Never at a loss for well-timed and attention-seeking opinions, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington writes Yahoo's obituary just as the Web portal embarks on a $100 million rebranding effort. Bleak as it is, his rationale is worth considering. Still, Jordan Rohan, Founder and Managing Partner at Clearmeadow Partners, just predicted that Yahoo is poised for a major comeback -- to the extent that there's even a hint of a cyclical nature to display advertising, he said at the OMMA Global conference on Tuesday. "After the stock has reached $25, someone is going to tell you it's cheap," he said. (The stock is …

What's in store for the iPhone? A new report from Barclays forecasts that the game-changing Apple gadget is destined to infiltrate Blackberry's corporate turf in the coming years. In agreement is Forrester Research, which is predicting a 35% share of the business market for iPhone in just three years. What's driving the trend? Consumers who want to use their iPhones at work, along with companies' willingness to decentralize IT and device purchasing, and reimburse staff for buying devices of their choosing. Meanwhile, judging by sales figures, Apple's new Snow Leopard update to its OS X operating system seems to have …

What do Amazon, Sony, AT&T and Sprint all have in common? They're all getting some new competition in the budding e-reader industry from iRex Technologies -- a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics, which on Wednesday entered the U.S. market with a $399 e-reader. It's compatible with Verizon's wireless 3G network -- a first for the carrier - and will soon be sold in Best Buy stores nationwide. (Best Buy previously sold e-book devices only on its Web site and in limited tests in stores.) To date, Amazon's Kindle reader has only been available for purchase online. Of note, iRex apparently …

While unlikely to impact either company's bottom line, it's worth noting that Starbucks debuted its iPhone apps on Wednesday, including a mobile payment system it's testing in Seattle and Silicon Valley. While they're rarely hard to find, "myStarbucks" directs consumers to the chain's nearest locations. It can also be used to store and share favorite drinks and other items and check drinks' nutritional details. Meanwhile, "Starbucks Card Mobile" serves as a digital payment card.

Another day, another effort by Google to reshape the Web. This time, it's with a universal commenting and note posting system named Sidewiki, which will be available to all via Google Toolbar. At first glance, tastemakers are at least feigning disinterest. "Don't sweat it," and "chillax!" writes Andy Beal on his Marketing Pilgrim blog. "If we freaked out over every thing Google launched, we'd all be nervous wrecks! Fortunately, not everything Google launches is a success." Yawn, says ReadWriteWeb. "Over the years, numerous companies have offered services that allowed users to annotate …

In a bid to formalize the concept of net neutrality, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission outlined rules on Monday that would prohibit Internet providers from selectively blocking content and applications online. With still a month left before an FCC panel votes on whether to turn the guidelines into official commission rules, the media and blogosphere took the move as an opportunity to sound off on the issue."Almost as significant, and in a bit of a surprise, [FCC Chair Julius Genachowski] made clear the rules would cover wireless as well as wired networks," notes MercuryNews.com. …

At least in the U.K. -- the home of the BBC -- it looks unlikely that Rupert Murdoch will realize his content subscription dreams anytime soon. Indeed, new market research from Harris Interactive finds that only 5% of U.K. Web users would pay for online news. What's more, 74% of respondents said they would find a way to live without their favorite news source, were that source to start charging an access fee, tomorrow. One columnist at the Guardian goes so far as to call Murdoch's paid crusade "his first major strategic error," which will not work even if the …

Google wants you to know that the keywords "meta tag" have no impact on how its search engine ranks pages. "Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don't have any effect in our search ranking at present." Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags? "No, Google does support several other meta tags ... This meta tags page documents more info on several meta tags that we do use ... For example, we do sometimes use the 'description' meta tag as the text …

Million dollar research awards aside, what does Netflix CEO Reed Hastings think about expanding to platforms beyond Microsoft's Xbox Live? "Eventually we want to be on all the game consoles, all the Blu-ray players, all the Internet TVs," he says. What about working with Apple and the iPhone? "Nothing in the short term." What of Youtube's forthcoming movie "rental" service? "I think there will be a lot of competition in this market: Hulu, Apple, Amazon, Youtube, Blockbuster." How far along is the industry towards a world where all video is consumed online? "Our best guess is that DVD will …

Hoping to address advertisers' frustration over measuring performance, Facebook plans to announce a partnership with Nielsen. Per the deal, Facebook will begin polling its users about some of the display ads it runs on its site, such as a banner promoting a movie release. Facebook will provide that data, including responses from those who didn't see an ad, to Nielsen, which will package it for advertisers, say the companies. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is planning to introduce the product, called Nielsen Brand Lift, shortly.