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Yahoo’s efforts to revive takeover talks with Microsoft have reached a dead end, prompting the internet pioneer to hire online search leader Google to handle some of its advertising sales.

The news disclosed on Thursday caused Yahoo shares to plunge 10 per cent as investors abandoned hope that Microsoft would renew a nearly five-month quest to buy the Sunnyvale, California-based company.

While a stock sell-off is never welcome news for any company, Wall Street’s disenchantment comes at a particularly bad time for Yahoo and its board of directors.

Yahoo is trying to fend off a shareholder mutiny led by activist investor Carl Icahn, who has vowed to replace the company’s board because of the way the directors handled the Microsoft negotiations.

But Icahn has been hoping to engineer a sale to Microsoft, so some shareholders may be reluctant to support his attempted coup unless he can demonstrate his slate of directors has a better turnaround plan than the current board.

Icahn did not return phone calls seeking comment on Thursday.

Microsoft has launched a new "cashback" search service that pays users a rebate for buying products they found through the company’s Windows Live search engine.

Live Search cashback is the latest attempt by the world’s largest software maker to draw users to its online search engine, which is a distant third behind market leader Google and Yahoo.

"This is giving you a reason why you should use a particular search engine," Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said at the company’s Advance 08 advertising conference.

(The service is only able to be used by people who are residents of the United Stars and can provide a local – US - address.)

Microsoft sees online search as a critical component to establishing an online advertising powerhouse. By placing text-based ads next to results from its ubiquitous search engine, Google has become the leader in web advertising.

A DIGITAL vault containing information about every email, internet visit and phone call made in Britain is to be created in a European bid to battle terrorism.

The plan, which will widen legislation governing the record-keeping responsibilities of telecommunications and internet companies, has alarmed civil libertarians who are already anxious about a proposed ID card scheme.

An estimated 3 billion emails and close to 60 billion text messages are sent throughout Britain every day, raising fears that the British Government will not be able to manage such a large store of information. A single database is also believed to be a far easier target for attack.

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This looks interesting – Cloud Computing

Forget monster hard drives, backing up your PC and shrink-wrapped software – the future of computing is up in the “cloud” as all of the big technology players jostle to take the “P” out of PC.

Microsoft this week brought the cloud computing concept – whereby all of our data and applications are stored on the internet as opposed to on the PC – a step closer to reality with the unveiling of its Live Mesh platform.

Live Mesh is essentially a web-based operating system, letting users connect all of their devices (home PC, laptop, work computer and, in the not too distant future, handhelds and games consoles) into their own personal mesh. Files and applications can be placed into a “Mesh folder”, which lives on the internet and can be accessed by all devices.

Board members key to takeover attempt Read More