MiHoo! There they go again - Microsoft and Yahoo teaming up to take down Google!

March 3 -- This is the latest news I just received from investor Michael Wilfred, one of my close friends and attendant today of the Yahoo investor conference in San Francisco.

Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo! Inc., has said in no less categorical terms today that she will do business with Microsoft, and that she will personally deal with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer and try to find a mutually beneficial partnership.

Now, as most people know, Google is the king of Internet Search. Yahoo is the second with about 26% of the search engine traffic, and Microsoft a paltry 9%. And it is now old news that Yahoo was being eyed by Mircrosoft last year in Microsoft’s bid to position MSN Search as a serious competitor for the search engine market. The deal did not go through because co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo, Jerry Yang, along with Yahoo’s board of directors rejected the $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft. Yahoo’s shareholders were frustrated that the deal did not go through. As industry insiders, we have been closely monitoring Yahoo and Microsoft, because we know for a fact that neither can compete with Google on their own.

When asked about the possibility that Yahoo and Microsoft would try honeymooning again now that Jerry Yang is gone, Carol Bartz said “We are going to negotiate as companies negotiate – and that’s privately. If something happens, you’ll know it then. Until then, there is no comment.”

However, Michael told me that Carol told him privately that she has already been talking to Steve Ballmer about a unified strategy, and that a deal was already on the table. She also did say that the deal would be made public in the coming days or weeks, depending on when all the aspects of the deal are discussed and approved by both sides. “The question is not whether there is a deal, the question is when will it go through. I don’t want to sell Yahoo and don’t want it to be pulled apart and left for the chickens. So this time, takeover it is not. Merger? Yes.”

After coming to know about this, I placed a few calls, and Andrew Greenberg, another investor friend of mine who happened to be at a different conference by Microsoft, confirmed with me that Steve Ballmer said “You all know that I would like to figure out how to pool somehow Microsoft and Yahoo. I’m hoping that’s a reasonable conversation with the new management at Yahoo.” Well, what Steve does not publicly say is that this conversation is already in advanced stages and that a new deal is ready!

Sergei and Larry may probably be thinking about the next big thing for Google, but Microsoft and Yahoo are this time coming for them. Google, watch out for MiHoo!

Insider News About Facebook's Bid to Take Over Twitter

What happens when Microsoft values your stock at $15 billion, you yourself say it is worth $8-9 billion but you let your employees sell stock at internal company valuations of $2-4 billion?

Well, the answer is simple: when you try to takeover another company and want to pay with stock options, you fail. I am here talking about Facebook, which was trying to take over Twitter.

Now, I must have seen this coming a while ago. There is no market for Facebook's stock given the fact that facebook is a private company. A few friends in the Big Apple told me that facebook was trying to take over Twitter, the rapidly growing personal blogging network, for $500 million.

At first, when Carlo Friedman, a consultant involved with Twitter, told me this; I was saying to myself that this may be a good deal for Twitter. $500 million is good money for a startup. I told myself that soon twitter.com may be bearing the Facebook seal of proprietorship. Not that it mattered to me anyway.

In all honesty, I have no idea what Facebook's net worth is at this point in time - my amazing maths skills fail me as soon as you cross the billion dollar threshold. What is the difference between $8 billion, $15 billion and so on? All I know is that with these figures, you are talking about a Fortune 500.

However, these subtle differences mattered to the company directors and investors of Twitter. Because, of course, Facebook is not a cash cow like Myspace. It would not be shelling out $500 million in cash - instead the deal was going to be $100 million in green notes, and the remaining $400 million would be in stocks.

But Facebook's stock value is a big controversy, and Facebook's revenue is limited by its desire to incorporate less ads which are more targeted and less obtrusive. So, you are the 4th most visited website on the planet, your userbase is loyal and your potential for growth is unlimited, and best of all, you are a private company. Problem is, you don't generate that much cash as your current position in the web hierarchy would command. This means, in essence, that depending on the metrics used for valuation, your net worth may be as low as $2 billion and as high as $18billion. That's a pretty big margin of uncertainty. And uncertainty, as most entrepreneurs know, is a bane for business.

Twitter was not convinced with facebook's deal, as Peter Thiel, a facebook investor, puts it: "The deal would have to be done with facebook stock. And you have to figure out how much the stock is worth." I tried talking to some friends with inside connections in Twitter, and they told me that the reaction on Twitter's side was that Facebook's stock value was too overshadowed with this veil of uncertainty, and Twitter was not convinced, at least yet.

So, the deal did not go through. Neither party really emerged as a loser, because none of these two companies are publicly traded, and investor confidence is still strong in both of them. Although Twitter does not generate money at this stage, it has grown from 800,000 unique visitors to over 6 million unique visitors since last year; while Facebook's money-making potential is still to be unleashed, as Thiel told a friend of mine. "There's no reason to think that we couldn't do $1bllion a year in sales if we turned on all the dials. That's about what MySpace does."

The good news is that the two companies have not completely shut down all negotiations. Richards Anthony, a close friend of mine and with insider access to Twitter and who also had interests in Facebook, told me that "We are always interested. There is a conscious dialogue. Although the meat is off the table, there's more cooking on the grill. The only thing is we don't know yet when it will be cooked!"

How I Got My New Iphone 3G 16 GB

Under intense pressure from the New York tech world, I finally decided to give the iPhone a try.

I needed a phone with internet, microsoft exchange server support and for usage as a normal telecommunication device.

Now, as they say, the phone is useless without a good network. AT&T is ok as a network, although I have always preferred Sprint/Nextel because of the Nextel Direct Connect feature.

I had two options in front of me: either I buy an unlocked iPhone and use it with my Sprint account - cost of the unlocked phone is $750 plus $99(+tax) for my unlimited Sprint data plan; or I pay $299 for the AT&T locked iPhone and get tied for two years with a $129(+tax) unlimited calling plan.

I still wanted to go with the unlocked Iphone. However, I realized that it was pointless. Considering the Iphone is a 3G Phone; the best 3G newtork is, whether I like it or not, AT&T. I drove past an AT&T shop, told the manager I was there to buy the iPhone. This is what the conversation looked like:

Me: I want and iPhone for business use.

Manager: Well Sir, You have come to the right place. The iPhone is the best phone for business out there.

Me: (Sensing that this was a marketing ploy, because they had a window ad about the Blackberry Bold saying that it was the best business phone on the market, I decided to bargain.) Well, I don't really need the iPhone, I am already a customer of Sprint and I already was planning on getting the Sprint BlackBerry Curve 8330.

Manager: Well, I must tell you that the iPhone has over 20,000 applications that you can download, and quite honestly, I use it myself, and there is no comparison to any other phone I have had before. The Blackberry doesn't even come close to the iPhone in terms of phone usage and entertainment.

Me: Well, I beg to differ. I think I am quite knowledgeable in this field to tell you that you are half wrong and half inaccurate. In any case, I was just driving by with the intention of buying the iPhone. But I just changed my mind, I will probably wait for the new Samsung MBP200 to get to the US market. (Yes, this is how I bargain... I came to buy, but I never let him know that I can be taken for granted!)

Manager: I am so sorry to hear that you have changed your mind Sir. As the manager, I can offer you this deal: you buy the phone today and I will waive the $36 activation fee and give you a car charger, bluetooth headset, leather case (total value of $80 for the three accessories) for free.

Me: Deal! Here's my driver's license, my social security and my plastic. Unlimited everything plan for me. I don't want to be bothered counting my minutes!

Manager: Ok please hold on while I run your credit check.

Me: I have 5 minutes, I need to run to a meeting.

Manager: Ok Sir, your results came back. You do not need to pay a deposit - your credit is fine.

Me: Four minutes is all I have now - otherwise I walk out of here and come back later this week.

Manager: (Two minutes later) Here is your phone Sir, already activated, and here are your accessories.

Me: Thank you, great experience shopping at your AT&T dealership. I'm glad you set me up running in 4 minutes and thanks once again for the freebies.

Ok, so this is the story on how quick I 'meteorized' my way around to get an iPhone. I know that I got a good deal, although I know AT&T will be making money with the hefty $129+ monthly fee that they'll be collecting from me.

I will probably be posting more about the iPhone itself once I start using it for real, right now I'm just hooked to watching youtube on it... and someone was talking about using the iPhone for work??