Yahoo acquires Alike, moving Seattle team to California

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Yahoo has acquired Seattle-based Alike for an undisclosed sum, aiming to bolster its own mobile technologies by bringing aboard the team responsible for Alike’s data-crunching mobile recommendation system. Alike announced the news on its site this morning, saying that it will no longer support the Alike apps on the iPhone and the web. The startup’s… Read More…

Yahoo and Google strengthen ties as Microsoft looks on

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Yahoo and Google this afternoon announced an agreement to put ads from Google’s AdSense and AdMob systems on Yahoo sites. It’s a non-exclusive deal, but it’s also a clear sign that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is willing and able to do business with her former colleagues at Google. What does that mean for Microsoft and… Read More…

The 10 social media tools that every startup must have

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Social media has revolutionized the way we communicate. With the revolution has come insane amounts of data, analytics and information about customers, followers and users. How can companies leverage this social media data in ways to help analyze parts of their business? That’s part of what Andy Boyer included in his talk about social media… Read More…

Tech Moves: Avanade bolsters exec team; HBO promotes Xbox pioneer; Yahoo board changes

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Avanade, a 12-year-old joint venture formed by Microsoft and Accenture, has named Florin Rotar as the company’s first chief technology innovation officer and Stella Goulet as its first chief marketing officer. Rotar has worked at Avanade since it was founded, and in the new role will be responsible for communicating the technology consulting firm’s vision to… Read More…

Instant messaging: Yahoo cutting ties to Microsoft

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In a blog post late Friday, the Yahoo Messenger team announced that it’s cutting several features from the instant-messaging service as part of the broader attempt to bring new focus to the company. One of the features that will be going away is interoperability with Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger. The connection between Yahoo Messenger and… Read More…

Tech Moves: Optify hires Doug Wheeler; Starbucks vet joins Auction Edge; and more

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Optify, a Seattle startup specializing in marketing software, has named 25-year- marketing vet Doug Wheeler to the position of chief marketing officer. Wheeler most recently worked at TappIn, which was acquired last year for up to $17 million by GlobalScape. Wheeler previously held executive roles at DocuSign, Citrix and Compaq. “Optify and its inbound marketing… Read More…

Google ‘would love’ to replace Microsoft as Yahoo partner

Eric Schmidt

The whole Microsoft-Yahoo search saga has always felt like a soap opera, starting with Microsoft’s failed bid to acquire Yahoo in 2008, and continuing to the present-day shakiness of their search partnership. And here’s another potential plot twist. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman and former chief executive, reportedly said during an appearance in Japan overnight… Read More…

Microsoft Bing takes a chip out of Google’s giant lead

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[Update: comScore changed its methods for collecting data in August, making the month-over-month comparisons invalid. The biggest change is in the combined total of Bing and Yahoo searches, as noted below.] Google’s share of the U.S. search market fell by 0.4 percentage points in the U.S. in August, while Microsoft Bing climbed by 0.2 percentage… Read More…

Microsoft Bing adds Quora answers to its social sidebar

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Microsoft is adding content from top contributors on the Quora question-and-answer site to the “social sidebar” on its Bing search results pages, trying to boost the usefulness of the feature. The results show up under the “People Who Know” section of the sidebar. For example, a search for “Harry Potter” on Bing now brings up a link… Read More…