Yahoo! Acquires an Army of 380,000 Writers
Yahoo! has announced a multi-million dollar acquisition of the user generated content website, Associated Content.
Associated Content is a site where users submit original content and depending on how many times their work is viewed, are paid accordingly. Yahoo!'s acquisition of AC gives the search company access to nearly 400,000 freelance writers.
The acquisition, expected to close in this year's third quarter, is supposed to help Yahoo! in its mission to present more original content as well as create more opportunities to sell online advertising and revive its revenue growth. The acquisition is rumored to have cost Yahoo! somewhere in the region of $90 million to just over $100 million.
In August last year, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz surprised everyone by declaring Yahoo! was never a search company. Bartz said in an interview with the New York Times that "her fortunes are tied to her pages," and that she was more than happy with the company's 20 percent of the search market. Bartz went on to say the company would be investing more in its pages so it could stop relying on third-party content and instead provide its own original content, something the company already does with sports content.

Yahoo has been dead for years, a has been company that is no longer relevant in any way.
...because Yahoo and Bing like to force themselves upon customers. I bet they just count how many people use the toolbars that are installed as bloatware.
Besides, it's not Yahoo that is out collecting MAC addresses and SSIDs, monitoring unsecured wireless trafic, and spying on every click you make and character you type.
They annoy me when they try to do other stuff badly and clutter the home pages with nonsensical non-news and very intrusive Flash ads that slow my system to a crawl.
They infuriate me because they simply do not respond to complaints.
But the e-mail service is excellent
Realize that there's a world outside of the oh-Great-Nation-of-United-States-of-America.
In East Asia, Yahoo! is more popular than Google, and one of the reason is NOT because they are stupid or anything. It's a legitimate force elsewhere in the world.
Google does that too with their toolbar.
The MAC and SSIDs are public anyway. And the key worlds are "UNSECURED wireless". This info can, has been and will be collected by many companies and government agencies. If you don't want to be collected please encrypt you traffic. If you don't, you have no right to complain at all. I understand and expect to hear that kind of BS on mainstream media because the people there might not know how radio works, but here at Tom's is just trolling.
If you consider my making a valid point about Google's very well documented spying (now under investigation in 10 countries) trolling, then I must conclude that you work for Google and are desperately trying to preserve their now tainted image.
First disclosure. I am not connected with Google at all and I have questioned Google's data collection policies before, but in this case most of the attacks are coming from people with questionable background and expertise. Now let me try to answer your questions and please don't make me regret it later.
Let me start with your final question with example. If you are in your home and having loud conversation with your girlfriend (you can replace it with whoever you want) and I pass by you and overhear you conversation, did I violated your privacy? Absolutely NOT. I am on the public place and you are speaking loud. Google did exactly that. They drove their car on public street an listen for Wi-Fi transmissions.
You probably know how GPS works, right! You know that GPS does not work very well in side city with big buildings and does not work at all in urban canyons like NYC and most European cities. In order to find you location you need to use other references. One way to do this is to listen for signals from radio transmitters. By driving down on the street Google and all other companies are recording position of the radio sources (Wi-Fi routers). That way when you go there with your iPhone and have trouble getting good GPS fix the phone will listen for Wi-Fi signals and try to calculate your position. This is done by recording the MACs and SSIDs. As I said before this is public data and there is no privacy claims here.
So, collecting MACs and SSIDs is done not only by Google, but by any company that provide Wi-Fi location services and their users. But not only them. That is how Wi-Fi actually works. First you listen for broadcast in order to discover APs around you. There is second phase. Once you located the APs you need to establish connection session. If you AP is not encrypted anyone can establish session. This is defined by the standard and licensed by FCC and any other country that allow Wi-Fi devices. If you connection is not encrypted you don't have expectation for privacy. It is like taking a megaphone and start speaking in the park and claim that no one should listen or record your speech.
[3]
1. ... grounded all Google Street View Cars. Until the issues are resolved.
2. ... identified all the data and quickly moved it in to secure storage of their network.
3. ... took that data off-line. So nobody has access to it.
4. ... Reported the incident to all affected countries. (What a stupid spy Google is, to surrender them self!)
5. ... Invaded external auditors to assist in handling and destroying the data based on requirements from each country.
Now how many other people or companies have taken those steps? NONE. So you see, none of your points are valid at all.
So let me ask you a question. What did you do when the USA Congress renewed the Patriot Act and gave immunity to AT&T and Verizon for assisting in the past and continuing assistance the government in warrantless spying of all USA citizens? And I mean all, not only one suspected in terrorist activities. Practically all international phone calls are routed to NSA. [2]
[1] http://www.kismetwireless.net/
[2] http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying
[3] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
Regarding your final comments about the Patriot Act, what has that to do with this conversation? We are talking about Google, and you veer off onto an entirely unrelated tangent. While you claim that you do not work for Google, you are certainly making considerable effort to defend their unsavory practices, including attempting to deflect the conversation away from Google. This is a tech site, not a political site, so let's keep our discussion on topic.
For the billions that Google invests down the drain in so many products, 99.5% of their revenue still comes from search. It is not long before Facebook will overtake Google (and it has already overtaken in many countries) and put an end to some of Google's arrogance