yahoo

Yahoo may be looking to continue its spending spree with the acquisitions of a couple of app makers.

Yahoo has reportedly offered to pay $30 million to $40 million to buy Xobni, AllThingsD reported Monday, citing "numerous sources" close to the company.

Xobni, which is "inbox" spelled backwards, offers desktop and mobile apps that can automatically create an address book based on your e-mails. As such, Yahoo may be eyeing the Xobni as a natural fit for its own online mail service.

And there's a common thread between the two companies, AllThingsD noted. Xobni's … Read more

Joining Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, Yahoo has revealed that it received more than 12,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for user information and affected accounts in the past six months.

The Web pioneer said Monday evening that between December 1, 2012, and May 31, 2013, it received between 12,000 and 13,000 requests for user information, most of which were related to criminal investigations involving fraud, homicide, and kidnapping.

The revelation comes amid a furor that erupted earlier this month over allegations that the National Security Agency has engaged in a sweeping effort to surreptitiously acquire information … Read more

Yahoo reportedly challenged a U.S. government order to help it spy on foreign users before ultimately failing and becoming part of the PRISM, the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance program.

The details of the dispute were never made public beyond a heavily redacted court order (PDF). But sources told The New York Times that Yahoo is the unnamed company that petitioned the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2008 for review of the order over concerns it violated its users' the Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The court responded that the company's concerns … Read more

Life is filled with trade-offs, and when it comes to keeping the country secure against terror attacks, Americans largely trust the government with broad access to personal data. Indeed, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 56 percent of those polled favored the National Security Agency's previously undisclosed phone tracking activities compared with 41 percent who opposed letting the spy agency surveil phone records.

In making their case to the public, government officials tend to put the issue in black-and-white terms: Do you want to be responsible for a terrorist attack because the intelligence community failed to connect … Read more

Yahoo has been on an acquisition spree lately, and it's not done yet.

The latest catch: Rondee, a free conference-call service provider. The service announced the deal Wednesday on its Web site, saying simply that it's been acquired by Yahoo and will join the online giant's Small Business team. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With the Yahoo acquisition complete, Rondee is no longer accepting new users. Current users can continue to create their free conference calls until July 12. Data from past calls will be available until August 12. After that, Rondee is going … Read more

Yahoo continues to clean house as CEO Marissa Mayer charges on to revamp the struggling company. It announced Wednesday that it's resetting all Yahoo IDs that have been inactive for at least a year, leaving them up for grabs.

But there will be a process, of course. Users will be able to request the IDs they want starting in mid-July, but won't find out which one they got until mid-August.

"If you're like me, you want a Yahoo ID that's short, sweet, and memorable like albert@yahoo.com instead of albert9330399@yahoo.com," Jay … Read more

In a maneuver to improve Flickr, Yahoo has purchased GhostBird Software, makers of iOS camera apps, for an undisclosed sum. The buy comes less than a month after the media titan released an overhauled version of its photo service that wasn't greeted with the warmest of welcomes.

Today we acquired @ghostbirdsoft for @flickr. Get ready to see your mobile photos in a whole new light! bit.ly/11zOvNY

Yahoo announced the acquisition with a tweet Wednesday and told Flickr users to expect to see their mobile photos in "a whole new light.&… Read more

Microsoft's Bing carved out a 17.4 percent slice of the U.S. search engine market in May, according to the latest ComScore data provided by investment firm Macquarie Capital.

An investors note released today by Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter revealed that Bing's share in May rose only 0.10 percentage points from April. But that slow but steady rise showed an ongoing gain that's held relatively firm for the past three years.

Still, Google remains the search engine champ, well ahead of the other contestants. Its May market share showed an increase of 0.20 points … Read more

You can never underestimate the competitiveness of your average CEO.

You can also never underestimate the business sense of charities who know when they're on to an easy earner.

Tuesday brings news of Marissa Mayer trying to see whether lunch with her might be more valuable than coffee with Tim Cook.

Recently, someone who clearly values power over food paid $610,000 to have coffee with the Apple CEO. This was all organized by auction site CharityBuzz, which guilts people into doing exciting things and paying for them hugely.

Now, similar forward-thinkers are being asked how much it's … Read more