According to Web traffic analysis companies (including Compete.com, comScore, Alexa Internet, Netcraft, and Nielsen Ratings), the domain yahoo.com attracted at least 1.575 billion visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study. The global network of Yahoo! websites receives 3.4 billion page views per day on average as of October 2007. It is the second most visited website in the U.S., and the most visited website in the world.

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Oke terlepas dari beragam alesan gak penting napa gua menolak undangan tersebut, gua cuma berharap juga bahwa orang-orang macam Larry Page dan Sergey Brin, dedengkotnya Google juga mau ikut ngasih kursus kepresidenan ato apalah. Justru gua ngerasa dua orang itu jauh lebih hebat dan powerfull ketimbang si Om Bill. Ato  si David Filo dan Jerry Yang, pendiri Yahoo! yang sangat fenomenal.

Di tunggu aja apakah orang-orang hebat ini mau ngasih ilmunya ke bangsa Indonesia. Mungkin jangan sekarang deh, kita lagi deg-degan nunggu harga BBM yang bikin keringat dingin itu... 

The Microhoo deal is still far from over, but you can bet every one of Yahoo's 14,300 employees are wondering what the $44.6 billion bid from Microsoft means for them.

The fate of Yahoo's top executives -- co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo and president Susan Decker -- remains unclear. Will Microsoft clean house or try to retain some of Yahoo's (YHOO) higher-ups? More importantly, will top Yahoos even want a corner office in Redmond?

Whatever happens under a new regime, Yang, Filo and Decker will be provided for financially, to say the least. Based on Microsoft's (MSFT) bid to buy Yahoo at $31 a share (a 62 percent premium to the share price when the offer was made last Friday), here's how the three head Yahoos would fare, according to executive compensation research firm Equilar and Securities and Exchange Commission filings:

• Jerry Yang: Yahoo's CEO indirectly owns 43,489,864 shares held in trust and 9,314,390 held in a family partnership of Yahoo. If these shares were purchased for $31, they would have a combined value of over $1.6 billion. This value doesn't include the 6,310 shares held by Yang’s wife, for which he disclaims beneficial ownership.
• David Filo: Filo stays out of the limelight but directly owns close to 80,000,000 shares of Yahoo. At the proposed $31 price per share, they would be worth more than $2.4 billion.
• Susan Decker: Decker holds an estimated 634,676 shares directly and 6,161,667 options. Under Microsoft's valuation, they'd have a value of over $54 million.

But don't expect any "golden parachutes" for these Yahoos -- according to research firm Equilar and company records, there's no evidence Yahoo would give its execs cash severance benefits in the event of a take-over. However, the company does have an agreement with Decker stating that some of her previously vested options will remain exercisable for an additional three years if she leaves the company.

As for majority of Yahoo's employees -- the non-billionaires -- it's not clear how they would fare under a Microsoft acquisition. The struggling search engine (and I mean Yahoo) had already said it would lay off 1,000, or 7 percent, of its workforce sometime this month. It's likely Microsoft would make more cuts should the deal go through.

First was simply a confirmation that David's plans are to ease out of some of his technology management roles at Yahoo while Jerry's intention was to stay engaged into the foreseeable future as CEO. When Semel left Yahoo some industry watchers suggested Yang would not stay long, but those rumors appear to have been unfounded.

I asked David if he'd met with Bill Gates during CES. He said "I haven't", which leads me to my current working hypothesis which is a little wild, but that's what blogging is for!

The hypothesis is that the Gates Keynote last night and the Yang talk this morning were not coincidental, but were the result of meetings - probably last night - between Gates, Yang, and perhaps former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel. I'll certainly take David at his word that "he" did not meet with Gates. Semel was *in the audience* this morning but was not introduced.

I should note that when I pressed David to talk about a potential merger he suggested he feels Yahoo has a lot to do themselves before moving in that direction, but he also noted how the industry moves in fast and furious ways. He actually asked *me* what the advantage would be to that. I've written about that before here at the blog but in short it's that Yahoo+MSN would be able to fight Google in ways neither appears to be able to do alone.

So I'm not predicting a merger/buyout but I sure wouldn't rule it out, and I'm guessing there are informal talks going on - probably here at CES.

Disclaimer: I've got some Yahoo Stock. Not that it's making me any money mind you, but I've got some.

Yahoo’s co-founder David Filo took the hype a little further earlier this year when he said he expected that most people in emerging economies like India would have their first experience of the Internet using mobile phones. The logic, I guess, is that India has been adding between 5 to 7 million new mobile phone users each month, but far fewer new PCs.

But most of the new phones have not been added for Internet connectivity, but plain telephony, and I often wonder how thousands of Indians, whose literacy doesn’t go beyond the ability of dialing a telephone number, are going to find any use for goodies from the Internet.

For those who would like to access the Internet on the move, the better option is a laptop - which is not a lot expensive if you need the Internet badly, and you can afford the full-featured PDAs that offer Internet access and other bells and whistles with a mobile phone. Why would an user struggle to enter mail on a PDA when he has the full-blown laptop option, or he can go to a cyber café ?

To be sure the mobility is important, but frankly is there any fun in squinting into a miniature browser to read the daily news, or a research report, or a sales report, while at the same time worrying how much that download could be costing you. The moment you decide on mobile Internet, you are talking of costs by the kilobyte, not megabytes, because that is the way the service provider charges you. So browsing for fun on your mobile is an absolute no-no, unless you have a corporate account, and the accounts folks are looking the other way.

I picked up a PDA a few days ago, and I do not use the browser on my mobile to go to my favorite web sites, or download my mail, because it is a lot more expensive than when I am at my laptop, and it is far slower too.

As I would be paying big bucks for a lousy experience, I use the PDA mainly for emergencies. That certainly doesn’t make me the darling of my service provider. Lots of folks like me can cripple the business plans of those who swear by the mobile Internet.

My friends scoff at me for picking up a PDA and Internet data plan from my mobile provider. Just what is it that I do that requires me to have instant access to my mail or to the Internet ? Can’t it wait say 30 minutes to an hour ? Does it give you a competitive edge ? Or will it only ensure that I lose my eyesight earlier than usual, squinting into the small screen of the mobile phone ?

The data seems to bear my friends out. Yankee Group, a Boston research firm, show that only 13 percent of cell phone users in North America use their phones to surf the Web more than once a month, while 70 percent of computer users view Web sites every day, according to this report in the New York Times.

Data is clearly not a hot application yet on the mobile. The New York Times quotes in the same report an analyst from Rethink Research, who said data would make up only 12 percent of average revenue per user in 2007, far below the expected 50 percent. The 12 percent figure does not include text messaging.

For users of mobile phones to use mobile Internet for one its prices have to hit basement levels, and bandwidth has to improve. That would require service providers to increase their capital outlays even as they have to cut on unit charges. But that is not all. For new users of the Internet there has to be a compelling application on the mobile that will make them embrace the Internet on a mobile phone rather than on a laptop or desktop. For traditional Internet users like me, who use the Internet for work, the Internet on the mobile phone can only be a tool for an emergency.

For now the mobile Internet seems to be the stuff mainly of marketing spiels, and big dreams that may go awry.

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