Yahoo Inc

Momentum seems to be shifting toward Microsoft Corp. in its high-stakes bid to buy Yahoo Inc., analysts said Friday. Although some Yahoo shareholders have called for Microsoft to raise its offer, not all are yodeling for a much higher price. That's because nearly 90% of Yahoo's institutional shareholders, including most of the top 20, hold Microsoft stakes, according to a report released by RiskMetrics Group, a financial risk-management firm.

Yahoo Inc., owner of the most-visited U.S. website, adopted severance plans for employees that would pay as much as two years of salary to fend off a $44.6-billion bid from Microsoft Corp. Full-time employees would get at least four months of severance pay, and executive officers would get 24 months, Yahoo said Tuesday in a regulatory filing. Employees will be eligible for the payments if they depart within two years of a purchase.

Yahoo Inc. is making a fresh appeal to a key demographic: women. Launching today is Shine, a Yahoo website aimed at women between the ages of 25 and 54. It will delve into fashion and beauty, entertainment, parenting, work and other areas of interest to women. Yahoo's future is uncertain in the wake of Microsoft Corp.'s takeover bid. But the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet giant is continuing to launch new products in pursuit of advertising dollars.

Its patience running thin, Microsoft Corp. said Saturday it would turn its $40-billion bid for Yahoo Inc. hostile and probably lower its offer if the companies don't reach a deal within three weeks. Microsoft vowed to nominate a slate of Yahoo directors who support a takeover if the deadline isn't met. The world's biggest software company also went out of its way to quash Wall Street speculation that it would raise its 2-month-old offer to seal a deal.

Yahoo Inc. says it's poised to revolutionize online advertising after years of being outmaneuvered by Google Inc. But the slumping Internet pioneer might not get the chance to show off the latest improvements to its advertising platform unless it can convince increasingly impatient investors that the new approach will produce a bigger payoff than Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited offer to buy the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company for more than $40 billion.

Yahoo Inc. will begin showing homemade videos on its online photo-sharing site, Flickr, in a long-anticipated move that might be too late to lure most people away from the Internet's dominant video channel, Google Inc.'s YouTube. Flickr's video technology, which debuted late Tuesday, represents the latest example of Yahoo trying to catch up to Google in a crucial battleground.

The increased jockeying for Yahoo Inc. complicates the Web portal's takeover fight with Microsoft Corp. But it also simplifies the bigger picture: The five largest draws for the Internet audience are now virtually certain to shrink to four -- maybe even three.

Yahoo Inc.'s short experiment with outsourcing some of its Web-search ads to Google Inc. has drawn scrutiny from antitrust regulators, the companies said Wednesday. Yahoo and Google said they had provided the Justice Department with unspecified information in response to questions about the two-week test, which was designed to explore how a possible collaboration could help Yahoo thwart Microsoft Corp.'s takeover bid. Microsoft is busy planning its next move in the buyout fight for Yahoo.

After months of posturing by both sides, technology titans Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have suspended their tough talk and have entered serious negotiations on a deal to unite against Internet search king Google Inc., people briefed on the talks said Friday. Microsoft, which had been threatening to abandon a bid now valued at about $42 billion, instead offered to pay billions of dollars more for the company, those people said.

In the now-suspended takeover fight between software titan Microsoft Corp. and Internet poster child Yahoo Inc., the winner was a heckler in the audience. The combined companies could have created a formidable challenger to Google Inc., but the Web search king helped scuttle the deal by complaining about the potential effect on competition and by tossing Yahoo a lifeline in the form of an advertising partnership.