.4%. Comparing Q2 2007 data with that of Q2 2008, showed a 2% increase, while both Yahoo and Microsoft falling at 2%-17.8% and 4.8% respectively.

Less than half a month to go before the dreaded Yahoo Shareholders' meeting, Yahoo's Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock sent a joint letter to the shareholders urging them to support the current Board. Nothing fancy or new things has been said in the letter though. The letter updates the shareholders of what the current Yahoo Board has been doing the past couple of days to maximize Yahoo's value. More particularly on search and display, the Google deal,

We interrupt our regular coverage of the ongoing Yahoo-Microsoft tussle to focus on what could possibly be both companies' fall back options. It seems like the focus of attention now is the acquisition of  Time Warner's AOL property. Reports say that both Microsoft and Yahoo are eyeing a deal with Time Warner on two different merger options and both are rushing to get a good deal before the Yahoo shareholders' meeting.

Legal Attorney Hal K. Levitte filed a complaint before the U.S. District Court in San Jose Calif. against Google for allegedly serving his AdWords' ads on parked domains. Levitte's ad campaign ran from June 1, 2007 to August 18, 2007 on parked domains through Google for Domains. During that period, his ad managed to get around 202,528 impressions from parked domains where his ads were served by Google. Despite this number of impressions,

Microsoft is now soliciting beta testers for its AdCenter Desktop application. Launched sometime in June the Microsoft AdCenter Desktop enables advertisers and agencies to manage their AdCenter accounts from a desktop application. They can then upload what they have done on their PCs to their AdCenter account online.

Finally Microsoft issued a formal statement regarding the Google-Yahoo search ad deal . Brad Smith, Microsoft Corp. senior vice president and general counsel, questioned the legality of the deal before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommitte on Antitrust and the House Judiciary Committee Antitrust Task Force. Mr. Smith also emphasized on the damage that the said deal would cause to the online advertising and innovation competition.

Microsoft issued a statement clarifying that their proposal last Friday, which Yahoo rejected on Saturday, did not include a change of Yahoo governance. Interestingly, Microsoft also said that their proposal was "solicited" by Yahoo's Roy Bostock due to Carl Icahn's attempts to engage Microsoft and Yahoo on a search transaction that will be favorable to Microsoft. In addition, Microsoft said that after submitting their proposal,

Sometime in 2005, Google has launched the Code Search, a vertical search property that indexes and parses published source code on the web giving users )more particularly, code developers and programmers( a flexible search engine to find what source codes are already available.

It didn't take that long for the Yahoo Board to renounce the new proposal made by Microsoft and Carl Icahn to acquire Yahoo's search business last Friday. Yesterday, Yahoo issued a statement citing four reasons for rejecting the new proposal: 1. Yahoo!'s existing business plus its recently signed commercial agreement with Google has superior financial value and less complexity and risk than the Microsoft/Icahn proposal. 2.

"And then what will shareholders be left with? A weakened, Icahn-controlled Yahoo." These were the last few words that Yahoo's Jerry Yang said during his conversation with Boom Town's Kara Swisher . Mr. Yang was of course answering to two issues, or should we say two companies threatening to takeover Yahoo's Board and owning the company.

It's bold, it's radical, it's drastic and yet it can just be Google Custom Search Engine in a Yahoo environment. Yahoo has just launched the Yahoo! Search BOSS )Build your Own Search Service( platform which would allow developers and companies to create their own web search engine using Yahoo's search infrastructure and technology. Yahoo is touting their Search APIs as a free-for-all,

Google has just added search volume data to its AdWords Keyword Tool. For non-AdWords publishers, the Keyword Tool is a tool for generating and refining relevant keywords that best matches a publisher's product or service. These keywords can then be added into the publishers' ad groups.

Google has just launched its own 3D Virtual World called Lively. Of course the first thing that would come into our mind upon reading "3D Virtual World" is none other than Second Life, with all its avatars and avatar interactions among members. Although Google's Lively may look and feel like Second Life, it is no where near its rich 3D environment. But it is understandable though since Lively is still in Google Labs, so we expect more features and enhancements later on.

For those who login to their Gmail account from multiple terminals, the new Gmail feature addressing the issue on user privacy has just been rolled out. Basically this feature tells you whether your Gmail is currently in use.  If you check out this new feature, you can see how many people are using your Gmail account. And if its more than one and you are checking your Gmail account at your PC at home or in the offic.

Mr. Icahn sure knows how to start the business week with a bang. Just when Jerry Yang was busy negotiating with Time Warner for a possible merger with AOL, here comes a seemingly irate Icahn writing to the Yahoo Shareholders, urging/demanding a change of Yahoo Board and the immediate replacement of Mr. Yang. In his letter, Mr. Icahn, reiterated the current Yahoo's Board failure to grab the initial $31 Microsoft buyout offer. According to Mr.

Finally, Google has added a "privacy" link to its home page which directs users to Google's Privacy Center which contains a link to Google's Privacy Overview and Privacy Policy plus other product specific privacy statement. The Privacy Center even gives a some bonus privacy videos, all explaining how Google is "committed to transparency and choice." The Privacy Overview explains in simple terms how Google values users personal information and what it does,

Now, that it's barely a month to go before the Yahoo Shareholders meeting on August 1 when the fate of the current Yahoo board is at stake, it is but natural for the current board members to seek ways on how to convince the Yahoo shareholders to re-elect the current Yahoo Board. Words on the streets )and we mean business streets( say that Yahoo has renewed its merger talks with Time Warner, on a possible integration of Yahoo and AOL.

Hitwise Intelligence's VP for Research, Heather Hopkins made an interesting analysis of Yahoo! online properties based on some Hitwise data. Hopkins noted that of the top 20 Yahoo properties for June 2008 based on internet visits, Yahoo! Search was just a mere third trailing behind Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo main portal. Yahoo Search got a mere 12% share of the total number of visitors going to Yahoo's properties for the said month.