Microsoft to fight Google with Live Search Cashback

Microsoft has announced Live Search Cashback that rewards users with cash rebates when they search for and purchase products from partnering online stores. Microsoft collects money from its partners, the advertisers on a CPA (Cost Per Action) basis. So this product shifts search advertising from CPC (Cost Per Click) to CPA and gives a lot of revenue back to the users. This is a desperate move by Microsoft to challenge Google which has 61.6% of the US search market share. Microsoft is third with under 9.1% of the total pie.

According to industry data, online retail in the United States is projected to grow to $335 billion by 2010. Today, 68 per cent of all those retail transactions begin at a search engine.

The Live Search cashback program features more than 10 million products from more than 700 merchants, including top U.S. retailers, Microsoft said.

Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder and chairman announced the initiative at the group’s advance08 conference in Redmond, Washington and said that the new program "will help advertisers drive more online sales while giving consumers a new way to stretch their dollars."

The technology is based on a system used by Jellyfish, the shopping and auction service, which Microsoft acquired in September 2007.

Google helps Indian authorities arrest Orkut political defamer

An obscene message about Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi on Orkut has landed an Indian man in prison. The message was allegedly posted on a community called "I hate Sonia Gandhi."

Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid, a 22 year-old IT consultant, was arrested after google handed over his personal data to police.

Vaid was arrested after a police raid on his house on May 16 and has been charged with breaking section 292 of the Indian Penal Code and section 67 of the Information Technology Act.

If found guilty he faces a possible five years in prison as well as a fine.

A Congress activist from Pune, Amol Bhokare had lodged a complaint in December 2007, against the unknown person. According to the police the person who formed this community is not guilty as per the law, as hating anyone is a personal opinion but posting derogatory content in a vulgar language is indeed a crime.

The cyber crime cell of Pune then got in touch with Google. It was informed that the message about Sonia Gandhi was circulated from an email address rahulvaidindia@gmail.com

A team was dispatched by the deputy commissioner of police to arrest the accused who had posted the messages against Sonia Gandhi. The accused, a commerce graduate, was produced before the court on May 17 in Pune. Vaid accepted that he had posted the messages. He has been remanded to police custody till May 21.

During interrogations, Rahul told the police that he hated Sonia Gandhi and so posted the message but had no idea that it would land him in jail.

Microsoft considers fresh Yahoo deal

Microsoft is set to challenge Google again. Microsoft Corp. said that it has made a new, downsized offer to cooperate with Yahoo while leaving the door open to a merger down the road.

Details of the proposal were vague. But the offer raises the possibility of everything from buying a part of Yahoo to an advertising partnership in which Microsoft would place its ads on Yahoo.

Another potential is a joint venture in search, an area where the two companies have lagged far behind industry dominator Google Inc.

The announcement comes on the heels of Yahoo shareholder and billionaire investor Carl Icahn launching a proxy fight to wrest control of the Yahoo board at the upcoming July three annual shareholders meeting.

Microsoft withdrew its unsolicited USD 33-a-share buyout bid on May three, after the two sides failed to agree on a price.

Icahn has called the Yahoo board's decision to reject Microsoft offer as irrational and wants to force Yahoo to return to the bargaining table with Microsoft.

BBC exposes facebook security flaw

The BBC's technology programme Click has exposed a security flaw in the social networking site Facebook which could compromise privacy. It has been found that applications can be created to mine data from Facebook users.

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