Suddenly, I feel like I work for Soap Digest. But with the latest don't-miss developments in The Young and the Profitless , we had to get a jump start on Season Two! Last time, on The Young and the Profitless : Despite Stacey's )YHOO( recent marriage to Grant )GOOG; last season(, Brad )MSFT( has decided he's going to win her back, with or without her consent . Meanwhile,

Happy Fourth of July to all those who celebrate it, and even those who don't! Lots of search engines and websites have special logos for Independence Day don't you like how Marketing Pilgrim is red, white and blue today? I know I'm a fan. But I found a little Easter egg )holiday confusion?( in Google Street View today. Check it out: it's Uncle Sam! Enjoy the holiday )or just Friday if it's not a holiday for you(!

All right, let's face it: it's the afternoon before a three-day weekend and your brain is already on vacation. And that's why we're here at linky extra goodnessa round up of the marketing news you'll want to know come Monday. Oh nm, my bad : Googler JohnMu retracts his previous statements )mentioned yesterday ( about banning countries/regions/continents from your website being "cloaking," as long as you also ban any Googlebots coming from those IP blocks.

Sometimes we just can't let dead horses lie. That's okay, neither can Microsoft. After months of more drama than a daytime soap ) ahem ( with the attempted merger/acquisition of Yahoo, Microsoft pulled their offer back in May. And now they're saying, "Whoopsiedoodle. On second thought . . . we will be coming back fighting." The Wall Street Journal reports today that Microsoft is planning another run at Yahooand this time they won't be going it alone.

It's the first linky goodness of a new month. Hurray! More not-so-good news for Yahoo: the DOJ will reviewing the Yahoo-Google ad deal and plans to consult Y&G's rivals. Yet another reason for MSFT to celebrate today, I guess. Webmaster Central Blog gives a little checklist of things to do before and during a reconsideration request using Google Webmaster Tools , complete with video. Has someone at Google misspoken? In a Google Groups thread,

First IAC took itself apart, now Ask is slowly dismantling its cool features, too. Chris Pendleton , a Virtual Earth evangelist, has posted that Ask has dropped its own mapping featuresAsk Maps, AskCity and map results integrated into their SERPsin favor of Live Virtual Earth )Microsoft's maps product(. In some regions, the change is even more drastic. As Barry Schwartz reports, Ask UK's map site is offline )and their title element is misspelled: "Unavailabe"?

Yeah, okay, I'm still mad at Google for adding every single person I've ever emailed to my "friends" list. But lately worse things have been happening to me over at MyBlogLog ) remember them ?(. I know, I know, MBL has long since fallen out of favor with tech & SEM bloggers. I'd forgotten about them, too, other than the occasional "So and so has added you as a contact" e-mails. Until the end of May, when I got one of these e-mails that stood out.

The last linky goodness of the month. But don't worrywe'll be back next month with more goodness for your linky enjoyment! Search Insider takes a look at yummy data . I heart data. Speaking of data, Matt Cutts posts on the Official Google Blog about Using data to fight webspam . Danny Sullivan points out in the comments on SERoundtable that the reason this article came out now was probably because Google's facing criticism from the EU for storing data,

Unless you consider "Watch Episodes of Your Favorite TV Shows Now. Fast & Easy!" to be 'content,' Google AdSense is making a bold move, according to today's New York Times . In a deal with Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane, Google AdSense will be distributing McFarlane's latest project, the Internet-only animated series,

If you've forgotten, just nine months ago, Microsoft purchased a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million . Doing the math from that, the total value of Facebook last October was $15B. But apparently this possibly-soon-to-be-recession-)though-technically-still-not,-people!( has really hurt the "social utility." Rumors are circulating on Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch that Facebook's current value is less than $5Band as low as $3 or $4 billion.

If you haven't tried iGoogle, Google's personalized homepage, you're not alone. But Google's looking to spiff up their customizable homepages and testing has already begun , as Google Operating System reportsand it looks like they're trying to make our foretelling of iGoogle as social network come true. The old iGoogle featured tabbed navigation across the top of the page; the new iGoogle moves it to a left-hand sidebar.

We were pretty sure about this last week , but today Yahoo has formally announced their reorganization . Excuse me, their "Realignment to Support Core Strategies." Of course. ) via ( According to Kara Swisher , SVP Brad Garlinghouse will be replaced by Scott Dietzen, former CTO of Zimbra, which was acquired by Yahoo in September. Just a year ago, Yahoo had a major management shakeup as Terry Semel stepped down and Jerry Yang and Susan Decker stepped in. Now,

No Linky Withdrawal here, pleasewe're back and better than decent as ever! Not terribly surprisingly, Google is launching the "Internet for Everyone" campaign . Because that's a basic right. Really. I used to teach the Constitution; it's in the 82nd Amendment*. What the rest of us with Internet want to know: will this bring our monthly bill down? )And as marketers: what is this new audience interested in researching/purchasing online?( ) via (.

Once upon a time, a bunch of Googlers were sitting around during meal time or 20% time or something, just thinking. And you know what happens when Googlers think in groups, right? "You know," says one, "I sure wish we could bring Google Maps to the islands of the world." "Yeah, that would be awesome. I claim Tahiti!" "No, I'm serious," says the first. "But, obviously, travel costs would be prohibitively high." "I still get Tahiti," mutters the second.

Just in case anyone out there was having a crisis of faith, the Opinion Research Corporation has good news for you: search engines are still the preferred method for conducting product/service research. In a survey of 736 adults released yesterday )PDF(, ORC found that not only do most people prefer to use search engines for product research, they also read "online customer feedback" heavily. That THAT , totally skewed Pew findings !

Either I'm really running high on the productivity scale or it's a really slow news day. Knowing me, it ain't my productivity. So here are the select few stories that weren't quite worth a post, but are worth a look: Revaluing Social Networks : TechCrunch looks at another way to assign valuations to social networks. He's calculated the average Internet ad spend per user in each country,

Happy summer solstice )or for you in the Southern hemisphere, happy winter solstice(! It's the longest )shortest( day of the year, and it's a Fridaywhat could be better? Oh, I know, some linky goodness! Last we heard from comScore, Facebook and MySpace were neck and neck worldwide: now they're not. Facebook is beating MySpace And Facebook looks to keep growing as they start their foray into China , which claims to be the world's biggest Web market.

In college, Thursday was always like "practice Friday." Don't you miss that? Google isn't the only one trying to forestall government intervention in the latest big deal : Yang Goes to Washington for the same reason, though he has yet to meet with noted Google-deal-curmudgeon Rep. Barton. Nobody's perfect. Good on Compete for admitting it and for recalculating their data, finding that Yahoo Traffic Better Than First Reported . I'm sure Yahoo's happy to be at 18.

We're all familiar with phishing schemes: an email urging you to login to your PayPal account at this URL )which doesn't turn out to be PayPal or eBay at all(, etc. Most of us have seen enough of theseand enough horror stories circulating on the web or the nightly newsto avoid these scams. But not everyone has. A post on Google Blogoscoped details the aftermath of one such phishing expedition. After receiving an official-looking email apparently from Google AdWords,

Oh, geez, is it Wednesday already? And, conversely, is the week over yet? In case you weren't sure, lying to Google is a bad idea , at least when it comes to reconsideration requests according to Matt Cutts. Ever wanted to build your own Reddit? Oh. Well, now you can anyway: Reddit goes open-source . Google Decides Books Have Consumer Intent and Puts Them Into Product Search . But are they just doing this because Microsoft did the opposite in killing its book search ?