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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Yahoo and Google link up on ads

In the latest twist in the Yahoo-Microsoft-Google saga, Yahoo and Google just announced they’ll start working together on the search and display ad business.

This comes just a few hours after Yahoo announced that it and Microsoft had absolutely, positively, really, truly, no kiddin’ around this time broken off talks that once could’ve put the Internet pioneer in Steve Ballmer’s and Bill Gates’s stable.

Yahoo and Google say their nonexclusive working arrangement could yield $800 million in annual revenues.

It also leaves Microsoft with one more thing on its “What to Do About Google” list.

Read the announcement from Yahoo here.

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Gartner agrees: PC shipments going strong

A second leading research firm has raised its forecast for personal computer shipments in 2008.

Gartner said today that it expects this year’s worldwide PC shipments to increase 12.5 percent over 2007, reaching about 297 million units this year. In March, the firm had forecast a 10.9 percent increase.

IDC, a rival research firm, upped its forecast in a press release issued Wednesday.

Though the two firms measure PC shipments in different ways, both said their higher forecasts were prompted in large part by higher-than-expected shipments of notebooks during the first quarter.

The ability of emerging countries to shake off the U.S. economic slowdown also played a role in their revisions, the firms said. Gartner said it expects 2008 shipments to increase 17.1 percent in emerging countries, compared with 6.3 percent in mature markets.

“Even so,” Gartner research director George Shiffler said in a release, “it’s a bit premature to say PC shipments won’t be impacted by a weaker global economy, especially if oil and food prices continue to soar.”

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