After declining search ad revenue growth and problems with gaining a foothold in radio and television advertising, Google is focusing on the Web’s elusive display ad marketplace.

Microsoft is dead serious about its new Bing search engine. Microsoft even bought out a company just to use its technology to build up Bing. The company is showing the world that it means business with a series of ads that targets the pitfalls of all search engines with the promise of a “cure.” However, is Microsoft promising something Bing can’t deliver?

Recently, news spread all over the Internet indicating that Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, overtook Yahoo as the number two search engine after Google. However, according to several research firms, the earlier reports indicating Bing’s victory may have been premature.

Yahoo is attempting to make Yahoo Mail your source for getting as much done as possible, but can it bring back the users it has lost to rival Google Mail?

Microsoft has once again redesigned their Web search engine, adding a few bells and whistles to try to make up ground on Google and Yahoo, who are miles ahead of Microsoft’s latest attempts.

Microsoft made headlines late last year when it snatched up just about every domain name variant with “Kumo” in it. Kumo is Microsoft’s weapon against super search engine Google. After dropping off the radar for a few months, recent reports indicate that the software giant may be gearing up to release its new search engine for public testing.

After posting lackluster earnings for the first quarter, Yahoo is laying off 600 employees and shuttering its Columbus office. The surprise is that Flickr was hit especially hard by these cuts, losing a number of its few remaining engineers.

Geocities was one of the first sites to offer you a simple Web page and the tools to edit the text and images to your heart’s content. Now it’s time to put this old dog out of its misery, much the same fate as Google Page Creator and AOL Hometown.

An open source tool designed to power search engines could be reborn as a commercial product for major online databases. New firm Cloudera plans to use the Hadoop system as the basis of its professional service packages.

Carol Bartz has been on the job as Yahoo CEO for about 45 days and has already made a number of changes near the top. How well will those high-level moves translate into transforming the company as a whole?

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Yahoo, the company spent a staggering $79 million dollars last year fighting off the takeover bid by Microsoft.

Yahoo announced the hiring of CEO Carol Bartz, formerly of Autodesk, in hopes that she can rebuild the floundering online advertiser. Yahoo CFO, Sue Decker, was long thought to be a frontrunner for the spot and has tendered her resignation.

Yahoo is looking for more ways to keep you interacting with friends through email by adding new features to your email Inbox. Last month social networking features started popping up in users’ email, and this month Yahoo started adding casual games.

In a move that could gut Yahoo’s Search Engine business, investors are currently preparing a takeover bid for the embattled Web advertiser. To add insult to injury, financing for the bid is being provided largely by jilted suitor Microsoft.

News in the world economy has been dismal for months, and the technology sector has fared no better than than national averages. Now another industry giant, Microsoft,  may be showing signs of weakness.

Yahoo is slashing the period during which it retains personal data about user searches. It’s also widening the range of data that it anonymizes after this period.

Yahoo has endured a downward spiral for quite a while now and it’s a combination of vacant leadership and a poor economy. Slimming down to survive is the company’s focus right now, and Yahoo has invented a creative severance package that requires recipients to stay in touch in case the people taking over old roles have questions.