Yahoo! has revealed how many data requests that they received from U.S. law enforcement agencies. The National Security Agency (NSA) made between 13,000 and 14,000 data requests from Yahoo! as part of the PRISM system. PRISM is a program that allows the NSA to tap into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies. These companies include Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, and Apple.
Continue reading →
PRISM is a national security surveillance program that was launched by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) in 2007. PRISM allows intelligence agencies to monitor the phone, e-mail, and other communications of U.S. citizens for up to a week without having to obtain a warrant. The existence PRISM (also known as US-984XN) was outed by Edward Snowden. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and several other companies denied that they have participated with the NSA voluntarily.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has acquired free conference calling company Rondee for an undisclosed amount. Founded 6 years ago, Rondee is going to be shutting down within the next month. The Rondee team is joining Yahoo!’s small business team. New users can sign up for the service and calls can be scheduled until July 12th.
Continue reading →
Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is on an acquisition spree including today’s announced that they have bought GhostBird Software. GhostBird is known for developing a couple of iPhone photography apps called KitCam and PhotoForge2. The two apps will be shut down effective immediately and they are no longer on the Apple App Store as of today.
Yahoo! has announced today that they will be freeing up “short, sweet, and memorable” Yahoo! IDs on July 15th. If you have been inactive for at least 12 months on Yahoo!, you will lose your ID. This is good news for users that want to have a better ID to use while on Yahoo!
Continue reading →
Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is auctioning an opportunity to have a lunch with her on CharityBuzz.com. Yesterday bids hit as high as about $5,000 and today it is at above $67,500 as of the time I am writing this. About 20 bids have been made so far and there are 15 days left to bid. When Apple CEO Tim Cook auctioned himself on the same website a couple weeks ago, the winning bidder paid $610,000.
Continue reading →
Yahoo! has announced that they have launched new design for their search page today. This is the first major update that the search company since Marissa Mayer became CEO of the company around a year ago. Mayer said that this is a “new, modern design” that puts your results “front and center.”
Yahoo! is also in the race to acquire Hulu and sources with AllThingsD are reporting that they are putting in a bid at between $600 and $800 million for the video websites. The large price range is due to different circumstances including the length of licensing rights for content and how much control that the programming companies selling Hulu have over their content.
