“It’s just speculation at this point. But there were rumors this past weekend that Microsoft offered $80 billion for Yahoo. Yahoo was said to have rejected the bid as too low. On Tuesday, even though neither party would comment, talk of a potential Yahoo-Microsoft deal of some kind sent Yahoo shares up 4.4 percent. For the record, Microsoft has $40 billion in cash at hand.”

Let’s hope this never happens – it’s good to have the Big 3.

[ from here ]

Google Inc., the No. 1 Internet search engine, said profit jumped sevenfold, surpassing analysts’ estimates, as new mapping and instant messaging features attracted users and the company added advertising space. The shares gained 8.4 percent.

Third-quarter net income rose to $381.2 million, or $1.32 a share, from $52 million, or 19 cents, a year earlier, Mountain View, California-based Google said today in a statement. Net revenue doubled to $1.05 billion, topping the $944 million average estimate in a Thomson Financial analyst survey.

[ from Bloomberg.com ]

Yahoo! Video can now search for Macromedia Flash files (.swf). Begun the video search wars have.

“Infoworld reported that Firefox increased its market share to 8.71 percent, up from 8 percent in May, while IE’s share shrank to 86.56 percent from 87.23 percent. This is according to NetApplications.com. Since the beginning of the year, Firefox has increased its market share every month between 0.5 percent and 1 percent, mostly at the expense of IE. This means Firefox would cross the 10% market share by October.”

from Slashdot