CNetNews.com reveals that “[f]ormer Vodafone chief Arun Sarin reportedly is withdrawing his name from the Yahoo CEO search, in part due to the uncertainty whether the Internet search pioneer will be broken up and sold, according to a report in the Financial Times. Sarin, who was considered a strong candidate who had made it through to a narrowed list of prospective candidates, reportedly had several issues in considering the Yahoo post.”
In more Yahoo! news, Internetnews.com writes that “[a]lmost a full year after outgoing CEO Jerry Yang laid out a vision for a ‘New Yahoo,’ the Web giant delivered on a major new look for its venerable home page and popular Yahoo Mail service at a press event [in San Francisco]. ‘We're creating a better, more relevant user experience,’ said Ash Patel, executive vice president of Yahoo's audience products division. ‘And we're opening up Yahoo more for third parties to leverage.’ Key elements of today's announcements are a revamped Yahoo Mail and Yahoo home page.”
Internetnews.com also reports that “[b]owing to pressure from key lawmakers, Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin has canceled this week's meeting, where the commissioners were scheduled to vote on a controversial plan to create a free, nationwide broadband network, among other items. In a letter to the chairman delivered last week, the presumptive chairmen of the House and Senate Commerce Committees in the next Congress asked Martin to abandon his agenda to focus on the digital TV transition. ‘The most important challenge for the Commission over the next nine weeks is to ensure the smoothest possible transition to digital television (DTV),’ wrote Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.V. ‘At a time when serious questions are being raised about transition readiness, it would be counterproductive for the FCC to consider unrelated items, especially complex and controversial items that the new Congress and new administration will have an interest in reviewing.’”
The New York Times has an interesting editorial arguing that President-elect Obama should work with Congress to build up the nation’s Internet infrastructure and also get good net neutrality regulations.
Yahoo!News writes that, according to a Cisco report, “[a]rmies of hijacked computers are flooding the world with spam as hackers devise slicker ways to take over unwitting people's machines. Virus-infected computers are woven into ‘botnets’ used to attack more machines and to send specious sales pitches to email addresses in low-cost quests to bilk readers out of cash. ‘Every year we see threats evolve as criminals discover new ways to exploit people, networks and the Internet,’ said Cisco chief security researcher Patrick Peterson. Junk email referred to as spam accounts for nearly 200 billion messages daily, approximately 90 percent of email worldwide, according to a Cisco Annual Security Report.”