It’s official - the long-rumoured Apple iPhone will be launched this year.

And it’s not simply a phone, but a widescreen iPod, mobile phone and mobile internet device all in one.

Steve Jobs provided the first tour of the “internet multimedia device” at MacWorld Expo, hailing that Apple had “reinvented the phone”.

It has no buttons - everything is touchscreen.

It even appears that Cisco have allowed Apple rights to call the new device iPhone, even though Cisco owns the actual trademark on the name.

During a presentation lasting over an hour, Steve Jobs gave a thorough demonstration of the services associated with the phone.

The wireless internet is part is key to the iPhone, and uses a tabbed version of the Safari browser to surf the internet.

Additionally, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, were brought on stage by Steve Jobs to demonstrate how technologies from both companies have been integrated - not least Google Maps and Yahoo Mail.

The iPhone also provides a respectable 4-8GB of Flash memory for photos and video.

Cingular are also providing exclusive support for the iPhone, and use of it will probably require a subscription to AT&T.

The iPhone was announced to ship in US in June, in Europe in the fourth quarter and in Asia in 2008.

Overall information is currently sketchly as journalists frantically write down the detailed specifications and demonstrated services from the Steve Jobs presentation.

However, so far Gizmodo has presented some of the best overall coverage - with plenty of appetite-whetting images.

Of all the tech gadgets ever launched, the iPhone is not simply one of the most eagerly awaited - but quite possibly the most significant release for years.

UPDATE: The official iPhone page at Apple.

Yahoo! has acquired popular blogging platform MyBlogLog for a rumoured $10-12 million.

The acquisition continues Yahoo’s trend of acquiring social networking sites.

According to Yahoo! VP Bradley Horowitz, the site will remain a distinct entity - but will allow signup via a Yahoo ID, as well as being integrated with Flickr and Yahoo Answers.

MyBlogLog is unusual in that it developed into a Web 2.0 property without any angel funding or Venture Capital investment - however, it has developed increasing buzz over the past few months.

One of the key features of the service is the free provision of stats tracking for bloggers, as well as the ability to show which other MyBlogLog users are visiting the site.

Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand provides more information on what MyBlogLog users can do.

Overall, the acquisition of social networking sites continues - and a primary asset from them is the extensive user data that can be collected. While privacy concerns may arise at some point in the future, for the time being data stored by smaller companies is rarely regarded as too much of a threat.

However, now that Yahoo! can directly collect data from popular blogs, it remains to be seen what concerns this could raise, if Yahoo were to share it across other Yahoo services for commercial purposes.

Yahoo! and IBM have teamed up to deliver a free enterprise search application for SME’s.

The IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition will apply IBM’s search technology but use an interface from Yahoo!.

The aim is to undercut products from rival companies such as Microsoft and Oracle, by delivering it for free to companies unwilling or unable to spend $30,000 on IBM’s high-end Omnifind software.

The new product may not be so powerful, but Yahoo is almost certainly hoping to leverage the software to help get more search and enterprise users into Yahoo!, especially as the product aims to link to Yahoo! online resources.

Just how effective the strategy may be remains to be seen, though.

In a remarkable twist, eBay - who had recently partnered with Yahoo! for advertising - has now opened it’s doors to allow an additional advertising partnership with Google.

Previously eBay had signed up to allow Yahoo! to provide exclusive advertising for US markets - the new deal gives Google exclusive advertising right outside of the USA.

Also surprising is the fact that eBay owns Paypal, which is seen as a direct rival to Google’s recently released Google Checkout service.

The move is probably an astute one for both companies - eBay has seen rising criticisms of its costs to merchants and quality of service, and by partnering with both Yahoo! and Google it can look to develop additional revenues.

Google also benefits by integrating with a key internet giant, which again can only help with revenue generation, especially considering that Google’s profits to earnings ratio shows that investors see more potential in Google’s future than is currently being realised.

Overall, it’s a remarkable co-alliance by companies that could otherwise be in competition, and certainly helps eBay position itself better as a company despite the lagging consumer confidence.

Yahoo! have had a week of serious technical problems.

Firstly, Yahoo! updated their search algorithm and introduced a new method of crawling the web for information.

Like Google’s bad data push before them, it seems that the result has been to cripple the Yahoo! Search results and reduce the user experience.

With irrelevant results at the fore, and quality websites dropping out, it appears that at a time when Yahoo! could have been trying to position themselves as a market leader while Google was weak, it seems that all they’ve achieved is a pitiful mimicry of Google’s own mistakes.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Yahoo! saw their Yahoo! Messenger service unavailable for many users last Tuesday.

And now you can’t even post a comment to the official Yahoo! blog without a string of error messages.

In a week when Yahoo!’s stock value plummeted, seeing $10 billion wiped from its value, it seems that Yahoo! really need to reorganise themselves a lot better.

Because at present it gives all the impression that steering blind at the helm, without leadership, without direction.

And plenty of technical problems to boot.

People who use Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger can now contact each other directly.

The breakthrough comes after both companies released software that will allow their own proprietary messenger software services to be compatible.

At present the work is in trial stages, but is expected to be completed over the year.

This continues a general trend between big - and otherwise rival ISPs - to join up for key services.

VoIP is good - but not good enough to replace existing landlines.

That’s the conclusion of Which? magazine, the publication of the Consumers Association.

It tested 6 of the major VoIP suppliers - Skype, Yahoo!, Google, Babble, Sipgate, and MSN.

It rated Skype as one of the easiest to install and use, and also rated it best for quality of the connection.

Yahoo!, Google Talk, and Sipgate were also well rated on quality, but independent Babble was slated for poor help documentation, as well as poor quality connection.

The VoIP application with MSN Messenger was also found to be of variable quality, and along with Google Talk, is unable to call landlines.

Overall, the Which? study highlighted that VoIP cannot be used to replace landlines at present, not least because emergency services phone calls are not available via VoIP.

Additionally, recent moves in the US to bill against so-called “Net Neutrality” may prevent companies such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, from offering side-stepping telecom suppliers to capture users for free services.

This may lead to the big ISPs having to charge for VoIP on subscription in future, if the telecoms companies are able to prevent their own services because abused in this way.

Yahoo! and eBay have both announced a strategic alliance in order to face-off increasing challenges from Google and Microsoft.

The alliance provides Yahoo! with exclusive advertising rights on eBay, and Yahoo! will additionally provide improved search technology for the auction site.

In exchange, Yahoo! will promote Paypal, which was recently acquired by eBay.

The move demonstrates continuing consolidation among the big ISPs as they attempt to capture user markets in the face of strong competition.

A significant number of search engine sponsored listings link to sites containing spyware, viruses, or offer scams to defraud users.

That’s the claim of Ben Edelman who compiled a study for SiteAdvisor detailing which search terms were the most likely to call up rogue ads across different search engines.

Certain keywords were found to be especially vulnerable to rogue ads, with “free screensavers” and “music downloads” are particularly risky areas for being infected with spyware and viruses.

Some ads were little more than email harvesters, who would spam anyone who signed up to the service.

Other ads simply charged users for services which were already available for free, such as one site charging $29 for the free Skype VoIP software.

Overall, the study found that most of the offending sites were present in the sponsored ads, with far fewer such sites found in the natural search results.

Additionally, the study found that MSN was the safest search engine to use, with Google users almost twice as likely to be presented with rogue ads.

Key summaries:

% likelihood of being faced with rogue ads, by search engine:

• 6.1% Ask
• 5.3% Google
• 4.3% Yahoo
• 3.1% MSN

%likelihood of beig faced with rogue sites - natural results vs paid results:

• 8.5% Paid results
• 3.1% Natural results

The overall warning is clear - that search engines that offer advertising are not doing enough to protect their search users from unscrupulous companies.

Security company PandaLabs is reported to have found a huge network of “zombie” computers - whose primary aim is to further clickfraud on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.

The size of the network is an astonising 34,000 computers, and reveals the degree of sophisitication that can be involved in PPC fraud.

Additionally, the report suggests that such networks are available to hire.

With the huge shift of online marketing spend moving to the internet, it shows a deeper level of corrupt business practices taking place.

Online advertisers are already concerned about issues of clickfraud, and lack of transparency at major PPC publishers - such as Google and Yahoo! - simply compound fears about wasted advertising spend.

In the meantime, it is unlikely to remain an isolated case - Platinax News reported last year about the use of botnets for PPC fraud - so expect to see further botnets for PPC clickfraud to be revealed.

In the face of investor concerns and falling stock prices, Yahoo! has mobilised itself to re-assure them with the following message:

“We’re still going really slowly with ads, and plan to let Google dominate the advertising market for another year at least.”

Of course, that’s simply paraphrasing Yahoo!’s press release - but the message is essentially the same.

While Google continues to dominate the burgeoning search advertising market, Yahoo! has left itself over-stretched and unable to focus on revenue generation in one of the most lucrative advertising markets online.

While Google stocks are likely over-valued in the long-term, the fact that no-one is yet able to directly rival Google on their main revenue generation, can only be continued good news for Google and Google investors alike.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! continues to get excited about playing catch-up, even when done very slowly.

SPECIAL REPORT

Social networking online is becoming an increasingly dominant dynamic in internet user behaviour.

Figures released by analyst group ComScore shows that social networking applications, such as MySpace and FaceBook have become some of the most active sites on the internet.

According to their statistics, the busiest websites in April 2006 were:

1. Yahoo!,
2. MySpace.com
3. MSN-Microsoft,
4. Time Warner Network,
5. eBay,
6. Google,
7. FaceBook.com,
8. Viacom Online,
9. Craigslist,
10. Comcast.

MySpace is a social networking portal, that allows users to sign-up and share information with each other.

FaceBook allows people to connect with others nearby by searching on the site.

Already Hitwise reports that MySpace drives as much as 8.2% of all traffic to Google, making it the single biggest provider of traffic to the search engine.

The Washington Post also reports that MySpace already has more internet traffic than Amazon, and is fast catching up on AOL.

Social networking has been a buzz-word of Web 2.0 - provide an interactive social enviroment for users and they will come and give.

But the big heache is monetisation. MySpace may have traffic between Amazon and AOL but certainly isn’t so profitable as either.

Internet resources cost, and at present, that user traffic simply costs.

Additionally, there are other dangers lurking around social networking applications.

For example, YouTube has taken the net by storm to become a major focus for video uploads.

Google Video was hotly tipped to take the online TV search market by storm, but an over-complicated interface and poor user experience means it’s little used in comparison.

YouTube simplifies all of that - but like all content sharing media networks, it has a problem with copyrighted material being uploaded to it.

That means YouTube is bound to already be on the radar of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPIAA), which has already tried to follow as aggressive a policy against copyright violations onlike as the goose-stepping morons of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The overall results can only mean that You Tube will face legal challenges and associated costs - and all from a Web 2.0 application that - typically - has no real profit model.

And the prevalent use of the sharing of copyrighted material can only remain a threat to social networking applications in general.

In the meantime, Web 2.0 has become a mini dotcom, with plenty of buzz, little in terms of business models, but plenty of expectations.

For the meantime social networking has become a proven source of internet usage. What it is yet to do is prove that this can be safely and responsibly turned in professional revenue models with longevity.

Yahoo! has been accused of helping Chinese authorities jail a second dissident.

Li Zhi was jailed for 8 years in 2003 for posting messages criticising corruption in the Chinese government. It is claimed that data provided by Yahoo! was instrumental in his convinction.

The claim comes after the company came under fire last year for collecting data on journalist Shi Tao, which led to his imprisonment.

According to Reporters Without Borders, there are 81 dissidents in Chinese prisons as a result of internet activity, and is demanding to know how many are due to actions of Yahoo!

While ISP’s are obligated to provide data upon request to governments, the position of companies such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google in China is becoming increasingly contentious.

US companies are eager to tap into the Chinese consumer market, but there are concerns that their data collection and censorship of information is proving too helpful for the promotion of human rights abuse.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned that Google latest software release may be a serious threat to user privacy.

Google launched Google Desktop Search 3.0 this week, with an increased number of user features, such as data sharing.

While groups such as Gartner warned business against using Google Desktop when originally released, the US rights advocacy group the EFF is especially critical of the new features.

Privacy concerns are already an acute issue, and Search Engine Watch has already listed criticisms about the collection and use of data, not simply by Google, but also other major internet companies such as Yahoo! and Microsoft.

While there have already been privacy complaints about other Google services, these were recently intensified after it was revealed that the US government had sought data from all major search engines last year.

ISP’s such as Google can rightly point out that the more they know about users, the better they can target services to them.

However, the converse may also be true that the collection and data-mining of user behaviour has not seen progress in privacy protections, especially in line with the application of new technologies that make data sharing easier.

Google have assured users of their new Desktop Search service that data will only be stored on their servers for 30 days.

However, the issue of privacy protection online is becoming more and more of an issue. We’re likely to see a lot more on this story yet.

Yahoo! is in consultation with its email users - to find out what incentives would persuade them to make Yahoo! Search their prefered search engine.

The consultation comes only weeks after Yahoo! Chief Financial Office, Susan Decker, was quoted as saying that Yahoo! was happy to take second place behind Google - a statement the company later distanced itself from.

While Yahoo! has always had a strong share of the search market, Google still remains the overall leader in this sector.

The consultation also follows after comments by Bill Gates of Microsoft, that people who use search engines should enjoy some degree of revenue share for the advertising placed in search results.

Yahoo! and AOL have announced that they are introducing charges to prioritise e-mail.

Emails that are paid for will be given preferential treatment - which means they are likely to bypass currently used spam filters.

Costs involved are reported to be around 0.10 - 1.00 pence per e-mail, which may prove an incentive by companies to use the new service.

However, a move to paid email is a highly controversial topic.

Email spamming remains an established industry, and critics have pointed out that the low fees may prove a lucrative investment for email spammers.

Additionally, other concerns have been raised that free e-mail will be more likely treated as spam regardless, resulting in users losing important data just because they didn’t pay for the service.

Additional fears have been raised that it may cause additional friction among Internet Service Providers (ISPs), where a financial incentive exists to allow only paid for email.

It remains to be seen what the practical effects of charging for email will become.

Internet giant Yahoo! has been criticised by anti-spyware Ben Edelman for funding spyware companies with its Yahoo! search marketing advertising programs.

In one example, Ben Edelmen calculated that Yahoo! paid the company Claria - originally known as infamous spyware company Gator - over $50 million in advertising revenues in 2004.

Search engine watcher Danny Sullivan used the report to call on Yahoo! to allow it’s advertisers to opt-out of specific programs, not least to help avoid potential liabilities in being seen to directly support adware and spyware installed on users machines.

The timing of the report by Edelman could be critical, as a US court judge today set a precedent, by ruling that people affected by spyware can sue the spyware companies, as well as their advertisers.

Yahoo is planning to launch a self-serve advertising service for bloggers and other small Web publishers, an area of the market currently held by Google.

While Yahoo and Google both serve major search-advertising partners such as AOL, Google has cornered the market in delivering its text-only ads to smaller content sites, including blogs.

Yahoo’s new service will be similar to Google’s, in that it will display text ads relevant to the content of specific Web pages. Advertisers will pay only when a reader clicks on their ads and will divide the fees with Yahoo.

The service will help Yahoo expand its advertising to small and medium-size publishers. Earlier this year, Yahoo released Y!Q, code that analyses the text of a Web page and generates search results based on its content. Publishers can add the code to their Web pages to automatically produce a list of related links.

Google has also strengthened its services to small publishers. In June 2003, it extended its ad services for large publishers, called AdSense, adding a self-serve, automated product specifically aimed at small sites.

Providing ads to small publishers would significantly increase Yahoo’s current advertising portfolio, which is focused on its search engine and larger Web sites. In April, Yahoo renamed its commercial search subsidiary, Overture Services, to Yahoo Search Marketing. Overture only catered to large publishers, such as The Financial Times.

Richard Koman at Silicon Valley Watch has confirmed that Yahoo! are testing their new its advertiser publishing program, to compete directly with Google.

Reporting in Confirmation: Yahoo is testing a Google Adsense competitor, he covers a lot of news already reported in our feature on Yahoo! celebrate 10 years - but adds that he has insider information on the project, which currently carries the acronym of YPN - almost certainly for “Yahoo! Publisher Network”.

As evidence of a second domain displaying the ads has been found, there are rumours that the project could be active within only a few weeks.

Yahoo! already have a live subdomain on Yahoo.com for the YPN project - http://publisher.yahoo.com/.

The move is very significant because Google derives most of its income from its AdWords/AdSense program, and Yahoo! is preparing to offer direct competition to that.

SPECIAL REPORT

Yahoo! celebrates its 10th birthday today, and to mark the event has not only opened its toolbox to developers, but also promises to expand it advertising network to small publishers.

As the BBC report Yahoo celebrates a decade online reveals, Yahoo! was originally started as a way for students Jerry Yang and David Filo to track their web interests.

The project became a commercial interest with $2 million in venture capital from Sequoia Capital, who had also helped fund expansion of Apple and Cisco. After additional funding, the company floated in April 1996.

Gary Price provides additional details of Yahoo!’s early development in Yahoo: Remembering The Early Days, where he tracks news of the project in early newsnet groups, articles, interviews, and internet archive cache of Yahoo.com from 1996.

When Yahoo! as a company first entered the stock exchange, it already had 50 employees, Now it has over 7,600.

Additionally, as reported in Wired.com’s article The UnGoogle (Yes, Yahoo!), the company also boasts:

165 million registered users,

345 million unique visitors a month,

$49 billion market cap,

Revenue for 2004 revenue was $3.6 billion

On top of that, the company holds a consistant number 1 rank on Alexa, which in it’s Yahoo! website profile page also lists a number of other interesting statistics, such as 41% of Yahoo! traffic being specifically for Yahoo!’s e-mail service.

And as reported in Search engine metrics: analysis, both Nielsen and comScore place Yahoo!’s market share in search at a steady 32%.

As part of the Yahoo! birthday celebrations, Jerry Yang pushed the boat out with a personal appearance at the New York Search Engine Strategies conference, in which Danny Sullivan was able to engage the Yahoo! founder in a question and answer session. Barry Schwartz covers the session in some detail at Keynote with Jerry Yang.

Developer Tools

Yahoo! have today announced the launch of its Yahoo! Developper Network. This API offers the ability to interface scripts with Yahoo! index in a manner similar to Google’s API, but with an allowance up to 5 times that of Google’s. More information on the technical specifics are cover in the Yahoo! Developer Network Documentation.

In Yahoo! Search Web Services Launch! high-profile Yahoo! staff blogger, Jeremy Zawodny posts more information on the announcement, and also provides a comprehensive range of sources covering the news.

The Yahoo! search blog provides additional information on the move. In Announcing the Yahoo! Search Developer Network and Search Web Services, the company states that:

rather than simply release a set of APIs that expose all of our “vertical” searches (web, image, video, news, and local), we thought about what it would take to create an ecosystem around these services.

The developer tools therefore comes presupplied with user community tools, not least a webblog, wiki, and mailing lists on top of existing reference material.

O’Reilly writer Paul Bausch, who wrote Google Hacks, is already the verge of releasing Yahoo! Hacks, with the book scheduled for release in Summer 2005. Announced in Yahoo! Web Services, he not only provides an introductory tour of core features, but also posts a sample application.

While Yahoo! openly state that they expect the release of developer tools to benefit themselves as well as the web community, it;s left to Richard MacManus to really try and prise the lid off the tactics behind the move. In How Yahoo’s Web Services Support Their Media Strategy he highlights as key a sentence in the Yahoo! media release, and comments that not only is Yahoo! moving from a Web 1.0 company into a Web 2.0 company, but that they are trying to drive themselves as the hub of distributed content on the internet:

The more external sites Yahoo can get their content and brand onto, the more recognized and used their brand becomes in media circles - and therefore the more eyeballs they can drive to their Internet entertainment hub.

Overture rebranded - prepares for Yahoo Publishing Network

Yahoo! have also announced a rebranding of its advertiser publishing arm in Overture Services To Become Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions.

Overture is no more - welcome to Yahoo! Search.

CNet joins this news to the headline of developer tools being released, in Yahoo opens up its search toolbox to developers and point out that Yahoo! are trying to win over the web community, and remind us that Yahoo! originally paid $1.63 billion for Overture.

However, the rebranding seems to be being made for a direct assault on Google’s AdWords/AdSense advertising program, which is the primary engine of profit for Google.

Waxy.org reports in Yahoo’s Contextual Ads in the Wild that what appear to be contextual ads supplied by Yahoo! can currently be seen at The Ink-Stained Wretch - the blog of Yahoo!-Overture product manager Ken Rudman.

For example, in the entry The Jewish Haiku, contextual ads similar to AdSense can be seen - excepting that the code shows it to be supplied by Yahoo! servers:

http://ypn-js.overture.com/partner/js/ypn.js

This could present a real threat to Google’s revenues, and push Yahoo! one-step ahead of their immediate search rivals, and also allow the company a clear head start over Microsoft, which is still signed up to deliver advertising from Yahoo!-Overture until July 2006.

More >> Read personal commentary on this news story in Yahoo! publishing

EDIT: Yahoo! release their version of the past 10 years of the web: Yahoo! Netrospective