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CARLSBAD, California (AFP) - Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang said Wednesday that Microsoft is “no longer interested” in buying the pioneering Internet firm, but is considering “other partnerships.”

Yang also maintained that Yahoo is “not under siege” despite a threatened stockholder revolt led by billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn.

Yang's comments came during a speech at an “All Things Digital” conference organized by the Wall Street Journal in the Southern California city of Carlsbad.

“Microsoft is no longer interested in buying the company and they are discussing various other partnerships with us,” Yang said, echoing comments made the prior evening by Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

“We are listening.”

Yang implied that sparring that took place between the companies while Microsoft's nearly 50 billion dollar offer was on the table has given way to talks aimed at finding a way for them to work together.

Microsoft could have taken a “much more hostile” tact and tried to oust the Yahoo board of directors that rebuffed advances by the Redmond, Washington, based software giant, according to Yang.

Yang stressed that it was Microsoft, not Yahoo, which walked away from the bargaining table.

Microsoft says it broke off takeover talks in late April after it upped its February 1 bid of 44.6 billion dollars by three billion dollars and Yahoo's board still wanted more.

Yang defended the board's handling of failed takeover talks with Microsoft and pleaded anew the case that the struggling Internet firm is poised to recapture its former glory and a bigger share of online advertising dollars.

Microsoft wanted to buy Yahoo to better take on Google, which dominates the lucrative world of Internet search and advertising.

“They definitely have an interest in Yahoo,” Yang said of Microsoft. “With the right circumstances, not only price, our board is open.”

Talks between Yahoo and Microsoft may be centered on letting Microsoft handle Yahoo's online advertising in the belief it can pump more cash out of the promising revenue source.

Yahoo successfully tested just such an arrangement with Google during Microsoft's takeover try.

An alliance with Microsoft, or even Google, could be a salvation for Yahoo board members facing a showdown with Icahn.

Icahn has reportedly bought a stake of more than four percent in the California firm and says he plans to oust board members he accuses of botching takeover talks with Microsoft.

Icahn has nominated a Microsoft-friendly slate, which includes him, to replace all ten Yahoo board members at elections to be held at an annual meeting in late July.

Yahoo delayed the shareholders meeting to an unspecified date because it needs time to prepare for the threatened coup attempt.

“The perception of us being a company under siege is just not accurate,” Yang said as he was peppered with questions about Yahoo's future.

Yahoo's potential to make money online stretches far beyond search, according to company president Susan Decker.

Internet search accounts for only 10 percent of the space for placing online advertising, and Yahoo boasts 500 million people that routinely use its properties, which include free email and user groups.

“It's an enormous asset,” Decker said at the conference. “It's undervalued. We want to do more with it.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Move over Indiana Jones. This weekend is shaping up to be all about sex at U.S. theaters, with an online ticket agency finding nearly 70 percent of women are planning special group outings to see “Sex and the City.”

The online survey of more than 9,300 people by Fandango, which sells tickets for more than 15,000 U.S. screens, also found 80 percent were planning to attend a “Sex and the City” get-together before or after seeing the film.

And 68 percent of those surveyed — 94 percent of whom were women — said they would be drinking the Cosmopolitan cocktail, made famous by “Sex and the City's” Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha.

“There has been some significant anticipation for this,” said Rick Butler, Fandango's chief operating officer. “The television series has a loyal fan base.”

By Wednesday, “Sex and the City” accounted for 90 percent of Fandango's advance ticket sales, easily trouncing “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which only made up 7 percent.

But the movie is unlikely to make anywhere near the $151.1 million grossed by “Indiana Jones” when it opened over the U.S. Memorial Day weekend. Box office predictions for “Sex and the City” range from $25 to $40 million its first weekend.

The “Sex and the City” film picks up where the hit HBO cable TV series ended four years ago after six seasons. Based on Candace Bushnell's autobiographical columns in The New York Observer newspaper, the TV series won eight Golden Globes and seven Emmys.

Reuters/Nielsen

(Corrects quotation in third paragraph to read: “Microsoft is no longer interested in buying the company…” instead of “Microsoft has a lot of interest in buying the company…” A corrected version follows:)

CARLSBAD, California (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) Chief Executive Jerry Yang said on Wednesday that a potential merger with Microsoft (MSFT.O) has a “tremendous amount of power” but that valuation and issues beyond price have so far derailed a deal.

Speaking at the D: All Things Digital conference of high-tech industry leaders, Yang publicly detailed his thinking about potential deals with Microsoft Corp and rival Google Inc. (GOOG.O).

The Yahoo co-founder declined to comment on the status of current discussions with Microsoft, saying “Microsoft is no longer interested in buying the company.”

Earlier this month, Microsoft walked away from a proposal to acquire Yahoo for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, after Yahoo rebuffed its offer, saying it would only settle for $37 a share.

In an interview with technology reviewer Walt Mossberg, Yang said a merger with Microsoft would involve a variety of issues beyond price and discussions had never thoroughly explored such non-price hurdles, including regulatory issues.

Yahoo President Susan Decker, appearing alongside Yang on stage, said that price had always been the biggest barrier to reaching agreement on a deal with Microsoft.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard)

San Francisco - Google's eye-catching demonstration of an early Android-enabled mobile phone Wednesday appeared to mimic Apple's iPhone. But Google officials downplayed the notion that they will face off against iPhone in the handset market.

The company at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco showed an Android device, featuring touch screen functionality, advanced graphical capabilities and Internet access, similar to iPhone. With Android, the company seeks to extend the browser to handheld devices, a capability currently limited to systems such as iPhone, said Vic Gundotra, Google engineering vice president.

[ Related: Read all about Google Android in InfoWorld's special report ]

“We believe over time, the browser on mobile devices will be the entry point for many, many applications,” Gundotra said.

Android, though, does not represent Google's countermove against the iPhone, Gundotra argued.

“I wouldn't say that at all. I think the iPhone is just a world-class device with a great Web browser that delivers in many respects on one of Google's key goals: To bring the Web to the mobile device,” Gundotra said. “We wish every mobile phone was as good as the iPhone.”

The first Android systems are due in the second half of this year, with an Android SDK available now that leverages Java development tools. Android also relies on Apple's open-source WebKit browser engine.

The audience was shown a view of a street from an Android system as well as a demonstration of the Pac-Man video game. Users also can add icons to the screen, such as a New York Times icon to access news.

Additionally, Android features capabilities like an unlock pattern for security and a status bar enabling access to missed calls, for example. Shortcuts can be enabled to applications such as Gmail and music and contact lists. Applications written for WebKit-enabled phones can work out of the box.

Also highlighted were zooming capabilities, a compass mode, site navigation, and access to Google Maps.

The Android demonstration made an impact on a developer in the audience who previously was not interested in the project.

“The Android [demonstration] did look really interesting to me, and that was actually something that I wasn't interested but after this, yes, I definitely am interested in it,” said developer Chad Crandall, who also is a student at Arizona State University. “It appears to be making a single platform for all the mobile Web applications, and that's something we all need.”

Android technically is under the jurisdiction of the Google-led Open Handset Alliance. Handset makers who have pledged to build devices for Android include HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and LG. Carriers planning to offer services for Android include Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and AT&T.

Asked if users would need to buy new devices in order to use Android, Android team member Andy Rubin said since the software is open source, someone might be able to make it work on existing systems.

Google expects to generate revenues via Android by extending the reach of the Internet to handheld phones. Google sells Internet-based ads, applications, appliances and license fees.

“Google does reasonably well on the open Internet. We'd like that model to come to mobile phones,” said Gundotra, a former Microsoft executive.

During the keynote, Gundotra emphasized Google's commitment to Web technologies. “At a very high level, Google cares about moving the Web forward. The Web has become the dominant platform of our era,” he said.

Company officials also said Google Gears software, which enables interaction between Web applications and the desktop, has been renamed as simply Gears. This is intended to spread the message that the technology is not just for the Google platform.

The company demonstrated a Gears application by MySpace, which used Gears to add search capabilities for its e-mail inbox.

“We don't want MySpace to tell those users to go use a Google product,” said Sundar Pinchai, a member of the Gears development team.

Google officials detailed product plans including pricing for the Google App Engine hosted service as well as noting the 1.5 release of Google Web Toolkit, featuring adherence to Java 5 conventions. They also cited the 0.8 release of Google's OpenSocial API , featuring REST capabilities.

Google officials also noted the Apache Shindig project, an open-source implementation of the OpenSocial and Google Gadgets specifications.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Commission is aiming for one-fourth of businesses, public authorities and households in the European Union to use next-generation Internet addresses by 2010 because the current system is running out of addresses.

Pushing people toward Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6, would make available “an almost unlimited” number of Web addresses — just as lengthening telephone numbers has allowed more phones to plug in.

The EU’s internet commissioner said more addresses were needed if Europeans were to use Internet-enabled devices such as smart tags in shops, factories and airports or intelligent heating and lighting systems in their homes. The addresses include long series of numbers to identify a Web connection.

Of the 4.3 billion addresses allowed by the address system most people use now, IPv4, only 700 million — or 16 percent — are still available. IPv4 dates to 1984.

Moving to a next-generation Internet could be like changing the engines on a moving airplane and cost billions of dollars in replaced networking devices, software and personal computers. But advocates say restructuring of the Web’s underlying architecture will improve security, mobility and other emerging needs.

Japan’s Nippon Telecom and Telegraph has already rolled out a public IPv6 network and China plans to put one in place shortly. But the ball isn’t rolling yet in U.S. and Europe, though the U.S. has made IPv6 a condition for government contracts for Web site services.

The EU executive called on European governments to follow suit.

“The Commission also wants the most important Web sites of Europe to take the lead and aims to receive commitments from at least 100 top European Web site operators, such as broadcasters or online news services, before the end of 2008,” it said.

The EU’s europa.eu Web site will be IPv6-ready by 2010, it promised.

Mozilla is aiming to create what may be the geekiest world record ever with its upcoming Firefox 3 browser release.

The company on Wednesday started a campaign asking users to pledge to download the next full release of its browser on the day it is available so the release can set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.

Mozilla has not yet unveiled exactly when Firefox 3 will be available, but expects it could be as soon as mid-June. A test release of Firefox 3 is currently available online.

The company is deeming the day of its release “Download Day” and is asking fans to not only pledge to download Firefox 3, but to host parties to encourage friends to download with them, and place “Download Day” buttons on their Web sites as reminders of the big day.

Currently there is no world record for software downloads; Mozilla is trying to create one with Firefox 3 and its Download Day festivities.

According to the campaign's Web site, once Download Day is over, Mozilla plans to provide the Guinness Book of World Records a signed statement of authentication from its judges showing that it followed rules for breaking records; the company also will confirm download numbers. Mozilla also plans to send video footage and photographs of Mozilla users hosting download parties as well as download logs for a sample size of Firefox 3 downloads to prove it has set a world record.

While the fanfare may seem a bit geeky, Firefox– released in November 2004– has inspired a significant and rather fervent fan base. This is in part because it was the first browser in years to give Microsoft's Internet Explorer viable competition. The browser even has its own fan page (sign-in required) on the Facebook social-networking site, with 79,174 fans signed up and counting.

According to Mozilla, there are more than 175 million users of Firefox, which is available in more than 45 languages and used in more than 230 countries.

More information about how users can participate in Download Day is available on the campaign's Web site.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Digital video recorder pioneer TiVo reported Wednesday that its first-quarter net income more than quadrupled as operating costs, most notably for marketing and research, declined.

Alviso-based TiVo Inc. earned $3.6 million, or 4 cents per share, for the three months ended April 30, up 336 percent from $835,000, or 1 cent per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue for services and technology totaled $54.9 million, down from $58.1 million for the same period last year.

Analysts, on average, had expected TiVo to post a loss of 1 cent per share on service and technology sales of $55.6 million, according to a poll by Thomson Financial.

But TiVo had 3.8 million total subscribers in the first quarter, compared with 4.3 million in the same period a year ago.

Chief Executive Tom Rogers said TiVo’s recent partnerships with cable and satellite TV providers, its successes defending its patents and its audience research business, called StopWatch, have generated excitement. This quarter should calm concerns that TiVo can pull off a standalone set-top box business, he said.

“We’ve really put some effort in the last few quarters into showing that the standalone business could be managed, particularly with respect to marketing expenditures … in a way that no one should have to worry about it being a drain that clouds the enthusiasm about these other areas,” Rogers said in an interview with The Associated Press.

TiVo rarely posts a profitable quarter and said Wednesday it expects a net loss of $2 million to $4 million in the current quarter on service and technology revenue of $53 million to $55 million.

TiVo shares closed at $8.10, down 16 cents or 1.9 percent, on Wednesday. Shares regained 10 cents, or 1.2 percent, in after-hours trading.

Taiwan-based VIA Technologies has released a new hardware design for a low-cost laptop computer, making it available under an open-source license. Called the OpenBook, the company said its design “introduces a host of new innovations,” including more advanced computing and multimedia features, an 8.9-inch screen, and video-playback support.

Vista, XP, Linux

Screen resolutions up to 1,024×600 are supported, as is the high-performance VIA Chrome9 3-D graphics processor. There is also video acceleration for the MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, VC-1, and DiVX video formats; an HD-capable video processor and eight-channel HD audio; three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, and audio-in/audio-out jacks; and a 2-megapixel dual-headed camera and a four-in-one card reader.

The design is based on the VIA C7-M ULV processor and a new, all-in-one VIA VX800 digital-media IGP chipset. Supported operating systems include Windows Vista Basic, Windows XP, and various Linux distributions. The platform has up to 2GB DDR2 DRAM, with a variety of hard disk drives and solid-state storage possibilities.

The OpenBook also has what the company called “a flexible internal interface” for high-speed wireless connectivity that offers WiMAX, HSDPA, or EV-DO/W-CDMA. There's also support for a full keyboard and a four-cell battery with up to three hours of power.

Richard Brown, VIA's vice president of corporate marketing, said the OpenBook “builds on the great success of the VIA NanoBook reference design launched last year,” which has been adopted worldwide.

Creative Commons License

The computer-assisted design, or CAD, files of the reference design are being made available for OEMs, system integrators and broadband service providers under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. Computer makers can create their own external look and feel, as befits the needs of their markets. Under the terms of the license, the CAD files can be copied, shared and modified without financial obligations to VIA.

However, the design would need to be credited to VIA, and changes to the design can be distributed only under the same Creative Commons license, or a similar one.

Doug Bell, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, said the OpenBook offers a “nice design that is VIA's attempt to get its foot in the door” for ultra-portable, low-cost notebook computers.

Bell said it is “too early to tell” about the possible success of VIA's offering, but he pointed out that there is a “lot of growth” in the ultra-low-cost end of portable computers. He noted the Asus Eee PC as one example, and said most major vendors will be coming out with products in that category.

According to news reports, VIA executives are suggesting that a system based on OpenBook would probably cost between $500 and $800.

In an ongoing legal battle, a group of Belgian newspapers want Google to pay millions of dollars for publishing and storing copyrighted content. Copiepresse, the newspaper copyright group representing the French-language publishers, has summoned Google to appear before a Brussels court on Sept. 18. The group hopes judges will decide the search company should pay between $51.7 million and $77.5 million in damages for infringing on newspaper copyrights.

Copiepresse is also calling for Google to pay a provisional amount of $6.3 million, though it has publicly stated it is still willing to settle.

Google could not immediately be reached for comment, but has consistently said it has not infringed on Belgian newspaper copyrights. The search giant appealed a court ruling last year that said Google could not reproduce excerpts from the papers on its sites.

Google Walks the Copyright Tightrope

“I can see why Google would want to appeal. Google is trying to walk a tightrope. Obviously, Google doesn't want to litigate against every newspaper outlet or copyright holder that comes after them. And they can't be seen as folding,” said Michael G. Kelber, a member of the Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg law firm's intellectual-property group.

As Kelber sees it, Google has to work to protect the fair-use doctrine and establish that copyright holders won't be successful in litigation against the search king. On the other hand, if Google can devise a business solution where it can pay a nominal fee, or otherwise come to agreeable terms with Copiepresse, it may be cleaner to settle the case than to litigate in a foreign court.

Either way, Google could see additional suits from copyright holders around the world — and that could turn into a nightmare for the company, which is already embroiled in a $1 billion copyright lawsuit with Viacom over its YouTube property. “The law isn't always evenly applied,” Kelber said. “Even copyright law that has international conventions is not always applied evenly throughout the entire world, and Google is a world brand. So I think they've got a delicate balancing act.”

Setting a Precedent

Copiepresse first filed suit against Google in 2006. The case has dragged out since then, with the court first ordering Google to remove the content from its Google News site and its main search engine. Google complied at the time. But the company added links to Belgian newspapers in its main search results in May 2007. Copiepresse cited that move as one reason why negotiations to settle the case failed.

“The key here for Google is trying to make some legal headway where it thinks it can, and then try to come up with creative solutions on a case-by-case basis. It's like any mass settlement. If you look at massive tort litigation, you have to be really careful how you settle cases along the way so you don't create even more litigation,” Kelber said. “You don't want to set up a precedent that's going to hurt you down the road.”

NEW YORK - Intel Corp.’s push to create and boost new categories of small, cheap Internet-connected devices is taking the world’s largest chip maker in some unusual directions.

It’s investing in wireless networks, or even buying them outright. It’s relying on software that isn’t from Microsoft. And it’s looking at making processors cheaper and smaller rather than faster and faster.

To Chief Executive Paul Otellini, it’s all part of bringing the Internet to new places and people, and computer makers are responding.

“I’ve not seen energy like this from our customers in a long, long time,” Otellini told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “Everyone views this as being sort of hyperexpansive to the existing market.”

A centerpiece of the strategy is the Atom processor, which packs the power of a PC-class processor from six years ago into the smallest space yet — 25 Atoms will fit on a square inch. It’s intended for Mobile Internet Devices — iPhone-like tablets that provide a “full” Internet experience, better than that available on cell phones.

Somewhat larger than the MID is what Intel calls the “netbook,” a small, cheap laptop. Taiwan’s AsusTek has had a breakout hit in this category with its eeePC, which starts at $300 and uses an Intel chip. Other manufacturers, like Hewlett-Packard Co., are entering the space too, though HP is using a chip from Via Technologies Inc.

Otellini isn’t concerned that low-power processors could “cannibalize,” or steal, sales from Intel’s high-end, high-margin products.

“If a higher-priced notebook isn’t substantially better and doesn’t offer more utility, shame on us,” he said. “If there’s cannibalization, I’d rather be the cannibal than someone else.”

Bill Hughes, an analyst at the research firm In-Stat, noted that a relatively small group is behind the demand for netbooks, which some stores have had trouble keeping in stock.

“It’s growing fast because it’s very small,” Hughes said. “It will continue to be a niche for the foreseeable future.”

As for MIDs, Hughes said the firm’s surveys indicate that consumers are much more likely to want a “smart” phone rather than carry another gadget along with a cell phone.

“Mobile Internet Devices are going to struggle in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be wildly popular in other markets,” he said.

To connect these portable gadgets to the Internet, Intel is backing WiMax, a wireless technology sometimes described as a long-range version of Wi-Fi. Like Wi-Fi, it has its roots in the PC industry, but it’s really a competitor to cellular wireless technologies.

Most major wireless carriers are skipping WiMax, planning instead to build out networks using Long Term Evolution, a successor to current cellular technology. To keep WiMax in the running, Intel is contributing $1 billion to a $14.5 billion venture controlled by Sprint Nextel Corp. that will build a WiMax network across the U.S., with a commercial launch sometime this year in a few markets.

Intel is also a minority investor in a consortium that bought a Japanese WiMax license. And in May, it paid $26 million to buy a wireless broadband license in Sweden. It did that without a partner, but Otellini suggested that the company is looking for one.

“You won’t see Intel per se becoming a network operator. That’s not our competency,” he said. “But as a means to enable hundreds of millions of high-performance mobile devices that access the Internet — both notebooks and smart phones — I think it’s a good investment for us.”

Even though mobile WiMax has a head start on LTE, which won’t be along until perhaps 2010, Otellini acknowledged that its success isn’t a sure thing.

“Whatever happens with WiMax, the consumer will benefit, because it makes LTE happen faster,” he said.

As Intel is looking for partners for WiMax, it’s drifting away from an old friend. For two decades, Intel processors and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software were so closely associated that the joint platform was called “Wintel,” much like celebrity couples TomKat and Brangelina.

But the union has been looser in the last few years, with Intel-based servers increasingly being used with the upstart Linux operating software. On the consumer side, Apple Inc., which has its own operating system, adopted Intel processors in 2006.

The push into smaller gadgets is set to take Intel further away from Microsoft. “Netbooks” generally run Linux or Windows XP, which Microsoft has been trying to discontinue in favor of its flagship, Vista.

“Vista has a larger memory footprint, a larger graphics requirement and a higher price point. This is all about low-cost computing,” Otellini said.

He noted that Microsoft has an operating system for smart phones, but it runs only on chips designed by Intel competitor ARM Holdings PLC.

“I see much of the activity in Mobile Internet Devices, sort of the evolution of the handset, being centered around Linux,” he said.

___

On the Net:

http://www.intel.com

Sprint WiMax venture: http://www.xohm.com

http://www.arm.com