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eBuddy is a strange mix of a typical Web company. While the lowercase "e" in front of the name might suggest it's a survivor of the early 1990s dot-com boom, it actually started out in 2003 and resides not in the Silicon Valley, but Amsterdam. It's also one of the few companies I've seen that has put almost its entire press kit on Flickr. eBuddy specializes in Web-based IM, which might sound familiar if you've ever used Meebo or the Web version of your favorite chat client. eBuddy works with three of the major … Read more

Slowing growth in display advertising led to a nearly 2 percent drop in net profit for Yahoo in the second quarter.

Net earnings were $161 million, or 11 cents a share, down from $164 million, or 11 cents a share, a year ago. It was the sixth consecutive quarterly profit drop for the company.

The Internet search and media company reported revenue rose 11 percent to $1.24 billion from $1.12 billion a year ago, excluding traffic acquisition costs, which are commissions paid to content partners.

The results matched what analysts polled by Thomson Financial were expecting. Yahoo had … Read more

Yahoo has kicked off its Search Suggest feature, designed to save users time by offering suggestions they can click on, according to Yahoo Search Blog

Take CNET, one of my favorite search terms, for example. Users enter "CNET" into the search box. A drop-down menu appears with a list of suggestions, ranging from "cnet" to "cnet downloads" to "cnet networks downloads," and on and on and on. So many CNET sites, so little time.

Users typing in "zoo elephant jungle" will receive assistance on the first three words, but after … Read more

Yahoo's search has been updated with a "suggest" feature that brings up search queries it thinks you're looking for based upon what you type. Previously, the only way to get Yahoo search suggestions was with Yahoo's Firefox toolbar.

The company is promoting this new suggestion service as a way to speed up search. For people who struggle with correct spelling, suggestions can save a page load or two when a mistyped name yields the helpful, yet mildly patronizing "did you mean" message.

The new suggestion service is nearly identical to Google's; however, … Read more

Yahoo Photos' loss is Flickr's gain.

Yahoo began shutting down Yahoo Photos last month, and now Flickr passed it to become the No. 2 photo-sharing site in terms of Internet traffic in the United States, according to monitoring firm Hitwise.

Flickr now has 6.42 percent of the visits to photo-sharing sites, up from 4.57 percent in March, Hitwise said.

That's a significant jump, but it's not all Yahoo might want: Flickr's 1.85 percentage-point increase was more than offset by Yahoo Photos' 2.6-point drop from 5.79 percent to 3.19 percent. And … Read more

MakeMeSustainable is a new green social networking site. Although entering a crowded field, the service wisely translates how greening your everyday habits saves money. It tallies dollar signs, trees, and carbon emissions to track changes in your usage of electricity, heating, transportation, and travel over many months. I like that it takes you directly to sites where you can achieve a goal instantly, such as by buying CFL bulbs or carbon credits, or downloading a power-saving app for your PC. And you can form and join groups based around your interests.

MakeMeSustainable builds a personal profile based upon your quick … Read more

Bloggers are reporting that Google and Yahoo are working on new social networks now that their existing services (Orkut and 360, respectively) have failed to gain traction, except in Brazil in Orkut's case.

Google sponsored a project last year at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute that was designed to "rethink and reinvent online social networking," the Google Operating System blog reported. The site also has screenshots. Dubbed "Socialstream," the service would be more like a unified social network that would allow someone to have accounts on multiple services but centralized contacts in one … Read more

The Financial Times is reporting that Yahoo and Microsoft will update their privacy polices within the next few weeks and publicly reveal how long they plan to keep data on consumer Web searches.

The action was prompted by the work of a group called the Article 29 Working Party, which advises the European Union on privacy policy and has also been in discussions with Google, the article says.

Google's proposed $3.1 billion purchase of online ad firm DoubleClick is being scrutinized by the European Commission following complaints from consumer and privacy groups there and in the U.S. … Read more

Yahoo representatives responded this afternoon to our requests for comment on alleged outages that were reported by multiple readers. The company has said that it was not actual downtime, but that sites like Yahoo News and Flickr were delayed by network carrier issues.

In the statement e-mailed to CNET News.com, Yahoo's corporate communications representatives said, "For a brief period early this morning, some Yahoo users may have experienced delays in accessing Yahoo services in the U.S. due to network carrier-related issues. The problem has since been identified and corrected by our network vendor. We know that … Read more