WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google Inc and Yahoo Inc have decided to delay implementing a controversial search advertising partnership, Yahoo said on Friday.

"The companies have agreed to a brief delay in implementing this agreement to continue our ongoing discussions with the (U.S.) Department of Justice," Yahoo said in a statement. "We have had discussions with regulators and look forward to responding to their questions about this agreement."

Google issued a similar statement.

"When we announced our advertising agreement with Yahoo in June we agreed to delay its implementation until October to give regulators time to look at the details. As we are still in conversation with the Department of Justice we have agreed to a brief delay in implementing the agreement while those discussions continue," the company said.

The delay was expected to last less than a month, a source familiar with the discussions on the issue told Reuters. "We're still looking at the time frame of October," the source said.

The deal, which allows Google to sell advertising for some of Yahoo's online advertising space, is unpopular with advertisers who fear higher prices. Google's web-search market share widened to 63 percent in August, while Yahoo dropped to 19.6 percent and Microsoft Corp slipped to 8.3 percent, according to comScore Inc.

Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers, said his organization was opposed to the pact. "We're gratified that Google and Yahoo are delaying," he said.

Google uses an algorithm that aims to match consumers with what it says are the most appropriate ads, a formula some advertisers find mysterious and bothersome.

The deal announced in June to share advertising was widely seen as an effort to help fend off Microsoft's efforts to acquire Yahoo, by bringing Yahoo an additional $800 million in annual revenues.

An antitrust lawyer, who regularly brings mergers to the Justice Department, said that the delay was probably not a good sign for Google and Yahoo.

"It means that they were not going to get a clean bill of health in time, and perhaps it's much worse than that. They don't want to go forward and be told that there's potentially a very serious problem there," said the lawyer.

There had been previously been signs that the planned partnership was running into trouble with the Justice Department, in particular reports that the agency had brought on board top litigator Sandy Litvack to work on the deal.

Litvack was the department's antitrust chief under former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Walt Disney Co's former vice chairman.

Google has argued the tie-up means Google and Yahoo could work together to improve the chances that consumers will be more likely to get ads for products they will want to buy—thus giving advertisers more bang for their buck. It has also said that since it sells its advertisements by auction that it has little control over prices.
[Submitted by MaTiCa]

Facebook begins to take legal action against social networking web sites that copy the site's design

Attorneys representing Facebook have filed a lawsuit against a German-based social networking web site that has a user interface that is virtually identical to Facebook.

StudiVZ, the most popular social networking site in Germany, has 10 million regular users and also is the most popular networking site in German. Even though Facebook has a German language web site, it has had a hard time trying to get new users due to sites like StudiVZ and others. The English Facebook web site reportedly has as many as 80 million users spread across the world.

Facebook claims the slight changes were "nominal" and the German site simply replaced "Facebook's blue color scheme with a red one." Also in the lawsuit, the German site also copied the Facebook wall, groups, friend feed, and other features used in Facebook.

A quick glimpse of the web site does reveal that even from the sign-up page onward, it is almost 100 percent identical to the English version Facebook web site, except in a different color.

Facebook could launch lawsuits to stop at least nine other Facebook clone web sites to get shut down, with Xiaonei, operating in China, likely Facebook's next target. Xiaonei closely mimics Facebook and its user interface, and is the most popular social networking site in China.

The attorneys for Facebook have been busy as of late, after the site and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, recently completed an intellectual property dispute that accused Zuckerberg of stealing the site's design from classmates at Harvard University. The founders behind the ConnectU social networking web site, which never really picked up users like Facebook, said Zuckerberg stole the idea for social networking from ConnectU after being hired to write code for the site.

With that legal matter closed, it's likely Facebook has set its sights back on a global expansion, attempting to launch web sites native to specific nations and regions.


[Submitted by Christo [PCD]]

Guinness world record for most downloads in a single day could fall to Firefox 3

Starting today, users will be able to download the final version of Firefox 3. Firefox is the second most popular browser online, behind Microsoft Internet Explorer. Firefox 3 has a laundry list of new features including a promise of significantly increased performance.

Mozilla claims that Firefox 3 will be seven times faster than Internet Explorer and three or four times faster than previous versions of Firefox. Other new features include single-click bookmarking, smart location bar, and improved security features.

Firefox 3 also brings improvements in how passwords are managed, a new download manager, full page zoom and more. One other interesting thing about the pending release of Firefox 3 today is the attempt to set a world record.

The downloading of Firefox 3 via the web is being audited by the Guinness Book of World Records in an attempt to set an official record for the most number of downloads in a single day. Downloads made via FTP will not count towards the record setting attempt.

Mac users have complained that OS X versions of Firefox 3 don’t use Mac user interface and user elements. The first Firefox 3 release candidate came in May 2008 after Mozilla had released several beta versions of the browser.

[Submitted by Christo [PCD]]