Microsoft's Bill Gates says "there's nothing new" vis-à-vis the software giant's Yahoo offer: "We've sent our letter and we've reinforced that we consider that it's a very fair offer," adding there are no plans to up a bid that was originally worth $31 per share. However, since Microsoft's offer more than two weeks ago, its stock has plummeted more than 12 percent, reducing the offer price to around $29 per share, or $41 billion. Yahoo, of course, rejected the offer, saying it "substantially undervalues" the company's assets. The Web giant has since explored mergers or partnerships with Google, Time …

Online advertising might be more measurable than other media, but it isn't as efficient as it could be, says Frank Addante, the 31-year-old founder of the Rubicon Project, a Silicon Valley startup. It's estimated that Web sites only sell about 20 percent of their ad space directly to advertisers. Ad networks handle the other 80 percent, but they often do a poor job of matching advertisers' products and services to the Web pages in their networks. That's where Rubicon comes in. Through complicated,though unexplained math, Rubicon compares ad networks in real-time, matching the network with the most …

There are integration problems facing a Microsoft-Yahoo merger. To be sure, the companies have different corporate cultures--Yahoo is a generation younger than Microsoft--but they're both bureaucratic and rife with fiefdoms. How swiftly these bureaucracies come to an agreement about what services-and employees-stay will be very important, as there's a lot of overlap between Yahoo and MSN. Far easier said than done. According to former Yahoo exec Rob Solomon, current CEO of travel search engine SideStep, Microsoft and Yahoo "are completely at odds with each other," when it comes to technology. Indeed, the companies run "two complex …

Free music, it seems, is here to stay. First, Imeem, then SpiralFrog, QTrax and now, News Corp.'s MySpace is aiming to bring ad-supported music to the Web's largest social network. CNET's Greg Sandoval says the Web's No. 1 social network is currently in discussions with music's big four about giving the record labels an equity stake in MySpace in exchange for offering free music. Reports in the blogosphere conflict over whether the new music service would offer downloadable or streaming music; PaidContent says downloads, while the Silicon Alley Insider says streaming. Sandoval's source wouldn't comment, but "I have …

Microsoft hopes to move light years beyond Google Earth with a new software app called WorldWide Telescope, which TechCrunch and other blogs say will be released on Feb. 27 at the TED Conference. According to the report, the telescope collects data from the Hubble telescope and others, allowing users to tool around the nighttime sky and zoom into stars, planets, constellations and zoom in as far as the telescopes can, using different views like infrared and non-visible light. "From what we hear, WorldWide Telescope will be significantly better than Google Sky," says TechCrunch's Michael Arrington. Google Sky launched …