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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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Maktoob may not be a site with which many American search experts are familiar, and similarly, Yahoo’s name probably isn’t something Arabic-speaking individuals are used to seeing on a daily basis.  But an introduction of sorts has occurred, as Yahoo Search is now powering Maktoob, which is the largest online Arabic-language community.

Yahoo announced its interest in acquiring Maktoob in August of last year, and at the time, described the move as its biggest geographic expansion in quite a while.  So this development, which more or less sees the matter through, is a big deal.  Thanks to it, around 17 million people will lay eyes on the Yahoo logo on a regular basis.

What’s more, it seems that Yahoo’s planning to take additional steps in the Arabic-language arena.

Kaushal Kurapati, Head of Search for Emerging Markets at Yahoo, explained on the Yahoo Search Blog, "This is just the beginning of our long-term commitment to deliver relevant Arabic-language content and services to the region.  Stay tuned for more news about our efforts in these emerging markets."

It should be interesting to see how things proceed.  Reactions to the initial announcement about Yahoo acquiring Maktoob were positive, with an official blog post receiving roughly 20 comments.

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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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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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The rumors about Yahoo selling Zimbra have finally become fact.  Today, VMware announced that it’s acquired the open source email and collaboration specialist, and although the financial details weren’t disclosed, corporate representatives on all sides of the transaction seem pleased.

Let’s start with someone who works for the buyer.  Brian Byun, VMware’s Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Services, said in a statement, "[W]e expect more organizations, especially small and medium size businesses, to increasingly buy core IT solutions that deliver cloud-like simplicity in end-user and operational experience.  Zimbra is a great example of the type of scalable ‘cloud era’ solutions that can span smaller, on-premise implementations to the cloud."

That might not mean Yahoo’s missing out on a lot of fantastic opportunities, however.  It’s important to keep in mind that the sale was voluntary, and not some kind of takeover, of course.

Also, Jim Morrisroe, Vice President of Sales at Zimbra, wrote on its corporate blog, "Zimbra’s technologies have and will continue to play a role in Yahoo!’s communications services, including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Calendar.  The Yahoo! team is very happy for us, our customers and our community as we prepare to enter this new era.  We owe Yahoo! a great deal of appreciation for their support."

So until the companies reveal a purchase price through an SEC filing – or it leaks some other way – it looks like the matter’s about wrapped up.  The deal is supposed to close this quarter.

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Yahoo has partnered with Ben Silverman’s production company Electus, in which Electus will develop and produce premium content for Yahoo and its advertisers.

The partnership is aimed at driving creativity in online programming. Electus will develop a number of original video concepts for Yahoo in partnership with advertisers.  The specific types of projects were not announced.

"Content creators and producers are looking for more direct relationships with their audiences and advertising partners, and this partnership will allow advertisers to have fresh ideas matched with premium experiences that enable their messages to be delivered directly to their consumers," said Ben Silverman, CEO of Electus.

"Yahoo! is the ideal partner for this initiative; not only do they have the audience reach and a deep understanding of what consumers want, but they have a long history of successful custom campaigns that deliver for all partners involved. And this deal moves them even further along that path."

Electus said the partnership with Yahoo is the first of a number it plans on announcing in the coming months.

"Yahoo! is bringing together the worlds of entertainment and advertising to build differentiated experiences that help redefine branded entertainment," said Joanne Bradford, senior vice president of North America revenue and market development at Yahoo!

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Yahoo has partnered with Ben Silverman’s production company Electus, in which Electus will develop and produce premium content for Yahoo and its advertisers.

The partnership is aimed at driving creativity in online programming. Electus will develop a number of original video concepts for Yahoo in partnership with advertisers.  The specific types of projects were not announced.

"Content creators and producers are looking for more direct relationships with their audiences and advertising partners, and this partnership will allow advertisers to have fresh ideas matched with premium experiences that enable their messages to be delivered directly to their consumers," said Ben Silverman, CEO of Electus.

"Yahoo! is the ideal partner for this initiative; not only do they have the audience reach and a deep understanding of what consumers want, but they have a long history of successful custom campaigns that deliver for all partners involved. And this deal moves them even further along that path."

Electus said the partnership with Yahoo is the first of a number it plans on announcing in the coming months.

"Yahoo! is bringing together the worlds of entertainment and advertising to build differentiated experiences that help redefine branded entertainment," said Joanne Bradford, senior vice president of North America revenue and market development at Yahoo!

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Back when the Microsoft and Yahoo search and advertising deal was announced, people (particularly developers) were left wondering what would become of such Yahoo projects as Searchmonkey and BOSS. These things let developers build upon Yahoo’s search technology.

Microsoft did imply it would be open to keeping them around, but not much has been revealed about the plans. While this isn’t exactly clarity, Yahoo has addressed the future of BOSS to a mild extent. In a post on Yahoo Groups, Ashim Chhabra of the Yahoo Search BOSS Team writes:

Under this agreement, Yahoo! is permitted to continue offering the BOSS web service, with search results that would integrate Yahoo! services and content with algorithmic results provided by Microsoft. As always, our intention is to provide a BOSS offering as long as it makes business and economic sense to do so. We are still examining what the BOSS offering will consist of, with some services powered by Microsoft, unique content that Yahoo! currently provides, and the potential for additional Yahoo! content in the future.

Prior to the announcement of the Yahoo!-Microsoft search agreement, we’d already shared our intention to explore a fee-based structure for BOSS. We continue to explore an appropriate fee structure or other revenue model as we work through the future of BOSS.

Yahoo has said that it will uphold the front-end part of its search engine, but the back-end would generally be handled by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Last year, Microsoft acknowledged that it liked what Yahoo was doing with Searchmonkey and BOSS, so it is quite possible these things will remain.

The Microsoft Yahoo deal is not necessarily going to be a permanent relationship anyway. That is if it even gets approved. The deal still faces regulatory approval.

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Yahoo’s got something to offer people who are tired of typing cities’ names and zip codes into search boxes.  Today, the company announced improved local business results that will allow users to find nearby places without first providing tons of details.

Nitzan Achsaf, a senior product manager, explained all of the details on the Yahoo Search Blog.  He wrote, "For example, if you are in the Palo Alto area and search for ‘evvia,’ Yahoo! Search displays the local shortcut for the restaurant, including address, phone number, and reviews."

The same trick applies to searches for broader business categories.  And Achsaf also noted, "[W]hen you search for business categories or business chains, you can now filter the results further by neighborhood or nearby cities in one click.  If the location is a major city, you can filter the results by neighborhood.  Otherwise, you can refine the results by nearby cities."

Although these changes may not be flashy, they should prove useful to a lot of folks on a regular basis.

People on the corporate side of things are liable to appreciate the tweaks, too, as they almost work out to free advertising.

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