Yahoo recently announced that it is changing to the max bid and quality score technique of bid pricing in Sweden. Yahoo seems to be a follower of Google, as and when Google makes changes, within a month’s time or so Yahoo does the same thing.

Changes:

Due to complaints appeared from Brazil about offensive content, Google the search giant in August removed ads from Orkut. This move came after a Brazilian nonprofit organization, SaferNet, lodged a protest with a Brazilian advertising body.

SaferNet suspected that Orkut comprises child pornography and other unlawful content on some user’s pages. Google states it had removed such pictures when it becomes aware of them. Google in turn faced a wave of legal defy in Brazil, Latin America’s largest advertising market.

Yahoo! Inc., a chief global Internet brand recently announced the preface of Blocked Domains within its Sponsored Search system recognized as Panama. The new feature offers site blocking capacities for advertisers allowing them to have better control over where their sponsored search and background ads appear. Since these ads could also come into view outside the Yahoo! network, the Blocked Domains feature would further permit advertisers to state websites and/or sections of websites on that they do not desire their ads to appear. This feature is especially intended to improved enable advertisers to block their ads from emerge on websites that don’t meet their business needs. This is just one of many ways Yahoo! is running to perk up the value of traffic that is delivered to advertisers.

In an meet with the Financial Times, the company’s new head of engineering in Europe, Nelson Mattos, said it was his aim to make Google’s European operations similar in size to its US operations through the hiring of many thousand engineers. According to estimates, roughly 500 out of a total of 7,000 Google employees are now in Europe, even though the company is notoriously private about the size of its workforce.

A spokesperson for Google refused to “give out exact numbers”, but confirmed that the company was “hiring more engineers in Europe because there is great talent there”.

Yahoo Inc. would now get rid of a little-used service for finding and rating audio plans recognized as “podcasts,” the most recent casualty of the Internet Company’s rejuvenation effort. The podcast section would no more exist from Oct. 31, according to a notice posted on Yahoo’s Web site. It joins some other features that Yahoo has scrapped as it tries to instant out of a financial funk, which has depressed its stock price and triggered a reorganizing of top management.

Yahoo spokeswoman Carrie Davis said the company yet hopes to blend its index of podcasts into another part of its Web site.

Google wants to build a fiber-optic cable under the Pacific Ocean so at to link its U.S. operations with Asia – Report by Communications Day news site for Australia and Asia. The Unity cable is under construction and prepared to launch during 2009. Google is yet to comment on the plan, but company said it could not confirm or deny the Unity plan. “Additional infrastructure for the Internet is good for users and there are a number of proposals to add a Pacific submarine cable,” a Google spokesman told CommsDay.

Yahoo is on the way to lauch Mash – a social-networking site. Yahoo says that they are the first one to allwo you mess with your friends profiles. Users are allowed to invite their friends with a designed page for the prospective member by adding colors, text, RSS feeds and contents. This could also have an adverse effect; however the page could also be disabled. But when compared to other social hubs, Mash has lightweight offering. It has widgets and games but not blogging component, no photo-management tool, and no e-mail and contact facility.

Now advertisers can create interactive ads within widgets as Google has recently exposed his new graphic and ad format. The search giant’s new skill can be used to make ads and could as well be distributed virally across Internet. Further new ads would assist the company tap into the increasingly viral manner in that audio, video and data content are been spread across. The rising use of RSS feeds and widgets would enable Internet users to embed small content windows on third-party pages.

MAKATI CITY, Philippines — Yahoo! Southeast Asia is planning to come up with a program for Internet cafe businesses in Philippines to develop its community in the country. This programs aims to boost the Internet Company’s effort to build an “ecosystem” of users in the country, stated by Jojo Anonuevo, head of Yahoo! business development of Southeast Asia.

Anonuevo said that Yahoo! Southeast Asia would certainly organize a group of so-called Yahoo! Ambassadors that would give confidence more Filipino users to join its community.

Microsoft Corp is now decided to integrate the Windows Live applications to its Visual Studio toolkit for building more developer base for its online platform. Further it is adding controls to Visual Studio 2008, which would permit developers to get connected with Window Live services to fresh tools they are on the way to build, stated by Adam Sohn, director in the Online Services Group of Microsoft. It is at present testing the technology inside and might as well include it in the current 2005 version of Visual Studio, but that is yet to be decide on that, he said.