So Microsoft called Yahoo's bluff and walked away.Yahoo now has no other recourse but to do everything in its power to secure a Google deal. Given Yahoo's (read: Jerry Yang's) obsession with remaining independent, a Google outsourcing deal makes sense because it allows Yahoo to focus on battles it can win, "instead of throwing money at a war it has already lost." Since Yahoo has already lost, its only concern should be user query share. Yahoo's share is already down to 20% and will probably continue to fall no matter how much money the company throws at Panama, its search …

Among the big questions currently hovering over the media industry is can print media survive the transition to the Internet? The question has taken on new urgency, as the tanking economy places even more pressure on newspapers and magazines (whose customers and advertisers were already heading to the Internet in droves even before the recession). The experience of International Data Group, a technology publisher, suggests that it can be done. The privately held company claims to have successfully migrated its publications to the Internet, where online ad revenue now surpasses that of print. However, the transition was not seamless: …

IBM and other large multinational companies are building virtual worlds to connect their hundreds of thousands of employees scattered across the globe. As Nicole Yankelovich, principal investigator at Sun Labs, said: "It's difficult to maintain a global corporate culture with people so spread around. Virtual world technology is a way to bring the company together to build a global corporate culture where people are on equal footing." The idea is that greater connectivity leads to enhanced productivity. Workers at IBM, for example, use virtual worlds for everything from meetings to collaboration, training and employee recruiting. For those who don't …

Once again, BoomTown's Kara Swisher turns to her Yahoo sources following Microsoft's unexpected decision to walk away from the $47-billion bid it lodged at the Web giant. Most of the Yahoo execs she interviewed are VP level or above. After speaking with them, Swisher tells CEO Jerry Yang: "Your stock drop isn't the worst thing you will have to deal with this morning when you pull up at work." The worst part, she says, will be the looks Yang receives from his employees, "who are scared silly and a lot peeved by the limb many feel you have dragged them …

Microsoft's dramatic decision this weekend to withdraw its offer for Yahoo and not pursue a hostile bid raises a whole host of questions. What happens to Yahoo now? What happens to Microsoft? Or is this just a tactic to drive down the price of Yahoo's shares so that Microsoft can go hostile with a lower offer? And Much has already been said about how Microsoft walking away from the Yahoo merger is a bad thing for Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and his board, but TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld thinks that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer doesn't come out of …

Any day now, right? Microsoft, which continues to use The Wall Street Journal as its mouthpiece for every move it makes (or doesn't make) in the ongoing Yahoo saga, late Thursday said it was leaning towards going hostile, with a likely announcement coming sometime today. In an interview with the WSJ Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer declined to discuss the company's decision or when it would be made. "With the right circumstances it'll happen. Without the right circumstances it won't happen," he said. The haggling is still over price. Earlier this week, Microsoft ceded some ground, indicating that it would raise …

Media execs love to gripe about the threat of piracy to their business, but the persistence of peer-to-peer media distribution has brought on a new call-to-arms: ubiquity. On the Web, that means "be accessible everywhere." Earlier this week, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin discussed that need, saying that consumers need to be able to access content at any time, in any way and at any place they desire-and for a reasonable price. Why, because that's what they demand. But more than that, Chernin said that making legal content readily accessible at a reasonable price is the only way to …