More Shoots with Yahoo

As it’s the time for holidays, Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) is now promoting a camera finder on its most preferred Flicker photo sharing site. This lets the users sort snapshots by the digital cameras that were used. The site is able to spot the camera used as the photographs are uploaded, and that in turn opens the door for the company to graph the usage and as well to create camera specific groups for users.

Google offers holiday gifts

Google is up with the fire of free schwag engine for the holiday season. Last year Google had sent out a potpourri of items including a wireless mini mouse, 4 port USB hubs, USB charger for mouse, headset with retractable cord, USB LED light and many more. However this year the gift is much cooler – a digital picture frame.

It’s really good that Google takes out time to thank their publishers with cool and attractive gifts.

More features with Google holiday gift

People who are interested in giving back during the holidays, donations to eight global charities could now be possible with Google Checkout login. Google plans to add $10 to every user’s first donation of $30 or more.

Shoppers could donate to these charities and do their shopping from their preferred Google Checkout merchants by new site http://checkout.google.com/holiday/. This site has popular gift item from Google Checkout merchants, in fact everything from coffee to cameras.

Holiday Site for payment service by Google

Google has recently launched a holiday site marking retailers who are using its Checkout payment service and then expose the money back promotion to attract its customers. Google Checkout provides a single avenue for making purchases on multiple retail sites.

Google is now looking to add customers through promotions, which include $10 off on purchase of $30 or more through this year Dec. 26. For example, if shoppers visited five participating merchants and spent between $30 and $49 on every site, they will get back a total of $50.

Google stock closes above $500

Mountain View-based Google closed at $509.65 last Tuesday, giving the search engine turned media long lasting a market capitalization of $156 billion and also making the eight year old firm, which is more valuable than Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola, Mitsubishi, Chevron and AT&T.

An investor who bought 10 shares of stock in the company’s during August 2004 Dutch auction style first public offering will now have turned his $850 into $5,040.80, a return of 493 percent on paper in little more than two years.

Google as News Archivist

Until recently, it was difficult to find news archives on the web more than 30 days old. That’s changed in a big way with the advent of Google’s News Archive search.

This News Archives search screens for news archive, which is virtually the same as the regular Google News search; but with a difference that the Archive search includes the option to limit the results to free articles, or for articles that are costing less than $5, $10, or $50.

Youth-oriented film website by MSN

LONDON – MSN is to launch a film website, which is featuring reviews, listings and exclusive clips aiming youngsters in the age bracket of 16 to 24.

MSN has brought in a number of partners to give content for the website including editorial column and recent trailers from independent film site MyMovies, listings and daily news from the Press Association, DVD data from Muze, actor/director data from French company Allocine and even from DVD rental from Lovefilm.

Analyst: Yahoo’s Panama project moves up faster

Yahoo’s new ad platform, dubbed Panama, looks like making good progress, according to a report by UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter.

In a research note, Schachter said “Yahoo is rapidly ramping up efforts to migrate advertisers to the new user line (campaign management application). Contacts point out that over the next coming weeks more and more advertisers would migrate. There is even a Website to let advertisers to request an early migration. However, as predictable, the complete migration is still not planned and is to be complete until early ’07.”

Google Mapping an Offline Course

Major Internet sites are now showing a strong and popular growing interest in the advertising business, and traditional ad.

Google has been leading all through the way, building on its online ad strength by striking deals to sell advertising in the traditional media like newspapers and radio as well. Meanwhile, eBay is growing an ad-buying system for TV spots for a set of large advertisers like Wal-Mart. Yahoo recently announced a deal with 176 newspapers, which did not include offline ad sales, even though newspaper executives did not rule that out.

Yahoo has an eye for talent

Search engine giant Yahoo has bought a website, which would helps individuals and sponsor companies to host online talent shows, adding more content created by users.

Bix, founded in January, holds online contests for featuring karaoke, dance, comedy, beauty, photography and for writing; Yahoo said this at the weekend on its website. People will compete by posting photos, audio and videos and other users will rate.