SearchEngineUpdate with Vanessa Zamora - 07-17-2008 Part I
Abstract: 1. AOL Looks For Buyer, Microsoft May Bite, But For Now Still Waiting For Yahoo, 2. Gmail Makes Updates To Contacts List Management
Vanessa Zamora
Video Content Producer, SearchEngineWorld
4:37 pm on July 17, 2008 (utc 0)
Transcript
Thursday July 17, 2008
AOL Looks For Buyer, Microsoft May Bite, But For Now Still Waiting For Yahoo
Its now been over 5 months since Microsoft first made an unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo, and now even as both firms gear up for the August 1st Yahoo shareholder meeting which will include a vote on a new Yahoo board put forward by investor Carl Icahn and so ultimately determine the future fate of Yahoo, Microsoft is considering AOL as a second contender to Yahoo. Microsoft and Time Warner unit AOL have reportedly held casual talks for several months as an alternative to Microsoft's efforts to buy Yahoo, with the last meeting scheduled last Wednesday. Although an AOL deal wouldn't immediately help Microsoft gain in search advertising, its main focus, it would immediately position Microsoft as an online powerhouse by bringing it significant online traffic and scale to its display advertising, both of which could help it monetize its own Web properties. Meanwhile, Time Warner is under pressure to make something happen as the value of AOL continues to decline, but a move by Microsoft before the August 1st Yahoo shareholder meeting is unlikely.
Google is rolling out a change to its Gmail email service to give users more control over their contacts list. Previously Google automatically added any person who a user corresponded with, which was intended to make the emailing process more efficient by subsequently auto completing the email address, saving users from having to remember an email address or look it up. However, the feature would often result in address book clutter. In order to resolve the issue and to give users more control, Google has created two categories for contacts including a “suggested contacts” category and a “my contacts” category. My contacts contains those that are intentionally added to the list as well as email addresses used five or more times, unless the feature is disabled. Suggested Contacts is where Gmail now puts its auto-created contacts, to keep them out of the way but bookmarked for any subsequent emails.
