CNNMoney - Last Updated: November 3, 2008: 6:58 PM ET

it's needs two to tango | courtesy of blogs.citypages.com

According to a report on The Wall Street Journal Web site, the two tech giants submitted revisions to their ad deal to the Justice Department to avoid antitrust regulations.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have reportedly submitted a list of concessions that would deflate their proposed Internet advertising partnership to appease antitrust regulators threatening to block the alliance.

The companies offered their revisions to the U.S. Justice Department during the weekend, according to a story posted Monday on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal said Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) are now willing to limit the amount of revenue generated from the partnership and shorten the deal’s duration. Google’s advertising customers would also be given the option to not have their commercials appear on Yahoo’s Web site.

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Silicon Alley Insider - Eric Krangel | October 30, 2008 5:00 PM

Google (GOOG) is fighting back after getting trashed on cloud computing. Specifically, the company is insisting that critics have been too harsh on warning companies to think long and hard before migrating mission-critical applications like email into the cloud.

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Businessweek - Techbeat, on October 30

Posted by: Rob Hof

According to a just-posted story in the Journal, the likelihood that Google and Yahoo will walk away from their controversial search advertising deal has risen, as talks with the Justice Department have not produced an agreement on terms the companies and the government can both live with.

This isn’t very surprising, since the fact that talks have gone on this long—more than four months after the two companies proposed the deal for Yahoo to run Google search ads on some of its pages—has suggested in recent weeks that it might not happen after all. But according to sources at both companies I talked to late yesterday, talks were continuing. And according to Google just minutes ago, they are still going. Spokesman Adam Kovacevich issued this statement: “We are continuing to have cooperative discussions with the Department of Justice about this arrangement and agreed to a brief delay in implementing the agreement while those discussions continue. We are confident that the arrangement is beneficial to competition, but we are not going to discuss the details of the process.”

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Silicon Alley Insider - Nicholas Carlson | October 31, 2008 10:28 AM

VentureBeat landed a copy of an email Google sent to its AdSense publishing partners. The Twitter-friendly version: “Times are tough. We’re doing the best we can to get you paid. Don’t leave us.”

Here’s the whole email:

Dear Publisher,

We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of AdSense publishers. During these difficult times, we’re continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network.
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Silicon Alley Insider - Eric Krangel | October 29, 2008 2:00 PM

That didn’t take long: Marc Andreessen — Netscape co-founder, board member of eBay (EBAY) and Facebook, and angel investor to numerous start-ups — already broke his May pledge to stop talking to the press. Specifically, he sat down with Portfolio mag.

Marc doesn’t pull any punches (does he ever?). Here are a few choice tidbits:
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Informationweek - Oct 30, 2008 12:19 AM

Posted by Art Wittmann

As InformationWeek covers Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s revelations at its Professional Developer Conference this week, it’s becoming clear that Microsoft’s top brass know they aren’t in the same business they were just a few years ago. So is this the transitive stage that spells the end of Microsoft’s dominance of the software industry?

I think the question actually applies more broadly. Though I didn’t think it was so even just a year ago, it seems to me that the software industry is at an inflection point. Forces are converging to make Software as a Service a viable alternative for businesses of all sizes. It’s always been the case that the efficiency offered by multi-tenant single-version systems would allow purpose-built applications to compete on a cost basis with traditional premises based software, particularly for smaller companies. Basically if it’s a no-brainer for a company to outsource its payroll, a similar equation applies to most of its IT software. Security and privacy concerns as well as regulatory compliance alone should probably be enough to make most smaller businesses SaaS customers. Pile on remote support and a variety of end user devices, and it really is a no-brainer.

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Silicon Alley Insider - Eric Krangel | October 29, 2008 5:00 PM

courtesy of signsofchristreturn.com

It’s been a big week for OpenID, the idea that Internet users should be able to use a single username/password combination to login at any site, all via an open source protocol.

Earlier this week Microsoft (MSFT) called OpenID a “de facto standard” and pledged Windows Live ID support for the idea, and today Google (GOOG) added their voice to the chorus. With the two new Internet giants now behind OpenID, expect many more sites to begin deploying code to s