Singer Chris Brown Arrested For Assault

On Sunday, the singer Chris Brown was arrested on accusations of assault after he was accused of physically assaulting the singer Rihanna. They supposedly had an argument in a Los Angeles neighborhood that evolved into a fight. Both Rihanna and Brown pulled out of the Grammys hours before it was telecasted this past Sunday. Brown has also dropped a planned appearance at the upcoming NBA All-Star Game that is scheduled for this weekend in Phoenix. The company Wrigley has decided to suspend all of the ad and marketing campaigns that he is involved with.

Rapper 50 Cent Sues Taco Bell

The rapper 50 Cent is suing Taco Bell because he says that the restaurant has used his name without his permission in their advertising that asks him to call himself 99 Cent. In a federal lawsuit, he also claimed that the Taco Bell print ad features him asking to change his name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent, or 99 Cent. The ad is part of a Taco Bell "Why Pay More?" campaign that promotes items that cost less than a dollar.

The company supposedly sent a bogus letter that requested the name change to the news media but not to 50 Cent. He didn't find out about the letter or that he was featured in the ad campaigns until he saw a news report about it. He wants $4 million in damages.

Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid

Microsoft Corp. has decided to withdraw its $42.3 billion bid on Saturday to buy Yahoo Inc. This came after an unsuccessful last try to negotiate a mutually acceptable sale price.

Microsoft was willing to pay as much as $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, but Yahoo’s board wanted at least $53 billion, or $37 per share. Microsoft could make a new bid later this year if Yahoo doesn’t recover after having more than two years of financial problems. Analysts feel that if things don’t change for Yahoo Inc. soon, their stock would decrease into the mid-teens and that would make it difficult for the company to turn down any future offers. Yahoo Inc. is considering an advertising partnership with Google and a merger with the Internet operations of Time Warner Inc.

Yahoo Launches Site for Women

On Monday, Yahoo Inc. launched a site aimed towards women age 25to 54 called Shine. The site is made to give Yahoo Inc. more opportunities to sell advertising targeted towards women. Advertisers in consumer-packed goods, retail, and pharmaceuticals have requested that there be more ways to advertise to women and many women are looking for a site to combine various content and communication tools.

The site Shine offers content and services in parenting, love, healthy living, food, and career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology. The site is in blog form and will have the newest items at the top of the page and commentary from an editor.

Visit: http://shine.yahoo.com

Yahoo Declines Microsoft’s Offer

Yahoo has rejected Microsoft Corp.’s $44.6 billion dollar offer thinking that they can get a better offer from the company or find another way to pay its shareholders. Yahoo has said that they could possibly negotiate if Microsoft comes up with a better offer. If they don’t, then Yahoo will have to try to rebound financially on its own.

Some analysts think that Microsoft will raise its offer to $35 to $40 per share to make the negotiation. Microsoft was willing to pay at least $40 per share for Yahoo a year ago but Yahoo wasn’t interested in the offer because it was confident in its own strategy and plans. A higher bid could possibly hurt Microsoft’s stock price, because recently it has been falling. Microsoft’s market value has decreased by over $40 billion, which is 14 percent, since the bid was announced. The Yahoo takeover could be more trouble than it’s worth for Microsoft. Analysts say that Yahoo will have no choice but to take the offer if Microsoft raises its bid.

If Microsoft doesn’t want to pay more money then they can take their original bid directly to Yahoo’s shareholders. Microsoft has been seriously considering this by meeting with some of Yahoo’s major shareholders to get support for the offer. Yahoo could also make Microsoft not want them by issuing out more company shares so that it would make the company too expensive for Microsoft to want to buy.

Even though Yahoo has been suffering for the past two years, it still has one of the largest Internet audiences and is a very valuable franchise. Microsoft wants to use those qualities to compete against Google Inc., which currently has the lead in online search and advertising. Yahoo has been considering an advertising partnership with Google as an option to earn profits and stay independent. Yahoo is also looking for other companies that might make a larger bid than Microsoft, but none has come forward yet.

Yahoo is hoping that their stock value will not go below $20 per share if Microsoft decides not to make any more bids. If that happens then there could be a large number of shareholder lawsuits.

Google’s New Service Clashes with Wikipedia

Google’s new service coming out called “Knol” will allow people to write articles on their areas of expertise like the website Wikipedia does. The content will be free to access and authors of content on the site will be able to attach advertising to their writing and have a share of the revenue. Knol suppose to cover all topics like Wikipedia does and it is currently in the test phase but will be available to the public soon.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316902,00.html

Facebook Uses New Tracking Feature

Some users of the Facebook website are complaining that their recent marketing program is showing their purchases made online to their friends on the site. The new feature places a small box in the corner of Web browsers that keeps track of purchases made at Fandango, Overstock, and other online retailers. The box would alert users that information is about to be shared with Facebook unless they click “No Thanks.” The box would disappear after 20 seconds on its own if you don’t click anything and then consent to share information is automatically assumed. Users are given a second notice the next time they log on to Facebook, but they can miss it if they quickly click to visit a friend’s page or check e-mail.

The concept behind the idea of the tool is that if users see a friend buy something, they’d want to shop from the same place too or maybe buy the same item. Companies can even buy and ad next to the feed item with the friend’s picture. The tool raises concerns of privacy. Users can decline the sharing on a site-by-site basis, but they still have to be apart of the program.