In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang says that "to trust (Carl) Icahn and his board is really a bad choice," adding that Microsoft is trying to squash the company's share price without any real desire to complete a deal. Yang of course is responding to yesterday's news that Microsoft would be open to restarting acquisition talks with Yahoo if Icahn, the billionaire corporate raider, is able to wrest control of the company in a proxy fight next month. Icahn has said he would replace Yang if he succeeds. Yang's position is that Yahoo is …

After 18 months of persistent rumors, Google finally launched its Second Life rival, unveiling a virtual world known as Lively on Tuesday. Sort of. GigaOm's Wagner James Au says Lively is more like "a series of virtual world chatrooms" than a "contiguous, immersive, fully user-created metaverse" like Second Life. Either way, he says, "Lively seems too similar to several existing (and very large) MMOs, making it an also-ran without a key market distinguisher to be truly compelling (besides being from Google)." That said, you can do some cool things with these chatrooms, like embed them on your Web site, but …

A new survey claims that America's slumping economy is having an effect on online ad growth. Conducted by William Blair & Co, the new survey forecasts that the gloomy economic outlook will contribute to slowing growth. The investment bank queried 150 Chicago-area interactive marketing companies about their budgets, and two thirds of respondents said economic conditions would affect spending. According the results, the respondents expect Internet advertising to grow slightly more than 16% in the next year, less than the 19% William Blair tracked in previous surveys. Respondents pegged paid search and ROI-based direct response ads as the sectors …

Most people who follow Google know that the company records the unique Internet Protocol addresses of every computer that connects to its products and services. For example, everything you've every searched for is retained by the search, although per a European Union mandate last year, the company now severs the link between IP addresses and search logs after 18 to 24 months. Privacy watchers and industry critics often wonder whether the potential privacy costs are worth it for consumers. However, The New York Times' Saul Hansell says Google's user tracking has its benefits, too. Earlier this week, the company announced …

YouTube will fall short of revenue expectations, generating about $200 million for Google this year, The Wall Street Journal reports in a revealing article about the state of the video-sharing giant. Earlier in the year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company was working on new and innovative ad formats for YouTube, but according to the report, Google is merely planning to start accepting pre and post-roll ads, a format long shunned by the search giant because consumers don't like them. In fact, the Silicon Alley Insider reports that Google recently found that 80% to 90% of video watchers …

Microsoft claims it will be ready to restart Yahoo acquisition talks only if shareholders embrace Carl Icahn's proxy slate at the company's Aug. 1 shareholder meeting. Yahoo shoots back, saying, we're ready to sell now, what's the difference? Microsoft, it seems, wants the infighting at Yahoo to boil over to the point where the company's stock is worth nothing before it swoops in to pick up the pieces. A nasty strategy, perhaps, but it's one that seems to be working. Kara Swisher reports that last week, major Yahoo investor Gordon Crawford told Jerry Yang in a face-to-face meeting that he …

GigaOm and others report that microblogging sensation Twitter is on the cusp of acquiring Summarize, an app developer that conducts searches to find relevant messages on the service. Om Malik says the deal, which could be announced as early as next week, may even provide the Silicon Valley startup with the business model it's long been in search of. Summarize summarizes itself thusly: "We monitor collective attitudes being expressed right now on the web." Actually, it does more than that: Summarize also analyzes conversations, offering a quick, collective opinion about what people think about a given topic. It does …