I don’t think a combination of Yahoo and Microsoft is going to reverse Google’s increasing search dominance. As Terry Semel said in 2006:

Microsoft and Yahoo, together forever. Could open-source offspring be the result?

I doubt that it would reverse course. In fact, I suspect that it would give Microsoft a convenient excuse to reverse course on its open-source antipathy and embrace it–at least in the context of the Web. Given how the Web works, with the focus on proprietary data while building on open APIs and open source, Microsoft could both embrace open source and retain its proprietary past at the same time.

Yahoo would be foolish to decline, given its recent travails. What is most interesting to me in all this is how it could drag Microsoft into the next generation of open source.

My impartial advice to Microsoft is that you have no chance. The search business has been formed.

According to Terry Semel, former CEO of Yahoo, the last time Microsoft approached Yahoo to buy some or all of its search business, Yahoo turned the Redmond giant down. Flat. As for an offer to acquire all of Yahoo, that “conversation has never come up.”

But that was then. Now Microsoft has put down a $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo that Yahoo surely can’t refuse under present circumstances. Especially since it will give customers a new choice, and Microsoft is all about offering customers choice…or so it says:

And open source is one of them.

commentary

He’s probably right. But the real question is whether a Yahoo-Microsoft combination could aggressively outflank and compete with Google in a range of other things beyond search. I suspect that it can.

Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player, who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers.

“(Yahoo and Microsoft discussed) search and Microsoft co-owning some of our search. I will not sell a piece of search–it is like selling your right arm while keeping your left; it does not make any sense.”

Music Music (by Burst Development, not iLike) allows you to upload songs, send the service a link to add the destination track to your playlist, or search through its database to find songs you like. Plus, it has an API available if you want to customize your playlist. I like it a lot.

But it’s not the only music app on Facebook. Quite the contrary, there are a variety of apps that provide the same basic service as Music. Some of those apps do it quite well.

Last.fm is pretty neat on Facebook.

The other Music is a useful tool, too.

Pandora Pandora isn’t a direct competitor to Music because it won’t let you add any song you want to your playlist, but the app is outstanding. You can create stations, rate a song, and sit at your computer all day listening to different tracks that its discovery engine determines you’ll like. I highly recommend it.

Profile Music Player If you’re looking for millions of songs to add to your playlist, Profile Music Player isn’t for you (it only has 63,000 tracks to choose from). But if you want to have an app that lets you easily add tracks from artists you might not know about, this service is a good place to start.

MixPod Playlist MixPod Playlist lets you find songs on the MixPod service, add tracks to a playlist, and listen to them as often as you like. You can also share that playlist on other social networks, like MySpace and Bebo.

MP3 Player If you want to listen to tracks from Shoutcast or MP3s you uploaded from your computer, MP3 Player will help you do it. It’s not the best app in this roundup, but it’s simple to use, so that counts for something.

Last.fm All of your favorite Last.fm features can be enjoyed on Facebook. Whether you want to listen to songs, create a shared playlist, or check out what your friends are listening to, you can do it with the Last.fm app. (Disclosure: Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET News.)

Imeem It’s not the easiest app to use, but if you want to add practically any song you can think of, plus some music videos to your profile, Imeem will help you do it. All the songs can be added for free. And they can be played anywhere you can access your Facebook profile.

Profile Songs It won’t let you add multiple tracks at the same time nor will it let you create playlists, but Profile Songs will at least give you the option to add your favorite song to your profile. You can switch it anytime you want. The selection is pretty good too.

My Music My Music syncs your iTunes and Windows Media Player library to your Facebook profile. You can listen to your most recently added tracks or shuffle songs. Try it out. You won’t regret it.

ReverbNation ReverbNation is a fine alternative to Music. It allows you to add tracks from relatively well-known artists and others you’ve probably never heard of. But its “Dig it?” feature is its most compelling offering because it gives you a list of tracks from friends that you might like, based on its stellar music discovery engine. Try out ReverbNation. I think you’ll like it.

Music (formerly known as iLike) is a music listening service that allows you to add tracks to your Facebook profile, share playlists with friends, and play games. It practically owns the space on the popular social network.

Free Music Player When you search for a song in Free Music Player, it tries to find the track on YouTube. If it’s available on the video site, you’ll be able to view the music video and sing along.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET)

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET)

Ozzie said he hoped in his speech to connect some of the dots between Microsoft’s online services, which he acknowledged can seem from the outside to be somewhat haphazard.

“I can say it’s already added some interesting twists to what promises to be a really, really exciting year,” Ozzie said.

Update at 9:50 a.m. PST: Ozzie talked about how various experiences that today are handled differently on various devices will soon be more seamlessly connected. In music and movies, for example, connected entertainment means only having to organize and license content once and being able to use it on multiple devices.

Editor’s note: CNET News.com’s Ina Fried blogged Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s address live from Mix ‘08.

LAS VEGAS–Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie decided he didn’t want to share the stage with an elephant.

Ray Ozzie opens Microsoft's Mix ‘08 saying that Web notions like tagging will become as common as the file and edit menus on the desktop.

He also justified spending Yahoo-size dollars by talking about the potential of the online advertising market.

In the first minute of his speech at Mix ‘08, the company’s Web-focused confab here, he talked about all of the things Microsoft has done in the online arena over the past year.

In wrapping up his comments, Ozzie acknowledged that Microsoft is competing for developers’ attention. “I know today you have many amazing technology choices,” he said. “But I’d like you to bet on us because I think together we can create extraordinary experiences.”

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

“And then there’s Yahoo,” Ozzie said, adding that there isn’t much he can say about Microsoft’s pending bid.

Update at 9:55 a.m.: For productivity, he said Office Live will become a “hub” where people will be able to link tags and share documents. Ozzie said Microsoft will have more to say about this area at a separate event. He didn’t say when or where this event will take place.

Update at 9:57 a.m.: Ozzie said that the attendees at Mix will be the first to be able to try out a new service for managing multiple PCs, though again he didn’t say just when this service will be available.

“It might seem to you to be just a little bit random,” he said.

Inverters convert direct current generated by solar panels or a wind turbine to household alternating current. When the power goes out, the Xantrex inverter draws on batteries to meet the household’s load.

The Xantrex Trace Series Inverter/Charger is designed to charge batteries from solar panels or wind turbine when there is a power failure.

Going off grid with solar–and batteries.

Many people assume that purchasing solar panels for a home includes a stack of batteries to run when the power goes out. That’s typically not the case for customers in the U.S. unless they are willing to pay extra for back-up power.

Xantrex participates in both the grid-tied and off-grid market but Gomm said that the off-grid market is still appealing even though it isn’t growing as fast.

(Credit:
Xantrex )

When a house’s panels are generating more electricity than the house is consumer, a “grid-tied” inverter will feed power back to the grid and make the meter runs backwards, subtracting from a customer’s monthly bill.

The Trace Series Inverter/Charger replaces its existing DR line that the company has sold since the 1990s which is most used in countries that don’t have reliable power supply.

Inverter maker Xantrex on Monday announced an overhaul to its inverters that let people combine a renewable energy source with some back-up power.

(Credit:
Xantrex )

“It’s a market that that a lot of people don’t focus on it but from a business point of view, you get an opportunity to earn some good money,” he said. “Those markets don’t require government incentives because the solution to the problem you are addressing is ‘you don’t have power.’”

The updated Trace Series is more user friendly to operate and is more efficient in converting electricity to battery power and back, said Lloyd Gomm, director of marketing and product management for Xantrex.

“The 2008 elections saw the role of the Internet in politics increase, and it witnessed the emergence of a unique group of online political activists,” said Aaron Smith, the Pew research specialist who authored the new report. The research for the report was conducted between November 20 and December 4, 2008.

While more voters turned to the Internet for political information, fewer relied on traditional news sources like radio or newspapers. Television remained the most common source of election news, with 77 percent of Americans watching election-related coverage. Twenty-eight percent of voters cited newspapers as a major source of election news, down from 39 percent in 2000.

The 2008 election was truly the most Internet-based presidential race ever, but the more voters went online, the more they sought out partisan content, a new report shows.

Official campaign Web sites were also more popular in the 2008 election. While 18 percent of all Internet users visited the John Kerry Web site in 2004 and 14 percent visited George Bush’s 2004 site, 30 percent went to Barack Obama’s site last year and 21 percent went to John McCain’s.

With greater online political engagement, the report shows, came greater partisanship. One-third of online news consumers said they usually seek out online political information from Web sites that share their political point of view, and the more online news sources a person regularly visited, the more likely he would be to seek out specific view points. Nearly half of online news consumers visited at least five different online types of news content in 2008.

Social media Web sites also featured much more prominently in the 2008 election, which is not surprising–most were in their infancy, if even in existence, during the 2004 campaign. Nearly half of all 18 to 29-year-olds–Internet users and nonusers alike–watched online political videos during the campaign. Among Internet users with a social networking profile, 52 percent used social networking sites for political purposes.

For the first time ever, more than half of the voting age population–55 percent of adults–went online for news and information about a presidential election or to communicate with others about the race, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

Obama supporters typically were more engaged online than John McCain supporters–26 percent of Obama supporters online created their own original political content online, compared with 15 percent of McCain supporters.

Twenty-six percent of Americans said they relied on the Internet as a major source of campaign news in 2008, compared with 11 percent in 2000.

(Credit: Pew Research Center)

“Most of the social services that people use aren’t going to be built by us. And that’s cool. That’s a good way to be. And so if Google’s building some stuff, it could be completely complementary with us, but it’s probably also going to move the ecosystem forward. We just kind of want to watch the direction that things are going in.”

OpenSocial allows applications to tap into the social graph, the network of friends and their feeds, of multiple social networks without code rewrites.

Google’s OpenSocial APIs may be gaining a major new adherent this week. According to the New York Times, Yahoo is expected to join the group that includes MySpace, Plaxo, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Six Apart, Oracle, salesforce.com and Ning, among others. In fact, Facebook is the only major social networking platform that has not joined the OpenSocial club.

Speaking with CNET News.com’s Caroline McCarthy at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival over the weekend, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was taking a wait and see approach to OpenSocial.

The report did not note whether the directors would authorize the Internet pioneer to engage in formal negotiations with Microsoft. (On Sunday evening, The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo on Monday would issue a rebuttal to the new deadline.)

And while Yahoo’s investors would also like a higher bid, they also want the deal done and are growing concerned, one major Yahoo institutional investor told CNET News.com Saturday. And should Microsoft engage in a proxy fight with Yahoo that ultimately goes before a shareholder vote and is successful, Yahoo’s management and its current board would, in essence, lose control over the company’s destiny.

Full coverage
Microsoft’s big bid for Yahoo Click here for the latest on the software giant’s attempt to buy the Net pioneer.

“(Yahoo) wants to maximize value for shareholders and that is what we’re going to do,” a source told CNET News.com on Sunday.

Take note: Some of Yahoo’s directors have faced proxy fights before, so they’re battle-tested.

This institutional investor has also previously told Yahoo’s independent directors he may be willing to support a new board, if they didn’t engage in formal talks with Microsoft. But such threats may not be enough to push Yahoo to engage with Microsoft without a higher bid.

Yahoo’s board of directors on Sunday reportedly hashed over Microsoft’s three-week deadline to close its mega-merger bid, according to a report in the Financial Times

Of course, the big question is whether they will figure it out in time. The game may only be in the bottom of the second inning, but it could be over a lot quicker than Swartz or any of the other cable and big media execs realize.

But there have also been occasions where media companies have actually taken content off the Web. Earlier this year, Hulu.com upset fans of the FX show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” when it yanked almost the entire three seasons of the show. Distraught users sent angry messages on Twitter and Hulu was forced to post a response in a blog saying that it was FX’s decision to pull the show and not Hulu’s.

As media companies try to figure out how to make more money from the Web while not biting the hand that feeds them, i.e. the cable companies, they are experimenting with which content to distribute online and how much of that content they make available for free to online viewers. For example, NBC offers full episodes of all three seasons of the show “Friday Night Lights” on Hulu.com. But the super-popular comedy “30 Rock” only offers full episodes of some of the most recent episodes.

Meanwhile, NBC and News Corp.’s Hulu.com has flourished providing online access not only to NBC’s and News Corp.’s own content, but also TV content from others, as well as some movies. CBS has also gotten into the game by offering some of its TV shows online through its Web site TV.com. And now movie studios are courting the once loathed and feared YouTube. The site owned by Google recently signed distribution deals with Sony Pictures, CBS, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate, Starz, Discovery Communications, and National Geographic.

Show me the money

Media companies plan to make money from these services through advertising, a model that has worked well in the broadcast world for more than 50 years. But making money in advertising on the Web has so far proven harder than in the broadcast market.

While these efforts are a step forward, the cable operators and the media companies are still trying to maintain control and strike a balance between the old and the new. Their biggest fear (and a reasonable one) is disrupting an extremely lucrative business model that has served them well for the past 30 years. But experts caution that if they move too slowly, they could risk losing everything to digital piracy.

While the media and cable companies may be merely trying to protect their copyrighted content and existing business models, they may find their attempts to control the distribution of their content fruitless. Boxee CEO Ronen said that these companies are risking losing complete control of their content through piracy.

Another major problem with the current business model is that cable companies spend tens of billions of dollars each year to license content from media companies. They then turn around and sell subscriptions to their service to consumers, who view the content. Popular content, such as the sports channel ESPN or the all-news channel CNN, are very expensive. And if consumers can get the same content from those sites for free on the Web, why would they pay $100 or more a month to subscribe to cable?

Unlike video Web sites such as Hulu.com, which is owned by NBC and News Corp., and CBS’ TV.com, the cable online video services are not free. And it doesn’t sound like the cable operators have any intention of offering them for free.

Cable operators and media companies are cautiously dabbling in on-demand online video, but this is one case where caution could be as dangerous as recklessness.

The situation demonstrated that it is the media companies, and not video-playing Web sites, such as Hulu, that have control of the content.

“We are in the bottom of the second inning when it comes to putting content online,” he said. “Content owners are realizing that they put some content out there and they aren’t making money. Now they are at the point where they are trying to figure out which business models will work.”

“Piracy will become an even bigger concern for them if they don’t give viewers what they want,” he said. “It’s already happening, especially overseas where you can’t get access to most of this content legally.”

Recently, the nation’s two largest cable operators have been talking about offering their cable lineup to subscribers online so they can view their favorite shows on their computers. And now, YouTube, the site Viacom sued for more than a $1 billion in 2007 and threatened to have shut down, is signing deals with big studios like Sony Pictures and Lionsgate, as well as TV network CBS. (CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

Understandably, cable operators have pushed hard to keep media companies from offering too much of their content for free online.

The problem is that media companies make more money from airing a show on broadcast than they do online, even though a lot of people who record their television shows with a DVR fast-forward through the broadcast commercials. And viewers of Hulu can’t forward through the commercials offered during their shows. The other problem is that advertising firms get paid bigger budgets to develop advertising for TV spots than they do for Web spots, providing an incentive to push clients toward TV advertising rather than online advertising.

Still, online distribution represents a new opportunity for media companies providing them the chance to monetize older content that sits unused in their archives as well as bringing in additional revenue from new products associated with popular shows.

“Media companies are getting pressure from the cable companies to not put as much content online,” Ronen said. “Cable is saying, ‘Why should we be helping people cut the cable cord when we’re paying $20 billion a year for content.’”

In short, do you give up some of your existing revenue and hope you can make that money back through advertising? Or do you stick with your current model and fight what could be a losing battle to protect your copyrights?

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator in the country, is already testing its online video-on-demand service in Milwaukee. The service allows Time Warner customers who subscribe to HBO, for example, to watch episodes of “Entourage” or “Flight of the Conchords” online through the Web site. Subscribers who don’t pay for HBO, don’t get access to those shows. Comcast isn’t in tests yet, but the company plans to offer a similar service available through its Fancast Web site later this year.

Media companies, likely nudged by the cable companies, have also tried to keep the online video viewing on the PC. For much of this year, Hulu has been blocking Boxee, a software application that provides an easy way to discover and view online video on the TV.

Appetite for online video grows

There is little doubt the online media age is upon us. Movie studios and network TV companies have been serving up popular shows online for at least the past couple of years. And now the nation’s two largest cable operators, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, are testing services that allow their cable TV viewers to watch their regular cable lineup over the Net on their computers.

“There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle now,” said Avner Ronen, CEO of Boxee, a company that acts as a sort of browser for the TV to help people find and play online video on their big screen TVs. “But if users can’t easily get the content legally and reasonably priced in a reasonable amount of time, they will go out and get it some other place. That has been proven with music, and video is no different.”

All this recent activity seems to suggest that cable companies and big media companies finally understand that the Web is their future. People want to watch what they want when they want. And the Internet provides an ideal way to connect people to their favorite content.

One thing has become very clear to be successful in offering online video: Content is king. And sites that don’t have it die. Just look at Joost, which was founded in 2007 by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the same pair who founded Skype and Kazaa. But the company had trouble landing top TV shows and films and two years later, it’s on the auction block.

“We believe we can add more value to the entertainment that people are already paying for,” said Sam Swartz, executive vice president for Comcast Interactive Media. “We recognize that consumers have different ways to consume content. Some will want to view it on a PC. Others will want to see it on a TV. Our job is–for the same subscription fee–to offer it to consumers on whatever platform they want.”

Content owners have also restricted the use of services, like Hulu, overseas, since there are special content license deals with foreign broadcasters for TV shows and movies produced for the U.S. market.

Microsoft and Yahoo together have a large share of the e-mail and instant messaging accounts, as well as two of the most popular Web portals. Drummond wonders about the possibility that Microsoft could use its dominance in the PC software market to unfairly limit access to competitors’ Web services.

“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies–and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets,” he writes. “Could the acquisition of Yahoo allow Microsoft–despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses–to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?”

A Microsoft-Yahoo merger could threaten the openness on which the Internet is based, a Google executive says.

Microsoft’s $44.6 billion “hostile” bid “raises troubling questions,” writes David Drummond, Google Chief Legal Officer, expresses cynicism in a blog posted on Sunday

Call of Duty 4
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Pipeline   Bog   Ambush  

Apple Mac Pro 2009 with ATI Radeon HD 4870
37 
34 
34  Apple Mac Pro 2009 with GeForce GT 120
18 
20 
22 

We suspect you’d see better performance with faster CPUs than our default model’s pair of 2.26GHz Xeon chips, but with the 3D card upgrade our previously default review model already costs $3,499. We found plenty to like about the Mac Pro in our review, and for design professionals the new 3D card options will surely be welcome. We just can’t endorse even this upgraded Mac Pro as a gaming system, with so many more powerful Windows-based options available for less.

As in our review of the Mac Pro, we tested with three different time demos in the Mac version of Call of Duty 4. We set the resolution to a modest 1,680 x 1,050 with 4x anti-aliasing. The results, as you can see, are definitely better with the $200 ATI upgrade, but it really only pushed the Mac Pro from “mediocre” to “acceptable” as a gaming system.