Google, is starting panic. For the first time since 2008 their market share as dropped below 75%. The reason behind this sudden decline and panic is Mozilla’s decision back in November 2014 not to renew the agreement (default browser search engine) they had with Google, instead opting to sign a five-year deal with Yahoo. Not surprisingly, Yahoo’s market share has increased as a result of this deal to 10.6% (up 2% since the agreement started back in November). Well, Google is not too happy about this and is trying to get Firefox user back. While Google is still the clear market leader, it is…
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On Monday, December 1st, Mozilla did another “strange release”. They did this last month with Firefox 33.1 aka The Anniversary Release. So for December they released Firefox 34.0.0 AND 34.0.5. I think I understand the differences, although most people on the forums are still scratching their heads trying to figure this one out. For the United States (en-US) and Russia (RU) builds, user have the option to changing over to the default search engine upon first run of Firefox 34. For en-US users this is Yahoo and for RU users this is Yandex. Since this change is optional, user who update from an earlier version of…
Mozilla released an update to Firefox on December 1, 2014 with Firefox 34.0 and 34.0.5 (new install). US users who have not made changes to the search engine settings in Firefox can switch to Yahoo (with the new improved search bar) as the default search engine upon first run. Also for US users Wikipedia searches are now using the HTTPS protocol for improved security. Default search engine changed to Yandex for Belarusian, Kazakh, and Russian locales. There are several other new features and fixes for this release and these can be viewed in the release notes. Users may be prompted to update to…
Been a while since there’s been much news on the possible Microsoft/Yahoo! acquisition. This time however, it is Yahoo! board of directors, at least some of them who are “willing to entertain any legitimate offers or ideas to improve the Silicon Valley search giant’s prospects”. This could include AOL (I still shocked they are still around), an all-out sale involving investors, News Corp. President Peter Chernin and oh yea, Microsoft. Also there are talks of Yahoo! outing their current CEO Carol Bartz who took over in January 2009 after Jerry Yang stepped down. But, the million dollar question: “Is Microsoft…
Oracle has pushed out JAVA Version 6 Update 20 to address a sever security exploit. While I am usually pretty good about keeping my plugins such as JAVA updated I did notice I currently had Update 16 installed 🙁 This update is for Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems including Windows XP, Vista, 7 as well as Server 2003 & 2008. Note: This exploit currently affects users running 32-Bit browsers. To install the update simply go to java.com and click the big red Free Java Download button. The site will auto-detect your operating system and present you with the correct…
Back on May 1st, The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog turned 3. Taking a looking back around May 1st for the past 3-years, here were some of the big news items: 2006 Mike Schroepfer announced developers were yanking Places from the then upcoming Firefox 2 release. Bon Echo/Firefox 2 Alpha 2 release. 2007 Support for both Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5 would be ending soon. Dell was going to offer (on some systems) Ubuntu & OpenOffice.org instead of Windows Vista and Office 2007 The Guru begins to experiment with Ubuntu. 2008 The failed takeover/merger of Yahoo! by Microsoft. Still not sure if…
While nothing official has been released by Microsoft, The Times of London is reporting Microsoft Corp. has resumed its pursuit of Yahoo in a deal that could cost the Redmond-based company $20 billion, less than half of what it offered for the search site this summer. Microsoft has put forward Jonathan Miller, ex-chairman and chief executive of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, a former president of Fox Interactive Media, to lead a new management team at Yahoo under a 10-year agreement. Microsoft would have a two-year option to buy Yahoo outright for $20 billion. The report also says senior management at…
…Yahoo’s stock goes up or (in most cases) down dramatically . A follow-up to yesterday’s post Microsoft/Yahoo: Ballmer “We are done…” At Wednesday’s shareholders’ meeting Ballmer said, “We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo. I’ve said that a bunch of times. Somehow some people have gotten confused nonetheless.” Yes Steve, people are confused as your comments are “somewhat confusing”. Seattle PI reporter Joseph Tartakoff takes a look back at Steve Ballmer’s public comments on the possibility of a Yahoo deal over the past few months and the (mostly negaitvie) effect on Yahoo’s stock. Source: The Microsoft Blog
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has once again said they are done with the talks of a merger. He addressed this question at the annual shareholder meeting today in Bellevue, Washington: “We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo. I’ve said that a bunch of times. Somehow some people have gotten confused nonetheless,” he said in response to a question. One person in the hall at Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center then applauded. Interesting, just last month The American Technology Research had indicated that it was “increasingly likely” Microsoft would make another bid for Yahoo at a “significantly lower” price.” Also at…
Current Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang has announced today he is stepping down and returning to his former role as Chief Yahoo! The news ends an embattled tenure for the Yahoo co-founder, who took over as CEO in June 2007, replacing then CEO Terry Semel. Now the big question is what does this mean for the still lingering merger/partnership/take-over with Yahoo and partnership with Microsoft. Yahoo is not doing so well, the stock has already lost nearly 2/3 (closed today @ $10.63 per share) of it value since the take-over was announced. Back on February 1st Yahoo! stock shot up to…