After 18 months of on/off offers, withdrawals, contacts and discussions, Microsoft and Yahoo have announced a ten-year agreement that will create a new number two in the Internet search market behind Google. The deal strengthens Yahoo (for the present) and gives Microsoft a better position to gain a healthy share of the advertising revenues. The agreement is good for advertisers, innovation in search technologies and ultimately the consumer, but unless Yahoo can reinvent itself it could be the beginning of the end for the former Internet number one.

While an alternative desktop and notebook PC operating system is great news, I have concerns about Google Chrome OS, and that is the availability of device drivers such as display and sound card or chip drivers, printer, scanner, mobile phone, some audio and video player, WiFi-USB dongles and other device drivers for Chrome OS.

Almost all of these devices come with a CD containing the Windows drivers and fewer with, with device drivers for Mac OS platforms and most reasonably tech-savvy users can follow the instructions and intuitively install the device drivers with the aid of wizards available especially with Windows 95 and later versions.

And if the CD is unavailable, which often is the case since many users think them inconsequential and misplace or discard them, it's no problem to search for and download them off the Internet, an install them.

Yahoo has unveiled a major redesign of its Internet home page, which it hopes will provide a more personalised experience for users and a more attractive proposition for advertisers. The anticipated revamp has been generally well received but overshadowed by Yahoo’s lacklustre second-quarter results and reports that its on-off talks with Microsoft are back on the table.

Symantec Security Response is currently monitoring a cyber attack – a distributed denial of service (DDoS) – impacting multiple U.S. and South Korean government, financial and media Web sites. A portion of the attack is being carried out by a piece of malware Symantec has identified as w32.dozer and variants of the MyDoom worm that appear to be infecting computers globally.

Google as the Linux champion on netbooks

Google generates most of its revenues from advertising, but intends to diversify its revenue streams with offerings such as Google Apps, which have just (surprise, surprise) come out of beta and whose momentum the new OS aims to boost (along with Google Mail and Google Docs usage) in one of the only markets that is still showing some health: netbooks.

Google is stealing a march on operators

Location has long been touted as one of the key enablers which should be core to both the operator’s own direct-to-consumer (D2C) service offering and more recently as a network enabler which operators could open up to third-party application developers and preferably at a premium. However, operators have dragged their heels for so long that device vendors such as Nokia and Internet players such as Google have stolen a march on the operators, launching their own location-enabled applications and building location platforms which allow them to enable third-party applications and build developer communities to serve their own user bases. Google is in the process of building a location network across its markets and this is largely independent of the operator’s cooperation (although it is dependent on the operator refraining from disruptive action).