Friday, September 29, 2006

Yahoo to Cooperate with Hewlett-Packard. Preinstalled Yahoo Toolbar in HP Computers

11:58 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Following a similar agreement between Google and Dell made four moths ago, Yahoo! claims that is has struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard to plant its Internet search engine on millions of computers. The alliance unites two companies trying to catch up to the longtime leaders in their respective fields.

“The agreement requires HP to set up its desktop and notebook PCs in North America so Yahoo’s search engine appears in the toolbar of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7, the next version of the Web’s most widely used browser. Yahoo is hoping that the tool bar will generate more search requests, providing a springboard for more ad revenue,” writes Associated Press.

Although Yahoo remains the Web’s most trafficked destination, the company hasn’t been able to narrow Google’s huge lead in Internet search - a factor that has crimped its earnings growth and battered its stock this year. The company already has warned its revenue for the current quarter will fall below Wall Street expectations.

Through August, Google held a 44 percent share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 29 percent and Microsoft at 12.5 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.

• Associated Press: Yahoo Teams up with HP on Search Engine.

Microsoft Sues FairUse4WM Developer. Microsoft Accuses FairUse4WM Creator in Source Code Theft

11:56 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Microsoft has filed a federal lawsuit against an alleged hacker who broke through its copy protection technology, charging that the mystery developer somehow gained access to its copyrighted source code.

Cnet News.com reports that for more than a month, the Redmond, Wash., company has been combating a program released online called FairUse4WM, which successfully stripped anti-copy guards from songs downloaded through subscription media services such as Napster or Yahoo Music.

Microsoft has released two successive patches aimed at disabling the tool. The first worked - but the hacker, known only by nick-name “Viodentia,” quickly found a way around the update, the company alleges. Now the company says this was because the hacker had apparently gained access to copyrighted source code unavailable to previous generations of would-be crackers.

“Our own intellectual property was stolen from us and used to create this tool. They obviously had a leg up on any of the other hackers that might be creating circumvention tools from scratch,” said Bonnie MacNaughton, a senior attorney in Microsoft’s legal and corporate affairs division.

In a Web posting early Wednesday morning, Viodentia denied using any copyrighted Microsoft code, and released yet another version of his tool.

“FairUse4WM has been my own creation, and has never involved Microsoft source code. I link with Microsoft’s static libraries provided with the compiler and various platform SDK (software development kit) files,” the developer wrote.

• Cnet News.com: Microsoft Sues over Source Code Theft.

Archive
All Latest News