Yahoo! bringing Internet to Samsung television sets

Yahoo! and Samsung on Monday said they will put the California firm's software to work linking the South Korean electronics giant's televisions to the Internet. New Samsung high-density flat-panel television models to be displayed this week at a premier Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will feature Yahoo! "widgets," mini applications which access Internet services.

Samsung televisions built with an "Internet@TV" content service will let viewers check online news or stock portfolios as well as see videos or pictures on the Web, according to the companies. "Through this partnership, we can combine the Internet benefits of user choice and personalization with Samsung's leading product innovation and global reach to deliver a new experience to users around the world," said Yahoo!'s Connected TV vice president Patrick Barry.

The applications will let Samsung televisions link to Yahoo! properties including Flickr, News, Weather, and Finance as well as to websites such as YouTube, eBay, and Showtime. Samsung already offers "Internet-enabled TV" technology and last year launched an "InfoLink" service that delivers news feeds from the publication USA Today to some sets in its line-up. "The collaboration with Yahoo lets viewers go one step further," said Samsung Visual Display Division executive vice president Boo-Keun Yoon.

"This new interface allows them to interact and connect with many of their favorite Web services on a personal level. It's frankly way beyond just passively watching broadcasts and is no doubt the future of TV." Samsung said it is using an open software platform so that outside developers can build custom applications viewers can install in its Internet-linked televisions as desired.Pricing for the televisions was not revealed.

Samsung HDTVs with the Yahoo Widget Engine are to be available in about four months in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the United States. The Samsung/Yahoo! announcement came on the same day as South Korea's LG Electronics and online movie rental giant Netflix revealed plans to market a broadband-enabled high-definition TV.

LG and Netflix said the "Broadband HDTVs" to go on sale this spring would have Netflix streaming software embedded in the TV, allowing users to stream movies directly from Netflix with no external device.

Introducing Yahoo! Web Analytics

Have you ever bailed on an online checkout because something in the user experience bugged you? Or were pleasantly surprised that the sponsored listings were more relevant than the regular results of your web search? This week, we are rolling out a new service that creates a helpful feedback loop for e-merchants, website owners, advertisers, and developers based on how well they did with you in critical moments like these.

Born out of our acquisition of IndexTools in May, Yahoo! Web Analytics (beta) provides powerful data and insights reporting that help website owners evaluate their marketing performance and tweak their website designs. They’ll get custom real-time reports and graphs that help them slice and dice metrics like sales, page views, and sources of traffic and ultimately identify ways to amp up their visitor satisfaction.

We’re rolling the service out in phases for the remainder of 2008 and into next year. The first big deployment is Yahoo! Small Business, whose 13,000 hosted e-commerce customers can get set up just in time for the holiday shopping season at the click of a button. We have already started to roll Yahoo! Web Analytics out to advertisers who seek Yahoo!’s help to build custom micro-sites, as well as to third-party application developers who build widgets and other mini-apps for Yahoo! users via our developer network or our new Yahoo! Open Strategy tools.

Nothing is worse for site owners—and consumers—than bad marketing or a lousy user experience. Here’s an easy tool designed to combat them… and fast.

For more information, please visit http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/ and check out the FAQ.

Yahoo, Intel attempt to solve Web content on television with “Widget Channel”

Yahoo and Intel today announced they are working together to bring dynamic Web content to your television set through the use of widgets. It’s an interesting idea. As many pundits have noted, companies large and small have attempted to bring Web content to the TV for years. All the efforts have failed for a variety of reasons: navigation issues, trying to replicate an entire Web page on the TV during programming, the introduction of the browser, keyboard, and mouse in the living room, and so on.

Yahoo thinks it may have the answer with the Widget Channel, which will allow developers to create small mini-programs (or widgets) that will be displayed on the bottom of a TV screen. These widgets offer on-screen access to everything from your pictures on Flickr, to interactions with friends on Twitter or Facebook, real-time sports scores, weather updates, stock prices, online movie rentals, and so on.

Why fire up the Web version of Twitter on the TV just to check or send Tweets? Why not have an ESPN widget running rather than bounce back and forth between Sports Center and “Grey’s Anatomy?” Why even bother replicating the Web experience on a TV set?

The Widget TV platform isn’t available and probably won’t be until the first part of 2009, when a new class of Intel chips for consumer electronics will be available that enable high-definition viewing, home-theater-quality audio, 3-D graphics, and the mashing of Internet and TV functions. Major manufacturers set to produce widget-ready TVs include Samsung and Toshiba.

Google and Yahoo strike deal, Microsoft's out

Microsoft must be ticked. It didn’t get to buy Yahoo, or even just a slice of it. Instead, all its efforts only served to drive Yahoo into Google’s waiting arms. The Google/Yahoo deal, announced Thursday, doesn’t make a Goohoo (or would it be Yagle?) by any means. According to BusinessWeek, Yahoo will display some Google text ads for Yahoo search results. Yahoo will control when and how the ads show up, and says it stands to make up to $800 million from the deal.

It seems clear Yahoo will need to take further steps to get its house in order, but just what those steps might be is still up in the air. Also in question is what Carl Icahn will do now that Microsoft appears finished (again) with its attempts to bolster its own lackluster online offerings with a Yahoo purchase.

Icahn may still try to replace Yahoo’s board come August, but as his primary goal for the proxy battle was to push a Microsoft deal, it’s unclear if there would still be any point to such a move. The Wall Street Journal has him “studying the situation” but not giving any clues about where he’ll go.

Don’t assume anything is a done deal in this saga, though. According to the Silicon Alley Insider, there’s an escape clause in the search deal that allows Google to walk away if there’s a ‘change in control’ for Yahoo. Per the piece, that could mean Microsoft, News Corp., or Time Warner buying 35 percent of Yahoo’s voting stock, Microsoft picking up 5 percent of total equity, or other triggers. Looks like Google would get a $250 million parting gift from the purchasing company if that happens.

And then there’s the potential for government regulators to put the kibosh on the plan. BusinessWeek has Eric Schmidt arguing that the deal doesn’t require regulatory approval, but guesses that Microsoft will still push for close scrutiny.