In a letter addressed to Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, the Yahoo! board insisted that the current offer–which is now valued at $42.2 billion–did not reflect the best interests of shareholders.

The letter was a response to Ballmer’s own bout of gauntlet-throwing on Saturday, when he gave Yahoo! three weeks to accept Microsoft’s offer or face a hostile takeover.

With Web 2.0 and users relying on social reviews in their decision making process, this tool is a great idea and integrated with Facebook could become quite succesful.  Loladex combines local search with the recommendation and rating possibilities inherent in social networks. Loladex already has about 16 million listings. The application is able to return localized results based on recommendations and ratings made by Facebook friends.  “Loladex mimics the way people think about things in the off-line world,” Goodman said.

These kind of applications from outside developers have taken advantage of the site’s open application platform.  Check it out at Loladex.

Before you click to look at the entry, it might be good to know first that it exists in the Hungarian annex of Wikipedia. This of course shouldn’t be much of a surprise to Wikipedia fans. While English is the number one language on the site, others have quickly grown to nip at it’s heels. Some of the other big languages include German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Marathi, Tagalog, and Cantonese are also said to be experiencing rapid growth.

Despite the site’s numerous critics for accuracy, it is obvious that people love the idea of such a resource being out there for them to access so freely and contribute so easily and openly. Can Wikipedia now double its count? We’ll just have to wait and see.  Read the rest of the article at Mashable.

• Gokul Rajaram, the “Godfather of AdSense,” is working on a stealth startup.
• Louis Monier, Anna Patterson, Russell Power are working on a search service called Cuill (pronounced “cool”) — it’s said to index the web more economically than Google. Uses a web crawler called “twiceler.”
• Jason Liebman, Sanjay Raman and Daniel Blackman co-founded HowCast, a network of “how to” videos. The pair company has apparently raised $8 million in funding.
• Steffen Mueller started a “search engine community” called Topicle.
• Vanessa Fox left Google for real estate search site Zillow.
• Dan Daugherty is heading RentBits, a real estate rental site. He’s got support from fellow ex-Googler Tim Moynihan, who is COO of the site.

To read more check out Silicon Alley Insider

The letter signed by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft will take its case directly to Yahoo shareholders and work to elect a new slate of directors, if the board doesn’t respond by the deadline by April 26. The bid to buy Yahoo was made in January and announced Feb. 1.

At the time, Microsoft offered $44.6 billion, or 62 percent above Yahoo’s market value. The deal is currently valued at about $41 billion, based on Friday’s closing share prices. Yahoo’s board formally rejected Microsoft Corp.’s bid, saying it undervalues the company.

Advertising Age
http://www.adage.com/

eMarketer
http://emarketer.com

CNet
http://Cnet.com

IMediaConnection
http://imediaconnection.com/search/index.asp

Interactive Advertising Bureau
http://iab.net

Marketing Vox
http://www.marketingvox.com/

Online Media Daily
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showTodaysEdition&art_type=13

Search Engine Land
http://searchengineland.com/

Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/

WebmasterWorld.com
http://www.webmasterworld.com/index.htm

iClick Solutions
http://www.iClickSolutions.com

That better data makes for better tools to combat click fraud isn’t exactly Earth-shattering news, but Google’s comments come at a sensitive time for the company.

While Google cracked open the doors surrounding its click fraud detection measures, the news comes at a time when the search giant is trying to explain some rather bleak click data to Wall Street. To be fair, Google posted its assessment of data and click fraud ahead of comScore’s report that the company saw only a modest 3 percent gain in its paid clicks business. But that report came after a disastrous report for the prior month that prompted many on Wall Street to suggest that Google, digital and the wider U.S. economy were showing greater signs of weakness than previously thought.

Read rest of article at iMedia Connetion.

You can check out YouTube Insight by:

1. Clicking under the “About this Video” button under “My account
2. Go to Videos
3. Go to Favorites
4. Go to Playlists
5. Go to Manage my Videos.

If you have any feedback please share your comments on how YouTube Insight is working out for you!

The program’s creators told Reuters on Thursday that the privately-held company’s trial version of Firefox 3 browser is ready for the masses to use after months of development

Until now, the company has discouraged average Internet users from moving on from Firefox 2, which was launched in October 2006.

“In many ways it (Firefox 3) is much more stable than anything else out there,” Mozilla Corp Vice President of Engineering Mike Schroepfer said in an interview.

Read the full article at Reuters.

According to Kara Swisher at BoomTown, sources close to the company say that Zuckerberg himself has been looking for a well-known technology executive to give him more support.

Such a search couldn’t come at a better time for Facebook, which has been beaten up a bit with reports that its opt-out program was beset by technical glitches. But perhaps more alarming for Facebook are reports that fatigue has begun to set in with users in the U.K. According to a BBC story, the social network saw a 5 percent drop in users from December to January. Facebook now has about 8.5 users in the U.K.