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Yesterday and this morning, reports indicated that Yahoo wasn’t having much luck selling its small business unit and HotJobs.  HotJobs has, however, found a new home.  This afternoon, Monster announced that it’s agreed to acquire the property for $225 million, and Monster’s reached a traffic agreement with Yahoo, too.

The agreement will see Monster provide career- and job-related content on Yahoo’s homepages in the U.S. and Canada for three years.  Monster’s also getting the opportunity to negotiate similar agreements with other Yahoo properties worldwide.

Then, according to a press release, there may be "performance based annual payments calculated by clicks and expressions of interest, subject to annual floors and ceilings."  (No further details were given on this front.)

Anyway, Hilary Schneider, Yahoo’s Executive Vice President, explained the sale by stating, "The transaction with Monster enables us to continue to provide an important service to our users through the traffic agreement.  Yahoo! remains focused on its core businesses and delivering exceptional experiences to users, partners and advertisers."

Yahoo and Monster expect to complete the acquisition (and subsequently start the three-year traffic agreement) during the third quarter of this year.

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Go to the Yahoo Small Business homepage, and you’ll be informed that "PC Magazine named us ‘Editors’ Choice.’"  It seems that not many other entities are interested in either Yahoo’s small business unit or HotJobs, however, as plans to sell both may have fallen through.

More than six months ago, reports indicated that Yahoo was trying to get rid of these divisions as Carol Bartz tried to focus on Yahoo’s core interests.  Intermittent reports since then hinted that Yahoo’s had difficulty getting other organizations to consider its asking prices.

Now, with respect to Yahoo Small Business, Jeff Bercovici wrote, "[A]fter finding a shortage of interest, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet firm has put the sale on hold, according to a source close to the situation."

And Rafat Ali added, "Also, we have been hearing that its jobs site Hotjobs’ sale process is not going well . . . .  Not a single confirmed bid came in when the process started, our sources say."

So it sounds as if Yahoo’s garage sale wasn’t exactly successful.  The big question is whether the company will lower its expectations and try again, or decide to keep Yahoo Small Business and HotJobs, after all.

CORRECTION: Whoops, sorry everybody (including Yahoo) . . . turns out at least half of this information was wrong.  Monster announced its acquisition of HotJobs this afternoon.

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Don’t be shocked if one or more shrines to Windows 7 are erected in Redmond today.  Microsoft released its quarterly earnings report this afternoon, and thanks in large part to the new operating system, the company’s numbers look quite good.

Analysts thought Microsoft might report something like $17.84 billion in revenue and earnings per share of 59 cents.  Microsoft overshot those forecasts by a significant amount, posting $19.12 billion and 74 cents, instead.

That puts the company up 14 percent and 57 percent, respectively, on a year-over-year basis.  And it would be an understatement to say that victories of this nature don’t occur every day, particularly given our economy’s current condition.

So if you’re happy (and as you’ll see in a minute, investors are), think well of Windows 7.  A record for Windows units was set last quarter, and Peter Klein, Microsoft’s CFO, said in a statement, "Exceptional demand for Windows 7 led to the positive top-line growth for the company.  Our continuing commitment to managing costs allowed us to drive earnings performance ahead of the revenue growth."

Unfortunately for Microsoft, things didn’t go so well in every respect.  The Online Services Business lost a whopping $466 million, which makes for a significantly worse performance than last year (when it lost $320 million).

Then, one other possible cause for skittishness is the fact Microsoft hasn’t yet given any guidance.  Windows 7 can’t sell well forever, after all.

Still, investors have received Microsoft’s news with open arms and fists full of dollars.  Even though the Dow and Nasdaq both sank today (by 1.13 percent and 1.91 percent), Microsoft’s stock is up 1.47 percent in after-hours trading.

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Two years ago, Google’s Chrome browser didn’t exist.  Now, it might be the best browser available.  New test results claim that it beats all competitors by a significant amount, at least in terms of speed.

Lifehacker’s Kevin Purdy recently put Firefox 3.5.4, Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4.0.249.78 (which is considered stable), Google Chrome 4.0.302.3 (which is a developer version), Opera 10.01, Opera 10.5 (which is a pre-alpha version), and Safari 4.0.4 through their paces.  Experiments related to load times, JavaScript, DOM/CSS, and memory use were performed.

Chrome came out on top in a couple of categories, and according to Purdy’s scoring system ("we took the numeric score placement of each browser in each category and ranked them from 7, as best in category, to 1, as worst.  We totaled those numbers up, and present them here as a total out of 35") won the comparison, with the developer version placing first and the stable version securing second.

Then Firefox 3.6, Firefox 3.5.4, Opera 10.5, Opera 10.01, and Safari 4.0.4 followed, in that order.

Purdy’s article has been viewed about 92,000 times, and it’s a good bet that his findings have driven a lot of people to try Chrome for themselves.  Assuming those individuals don’t find the browser wanting in some area other than speed, Chrome may get quite a bump thanks to this experiment.

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Rick Spencer of Canonical, which distributes the Ubuntu version of Linux, revealed that Canonical has formed a revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, which will see Yahoo become the default search engine in the Mozilla Firefox browser in the upcoming 10.04 version (aka "Lucid Lynx") of the operating system.

Spencer shared the information via a public mailing list (hat tip to Ars Technica), where he said:

Note that this won’t in any way effect the ability of a user to choose and use the search provider of their choice. It’s literally 2 easily discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any personally identifiable or usage information.

I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our user’s default search across Firefox.

The move is an interesting one for both Canonical and Yahoo. Yahoo needs to do whatever it can to gain search market share, and Ubuntu is a popular version of Linux.

"Canonical is unusual among major commercial Linux distributors in the sense that it doesn’t sell an ‘enterprise’ or ‘pro’ version of its software," notes Ars Technica author Ryan Paul. "In an effort to make this approach sustainable, Canonical is experimenting with a number of different business models, including commercial support for end users, subscription-based Web services, and integration support for hardware makers. In the announcement about the search engine change, Spencer says that Canonical’s partnership with Yahoo will help to fund the ongoing development of the distribution."

Terms of the deal between Canoncial and Yahoo were not made available. Meanwhile, the search and advertising deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is still pending. The effects of that on Yahoo’s market share remain to be seen.
 

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Yahoo said today it is holding its second annual Key Scientific Challenges Program, which is open globally to any graduate student enrolled in a PhD program at an accredited institution.

The Key Scientific Challenges Program focuses on a number of issues, from developing algorithms that make information more personally relevant, to finding insights about online advertising and experimenting with new sociological models for how people engage with the web.

"Yahoo! and the entire online industry face challenges that are increasingly complex and require an interdisciplinary approach to solve," said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Labs.

"The Key Scientific Challenges Program provides graduate students an unmatched environment that brings together social scientists, economists, computer scientists, and statisticians to collaborate in an unprecedented way. The students get the benefit of testing their research ideas in the real world, and Yahoo! gains new perspectives on the technical problems core to improving the Internet."

Winners of the Key Scientific Challenges Program will receive:

•     $5,000 in unrestricted seed funding for lab materials, travel to academic conferences, professional society memberships, and other resources to drive their research.
•     Exclusive access to selected global-scale Yahoo! datasets.
•     Personal mentoring and collaboration with Yahoo!’s world-class research scientists.
•     An invitation to present their work at the Key Scientific Challenges Graduate Student Summit, to be held in September 2010 at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

Applications for the program must be submitted by midnight PST on March 5, 2010. Winners will be announced in the spring.

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Most estimates agree that there are almost 7 billion human beings on this planet, and even the biggest misanthropes must admit that a few of them are smart and capable.  Yahoo apparently wasn’t able to encounter any keepers, however, as it’s stopped searching for someone to lead the company’s international division.

This position opened up in February of 2009 as Carol Bartz really began to reshape operations at Yahoo.  Now, as reported by John Letzing, Bartz said during yesterday’s earnings call, "I didn’t find anyone who was up to our needs."

Some critics might take this as an admission of defeat; it seems a bit ridiculous that a year-long hunt didn’t turn up anything.  Or perhaps even scary, if Yahoo located some qualified candidates, but said candidates didn’t want to work for the company.

Still, the timing of Bartz’s announcement goes a long ways towards making things look better.  Yahoo’s Q4 report was pretty good, after all – its stock rose in after-hours trading and is still headed up this morning – so this position appears to be less than critical.

When everything’s said and done, the new plan is for three Yahoo executives (Hilary Schneider, Rose Tsou, and Rich Riley) representing the Americas, Asia, and EMEA to report directly to Bartz.

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Many global consumers are willing to pay for some online content or are open to increased advertising, but attitudes vary greatly by geography, demographics and content type, according to a new survey by Nielsen.

Nielsen polled more than 27,000 consumers in 54 countries to determine attitudes about paying for online content and to gauge what types of content consumers were most likely to support financially.

More than half (57%) of global consumers are willing to pay for professionally produced content such as music and movies, while 50 percent are willing to pay for current Tv shows.

Only 20 percent of consumers are willing to pay for blogs and less than a quarter (24%) would pay for user-generated video content. Nielsen found consumers are more likely to spend money on what they currently pay for, instead of what they already receive for free.

Nearly half of global respondents indicated they would be open to more ads to support free content, but that varies by market. For example, 57 percent of respondents in the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan are more open to advertising, while just 40 percent in North America and 39 percent in Europe feel the same way.

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Mozilla’s next salvos in the browser wars won’t come quite as soon as the company previously promised.  Firefox 3.6, which was supposed to ship this month, now isn’t scheduled to be finished until sometime during the first quarter of 2010, and the release of Firefox 4.0 has been pushed back, as well.

Given how heated the browser rivalry has become in recent months, the delays represent an interesting choice (and/or failure) on Mozilla’s part.  After all, Chrome’s continuing to make gains, and Internet Explorer may be about to sacrifice some ground in Europe.  This doesn’t look like an ideal time to take things slow.

Still, some interesting things are on the menu in terms of the next versions of Firefox.  Stephen Shankland pointed out this morning, "The big new feature in version 3.6 is incorporation of the Personas plug-in that lets people easily customize the browser’s appearance, though behind the scenes there’s also been work to speed up the browser’s launch time, improve security, and make some other changes."

Version 4.0, which is supposed to arrive in late 2010 or early 2011 (look for a beta this summer), should introduce "significant user interface changes," too.

It’ll be interesting to see what Google and Microsoft can accomplish with Chrome and IE by then.

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Google is a master of online advertising, and in recent days, has more than ever been vilified as an enemy of the newspaper industry.  People were understandably surprised, then, to find ads for Chrome plastered all over a UK newspaper this morning.

The Metro is a free paper targeted at commuters in 16 cities.  It’s supposed to be the world’s largest free paper and the UK’s fourth largest paper of any sort, with 1.3 million copies distributed every weekday.

Then here’s the interesting part: today, the Metro is sporting a wraparound cover promoting Chrome.

Martin Bryant wrote, "The ad’s front page . . . describes Chrome as ‘A fast, new browser. Made for everyone.’ . . . .  Inside, the ad explains why Google made the browser and details its features such as the unique way it handles tabs and its Incognito mode . . ."

Finally, "The rear of the ad lists items such as 10 days of holiday left, about to expire; 27 emails between my wife and I hatching travel plans; 7 potential travel plans generated on 4 travel sites, 3 playlists generated on Spotify.’  It then goes on to read ‘6 tabs open, 0 crashes, 1 browser.’"

If this wraparound is successful, we may see more real-world ads from Google in the future.

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