Microhoo. Or would it be Yahrosoft? Either way, unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few days (with the only metaphorical rocks netting you a reprieve in this case being: a) the huge upset that was Super Bowl XLII, or b) the intense political race surrounding Super Tuesday), you’re most likely aware that a merger between software and internet superpowers Microsoft and Yahoo! has become a genuine possibility. Well, at least in the eyes of Microsoft.

People have been sounding off about the topic since last Friday, when Microsoft publicly announced its offer to buy Yahoo for $31 a share (or a 62 percent premium over the closing price of Yahoo’s common stock on January 31, 2008—which was $19.18 a share). That’s a $44.6 billion unsolicited bid. While there may be various motives behind Microsoft’s ongoing effort to acquire the struggling Yahoo, one obvious reason would be to better its positioning against Google in the U.S. search market. Combining the current stakes of Microsoft and Yahoo in this market would equate to around a 32 percent share, creating a much more formidable threat to Google’s existing 58 percent hold over the marketplace. Microsoft would also like to gain stronger footing in the online services and paid-search advertising industries, and Yahoo’s customer appeal and current operations would certainly help Microsoft to accomplish these goals.

This clear and present danger to Google’s reign is why the corporation will likely play a role in whether or not this MFST/YHOO union actually happens. While Google can’t outright buy Yahoo (it would violate antitrust laws), the company is more than capable of stirring up some trouble. Yahoo can also avoid being acquired by Microsoft by outsourcing its searching advertising to Google, as this move would rejuvenate Yahoo’s cash flow and appease company shareholders (who must at least be tempted by Microsoft’s generous $31/share offer).

Outsourcing to Google would provide a hit to Yahoo’s pride, but teaming up with Microsoft is what one Yahoo engineer describes as “the frosting on a giant double-layer suck cake.” I’m not sure what that even means, but it doesn’t sound pleasant. The financial breakdown of the merger makes sense for Yahoo, and its shareholders especially, but integrating an independent, free-thinking operation such as Yahoo into a well-oiled machine like Microsoft is anything but a natural process.

The truth of the matter is, Yahoo has been in a gradual downfall for a few years now, and some internal changes will have to be made for the company to have any chance of rebuffing Microsoft’s advances. According to a BusinessWeek article that ran yesterday, the only options that Yahoo has left at this point are 1) to outsource its advertising to Google, 2) to secure a private equity partner to fund Yahoo’s going private, 3) to seek out a white knight (or a more tolerable company to submit to than Microsoft), or 4) to swallow a poison pill…which will presumably end in shareholder lawsuits.

I try my best not to lift quotes from TechCrunch for most of the posts that I write (we all know that it would be easy), but I felt obligated to include this wrap-up of the situation posted by Michael Arrington yesterday. Eloquent, yet cynical, in a word…perfect:

Whatever happens, the salad days for Yahoo are long gone. 2008 will be the year Yahoo ceased to be one of the big independent Internet heavyweights. They’ll almost certainly become an operating subsidiary of Microsoft, or Google’s whipping boy. And if by some chance the government puts a stop to either deal, they’ll have a short reprieve before facing similar decisions next year or the year after. The world is an unforgiving place. Yahoo is cute, cuddly and likable, but they did not execute the way Google did. And because of that they are quickly turning into collateral damage in an epic war that is really just beginning between Microsoft and Google.

Does anyone else feel like they are trapped in a Dungeons & Dragons game gone dangerously awry? Not to stereotype or anything, but Bill Gates would make one menacing Dungeon Master.

Seeing as I’m still holding onto the notion that it’s 2007, I figure now would be a good time to write one of those retrospective, year-end posts. I have a monstrous pile of New Year’s resolutions that I don’t feel like tackling, so I made sure to find a topic that allows me to fight off the arrival of 2008 (for at least a few more days). Lucky for you, it’s also pretty interesting.

Here is Pingdom’s take on the biggest internet blunders of 2007. The post highlights 13 incidents and links to a slew of related articles for each one. There were a few that I was aware of, like the NaviSite fiasco that I posted about in November (my very first post!), and the Black Friday service issues that several big-name internet retailers experienced.

Other notable blunders that were featured on the list include: Twitter’s six days of downtime throughout the year; the Skype outage that occurred in August; the 365 Main data center outage that affected sites like Craigslist, Technorati, TypePad, Second Life, and Yelp; and the RackSpace incident when a truck rammed into a power transformer, cutting off power to its Dallas data center.

What do these incidents teach us? That no website or service is infallible; that very few outages go unnoticed these days; and that you shouldn’t rely on a server, a hosting company, or an internet service without some type of backup plan, especially if an outage will cost you a sizeable chunk of revenue. Even though technology is constantly being improved upon, outages will never cease to exist. And that, my friends, is why tech staffs exist (and why they probably make more money than you do).

Given that almost everyone I know is engulfed in holiday fever/spirit/terror/bliss (take your pick), I figure only the true tech aficionados are browsing the web for news stories right now. I want to reward this genuine devotion, which is why I’ve chosen today to blog about a truly great news item: Swedish citizens use the internet. A lot! No need to thank me, I’m in a generous mood.

But in all seriousness, this survey conducted by Statistics Sweden is interesting, especially if you are the type of person (like me) who tends to think about internet usage domestically and not always with a global mindset. Before you click on the link above, I have to warn you that most of the report is in Swedish. And based on the fact that my multilingual abilities peaked around the time I recognized Bono counting out of order in that iPod commercial, I’ll assume that you all need directing to the English translation of the survey as well. It begins on page 239 of the report (although it actually reads page 241 in the Adobe Reader tool bar). Either way, scroll towards the end of the linked document and you’ll see what I am talking about.

It appears that internet usage actually declined in Sweden between 2006 and 2007 (from 84 percent of the population to 80 percent). This statistic is surprising, mainly because the internet has only become more pervasive in the majority of places as time has gone on. (Insert doubts about the accuracy of this survey here.)

Nordic countries tend to dominate technologically in the EU. Iceland boasts an internet usage rate of over 80 percent, with citizens using the service at least once a week. Norway maintains its usage at an even 80 percent, while 75 percent of the citizens in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden report that they use the internet for various purposes. When you think of countries that are at the forefront of technology use, I am not sure that the Nordic region is the first area that comes to mind, so these figures are beneficial to know.

Despite Sweden’s recent dip in internet usage, citizens who already use the service have increased the frequency with which they access it. Almost all Swedish citizens own a mobile phone as well, while close to 90 percent have PCs in their homes. The internet is most popular among 16 to 44 year olds, with over 90 percent of this age group using the service. The subsection of the population aged 65 to 74 has the least usage (only 40 percent of this group use the internet).

The popularity of broadband usage has skyrocketed in Sweden over the past few years. In 2005, 44 percent of the country’s internet users opted for the faster connection method. In 2007, over 70 percent used broadband connections. The most common reasons that Swedish citizens used the internet were to: research information on goods and services, send and receive emails, complete banking transactions, make online purchases, obtain public information, and take advantage of peer-to-peer file sharing.

According to the survey, about one-third of the internet users in Sweden are involved with e-commerce. These people used the internet to make travel and hotel reservations and to purchase clothes, sporting goods, movies, music, books, and newspapers. Sweden places sixth among other European countries involved in the survey in terms of how many of their citizens order goods and services over the internet. Norway snagged the top spot in the survey, with 48 percent of their population choosing to shop online.

So what does this all mean? I’m not exactly sure, but I do find it interesting that countries such as Sweden, Iceland, and Norway are so technologically aware and active. I tend to assess the technological identity of a country by the strength of its tech community, even though that is such a small part of the population. Maybe it’s more about real people, in unrelated fields, coming together because of one common medium; maybe that equates to technological maturity.

And on that note, I think I’ve gone a little too deep for my own taste. I promise to veer away from less than insightful philosophies about the state of the internet in the future. That’s not why you come here anyways. It’s for my sarcastic wit and stellar jokes, isn’t it? Ahh yes, that’s what I thought.

Privacy (or the lack thereof) is a major concern with internet users in the present day. I try not to think about it that often, because when I do, it tends to creep me out. Honestly, the amount of knowledge that Google retains is scary. With 58.5 percent of the U.S. market completing their searches on Google-powered sites, and the company holding onto information about your search queries for 18 months, it’s like Google knows everyone’s deepest, darkest secrets. And as history has already shown us, search engine companies aren’t always deserving of our trust. Like the mean girl at school, they nonchalantly share your secrets with everyone, all the while acting as though they’ve done nothing wrong.

Ask.com is aiming to differentiate itself from its competitors (namely Google, Yahoo, and MSN) by providing users with privacy, something that no other search engine company has tried (or wanted) to do. With a new feature called AskEraser, Ask.com users can opt to have cookies deleted from their web browser. This includes their IP addresses, their user ID and session ID cookies, and the text of their search queries through all Ask.com search areas. And you don’t have to be a computer mastermind to activate the function. Beginning this past Monday, Dec. 10, the AskEraser tool has been displayed in the right-hand corner of the Ask.com homepage. You simply click on “AskEraser,” after which a prompt appears explaining what the feature does. Then you press “Turn on AskEraser,” and the process is complete. All it takes is about five seconds, and your search queries will be safe from prying eyes, sort of.

The issue that some critics take with the AskEraser feature is that it’s misleading. The function only works for searches that are completed through Ask.com’s search box, and not for searches that are executed through an Ask.com toolbar on a third-party site. That third-party site can still retain data regarding your search activity. Ask.com also depends upon Google for many of the text-based ads that appear next to its search results, and the AskEraser function cannot delete the search request information that Google receives to help pair ads with specific users. Nevertheless, AskEraser users will have much more confidentiality than those who frequent other search engine sites.

There are doubts that the selling point of privacy will be strong enough to catapult Ask.com higher in the search engine rankings. The company currently holds the fourth-place spot in the U.S., with a 4.7 percent share of the nation’s market. Google, as mentioned above, is first, Yahoo is second with 22.9 percent, and MSN is a distant third at 9.7 percent. Even though AskEraser may not translate into market dominance for Ask.com (Google is way too menacing to go down without a fight), hopefully this marketing tactic will send a clear message to web-based corporations: contrary to popular belief, the current age of internet users doesn’t want everybody knowing their business.

Spam comes in all shapes and sizes, none of which are very well liked. I avoided original Spam like the plague as a child (it frightens me to this day), but electronic spam has created far more frustration and worry over the past few years than the mystery luncheon meat ever did. In a blog post taken from Read/WriteWeb today, Josh Catone writes:

“In 2001, spam accounted for an estimated 5% of our email. In 2007, it clogs our inboxes to the tune of 90-95% of all email sent…The year-over-year increase appears to indicate the failure of the US federal CAN-SPAM Act, which was passed in 2004 when spam only accounted for about 70% of all email sent.”

Catone is citing data from the spam filtering tech company Barracuda Networks. These figures are much more severe and telling than the tame statistics released by market researcher IDC recently, which were quoted in a USA Today article last month.

Unsolicited email messages creep (or pour, depending on your level of misfortune) into our inboxes on a daily basis, dodging filters in the form of MP3 files, e-cards, and PDF attachments. USA Today references Bill Gates’ bold statement in 2004 that in two years, the spam crisis would be resolved. Yet in 2007, a year after this problem was expected to be obsolete, electronic and human spammers are managing to send out 60 to 150 billion spam messages over the internet each day.

Even though IDC’s data is a little more reserved than Barracuda’s, it still conveys the behemoth nature of the spam problem. According to IDC, this is the first year that the total number of spam messages sent worldwide (10.8 trillion) will exceed the number of person-to-person emails sent out (10.5 trillion). The effect is that email accounts are first and foremost serving as a vehicle for spammers, which is an idea that no internet user or email account holder welcomes.

Email services often come with built-in defenses that block spam now, and security software is being enhanced to better protect against this growing problem. This forces spammers to be a little more creative in the way that they send messages. The growth of bots and compromised PCs that spew out spam in bulk has also fueled an increase in messages.

If you want some more background on the subject, the USA Today article includes a lot of information on the progression of spam over the past few years, as well as some interesting statistics on the different types of spam and the filtering technologies that are emerging to combat the messages. Also, here is an overview of Symantec’s seasonal spam report, which highlights some of the spam trends from this month and 2007 in its entirety.