Yahoo’s search business has largely been a disappointment lately; the decline in Yahoo’s search ad sales accelerated last quarter and the company’s share of the search market dropped nearly a full percentage point last month, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) figures.

But at the Barclays Global Capital Technology Conference this week CFO Tim Morse said the business was on the way up. He said that revenue per search was “making strides” this quarter, in part due to improving economic conditions and the holiday season—but also because of a number of Yahoo-specific initiatives (Asked for specifics, Morse mentioned “tweaks” Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) had made to its redesigned home page, which now includes a greater emphasis on search).

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Erick Schonfeld submits:

Earlier this week, Google (GOOG) made a massive push into realtime search, taking advantage of its newly gained access to Twitter’s firehose of data, as well as realtime feeds from Facebook, MySpace and others. You can see these realtime results for every search you do by selecting the Updates option, Bing is also in the realtime race.

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Reports indicate that Yahoo will be rolling out its own version of real-time search results today. Google of course did this earlier in the week, but Yahoo's offering will not exactly be real-time.Google has access to Twitter's firehose although everybody will have access next year because the two companies entered...

Reports indicate that Yahoo will be rolling out its own version of real-time search results today. Google of course did this earlier in the week, but Yahoo's offering will not exactly be real-time.Google has access to Twitter's firehose although everybody will have access next year because the two companies entered...

Visit StreetInsider.com at http://www.streetinsider.com/news.php?st=p&id=5175193 for the full story.

Internet search giant Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO: sentiment, chart, options) has seen a significant jump in call trading this morning, as traders flock to the security's January 15 call...(Read More)

A primer on put options.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has changed the simple look of its homepage in South Korea. Google's Korea homepage now has the top-ranked Korean news items, a rotating view of popular Korean blogs and the pictures of "hot people", that reflect Internet inquiries about Korean personalities.

Google also changed the search-results page. In addition to the web sites that fit the inquiry, it also delivers Korean blogs and reference materials including some hosted by its rivals. The two competitors’, NHN Corp. and Daum Communications Inc, homepages look more like those of media outlets than a search engine. They include latest news, photos, videos and updated lists of highly-trafficked blogs and popular online chat sites.

According to the Wall Street Journal, both the Korean companies keep users captive for a longer period than Google or Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) by creating vast databases of popular content and linking to them first.

ValueClick is one of the largest pure Internet marketing firms. While competition is strong and management is less-than-stellar, ValueClick's price, excellent business model, and potential to be acquired make it a tepid buy.[More...]

Consumers are bombarded with images from thousands of companies every day. If you want to stand out, you can't have just a logo anymore -- you need to become a brand. An eye-catching, message-sending, innovative brand.

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When people think about AOL, they tend to associate the company with failure, writes Jon Friedman.

AOL begins a new publicly traded life.     

The paucity of women on boards of directors doesn't bode well for stock returns.

As the decade draws to a close, nostalgic Adweek selected its nominations for the Best Commercials of the 2000's.

Instead of going for the funniest or the most memorable, the trade paper characterized their choices as the "creative work that most influenced the industry and came to define the era."

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BloggingStocks: Microsoft (MSFT) has been touting its "decision engine" Bing since this past summer, and it recently became the standard search engine underneath Yahoo!'s (YHOO) massive user database. Although Bing has been well-received and grew almost immediately ... Read more

Google is turning Android phones into magic wands that make your life easier. The payoff will be huge.

Facebook, the world's No.1 Internet social network, took a step toward opening up parts of its site to outsiders on Wednesday by introducing a broad revision of its users' privacy settings.

The online giant is in the process of “identifying” the 400 engineers that will be moved to Microsoft as part of the companies’ planned search and advertising partnership.

Motorola's Droid is a promising early step in the company's comeback plan, but it has to become a hit if it's going to turn around its handset division.

Pierre Ferragu of Bernstein charted the rise and fall of Motorola in a report he released this week. The company only has 5% market share right now, "a territory from which virtually no handset maker has ever come back."

He also says Motorola needs to focus on high end smart phones, and innovation. It was always driven by hit handsets. It let up after the Razr, and was leapfrogged by rivals like Apple and RIM.

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