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Google reported a 27% increase in revenues for the last three months of 2011, but even that was not good enough to meet Wall Street estimates, sending the shares tumbling.Google shares fell 10% in after hours trading to £370 ($575) .

It reported 3 month revenues of £6.8 billion ($10.6billion) and its net profit rose 6.4% to £1.74 billion ($2.7 billion).

“Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year,” said chief executive Larry Page.

“I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago.”

But analysts were less impressed with Google’s figures.

Expectations were very high and Google have missed thier estimates.

The number of clicks on Google’s AdWords Pay Per Click networks rose significantly in the fourth quarter, but the amount that Google was able to charge advertisers for each click fell 8%.

For the full year, Google reported a 29% rise in revenue to £24.45 billion ($37.9 billion), with net profits up 14% to £6.25 billion ($9.7 billion).

Microsoft’s profits in the three months to the end of December fell as lower computer sales hit its core Windows business.The world’s largest software firm made a net profit of £4.27 billion ($6.624 billion), against £4.42 billion for its second quarter last year.

Revenues rose 5% to £13.47 billion, slightly down on some analysts’ expectations.

Revenue at the Windows operating system division fell, but rose at its server, Xbox 360 and online services arms.

Wall Street welcomed the figures, with Microsoft’s shares rising 2.1% in after-hours trading.

Tighter cost control and a continuing reduction of losses at the Bing search engine helped boost the figures.

Analysts were expecting a fall in business at the Windows division due to slower sales of PCs.

The computer industry is facing a worldwide shortage of hard disk drives due to flood devastation in Thailand whit hit the global supply chain of suppliers in November.

But Windows is also facing competition from the growth of tablet computers such as Apple’s iPad and mobile devices using Google’s Android system.

However, Microsoft is hitting back with the release of Windows 8, an operating system for PCs and mobile devices.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said in a statement: “We delivered solid financial results, even as we prepare for a launch year that will accelerate many of our key products and services.”

During the quarter the Windows and Windows Live division posted revenue of £3.05 billion, a 6% fall on the previous year.

The Entertainment & Devices division saw the sharpest revenue rise, up 15% to £2.78 billion.

Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo!, has resigned from its board of directors with immediate effect.Jerry Yang founded the online company in 1995 with David Filo and was its chief executive from June 2007 until January 2009.

His resignation comes two weeks after the company hired former PayPal executive Scott Thomson to be its new chief executive.

Mr Yang annoyed some shareholders by turning down a £31 billion ($47.5 billion) takeover offer from Microsoft in 2008.

Since then the value has plummeted and the company’s current market value is only about £13 billion.

Mr Yang has also resigned from the boards of Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group and said in a statement: “The time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo!”.

In addition to leaving the boards, Mr Yang is also giving up his title of “Chief Yahoo”. He also expressed support for the company’s current management.

“I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future,” he said.

Some observers had seen Jerry Yang as an impediment to the sale or restructuring of the business as it provides a more objective and unemotional approach to the variuos strategic alternatives which are being considered as the company attempts to reinvent itself.

Yahoo has named Scott Thompson- the president of online payments firm Paypal, as its new CEO.He will fill the vacancy left by Carol Bartz, who was dismissed as chief executive in September after failing to turn around the company’s fortunes.

Mr Thompson has headed Paypal, the payments division of eBay, since 2008, during which time its userbase doubled.

Yahoo is currently undergoing a strategic review as it has failed to keep up with rivals such as Google.

First and foremost Mr Thompson has to define what Yahoo should be. Technology firm? Media company? Online services provider? Search engine? Internet portal? All of the above?

Yahoo has spread itself too thin, both managerially and technologically. It tried to compete with Microsoft, Google, AOL and everybody else at the same time – and failed. Yahoo is not known for innovation anymore. Meanwhile, Facebook snuck up from behind and ate Yahoo’s most valuable asset – the time its users spend online.

Selling troubled Yahoo to some naive investor might be an option, but anti-trust challenges make the outcome of any bid doubtful – unless Yahoo’s Chinese partner Alibaba steps forward. But that in itself would be a political Pandora’s box.

The US firm’s key products, beside its search engine, include photo sharing site Flickr and its webmail platform.

However, its domination of webmail – and the ancillary services it offers its email account holders – is under threat as younger users migrate to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Markets gave the news a cool reception. Shares in Yahoo were down 3.1% at the close of trading in New York.

Shares in Paypal’s parent, eBay, closed down 3.77%. The broader Nasdaq tech index closed up 0.33%.

Yahoo’s share price has stagnated at about $15 ever since late 2008, refusing to go above $20, after it rejected an offer from Microsoft to buy up the company at $33 a share.

Revenues at the firm have stagnated, particularly compared with leading search engine Google, and Yahoo has had to lay off workers four times over the past three years.

The poor performance prompted Yahoo’s board to ignominiously turf out Carol Bartz in September last year.

Tim Morse, who had been standing in as chief executive, will return to the role of chief financial officer when Mr Thompson takes over on 9 January.

Yahoo shares rose on speculation that the company is looking to sell its stake in China’s Alibaba Group and also Yahoo Japan.Yahoo rose 6% on the Nasdaq stock exchange after the New York Times reported the firm was aiming to cut its Alibaba stake to 15% from 43%.

According to some estimates, the deal will value Yahoo’s Asian assets at £11 billion ($17 billion).

Yahoo bought its stake in Alibaba for £675 million ($1bn) in 2005.

Despite being one of the biggest brand names, Yahoo has seen its market share tumble amid growing competition.

The likes of Google and Facebook have not only surpassed it in the amount of users but have also seen advertisers flock to them, hurting Yahoo’s revenues.

Dwindling fortunes saw the company fire former chief executive Carol Bartz earlier this year and launch a strategic review of its operations.

There has been growing speculation about a takeover bid for Yahoo, with companies including Microsoft, Alibaba and private equity group Silver Lake being linked to a possible deals.

The main focus of Alibaba’s sale of its Asia assets will be on what developments take place with regards to its stake in Alibaba Group.

Alibaba is China’s biggest ecommerce group and Yahoo’s stake in it is considered by many as one of its most prized assets.

However, relations between the two firms have deteriorated reaching a tipping point earlier this year after Alibaba spun off its online payment business, Alipay.

Yahoo accused the Chinese company of hiding the move from it, saying the change had been made in August 2010, but it only found out about it in March this year.

Google has updated it’s search engine results algorithms in response to timely search queries.The update is designed to work out whether a person wants up to date timely results or historical data.

The search engine estimated the alterations to its core algorithm would make a difference to about 35% of searches.

The changes try to make results more relevant and beef up features which Google believes set it apart from rivals.

By contrast, Microsoft’s Bing search engine emphasises their results from social search news.

“Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh,” wrote Google fellow Amit Singhal in a blogpost explaining the changes.

The changes sought to understand whether a searcher wants results “from the last week, day or even minute” said Mr Singhal.

The update is supposed to offer a better guess of how “fresh” the results should be.

For instance, said Mr Singhal, anyone searching for information about the “Occupy Oakland protests” would probably want up to the minute news.

These need to be distinguished from searches for regular events such as sports results or company reports.

Other types of searches could call on older results, he said. Those looking for a recipe to make tomato sauce for pasta quickly would be happy with a page that is a few months or years old.

The update to improve the “freshness” of results builds on the big update made to the underlying infrastructure of Google’s core indexing system in August 2010 known as Caffeine. That change made it easier for Google to keep its index up to date and to add new sources of information.

Writing on the Search Engine Land news site, analyst Danny Sullivan described the changes to google’s search engine results as “huge”. The last big update to the Google algorithm, known as Panda, affected only 12% of searches.

The update could have potential disadvantages, warned Mr Sullivan.

“Rewarding freshness potentially introduces huge decreases in relevancy, new avenues for spamming or getting “light” content in,” said Mr Sullivan.

The Google search engine algorithm changes are announced at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search

Google is to charge websites for adding their maps to your website.Google Maps wants to charge larger websites for heavy usage of the service.

From 1 January 2012, Google will charge for the Google Maps API service when more than the limit of 25,000 map “hits” are made in a day.

Websites, especially travel firms, use Google Maps to link customers to a view of the destinations they inquire about.

Google is rumoured to be charging £2 per 1,000 views in excess of the limit.

Google maintains the high limit of 25,000 free hits before charging “will only affect 0.35% of users”.

Google said it was aware that developers needed time to evaluate their usage, determine if they were affected and then take action as appropriate.

“We understand that the introduction of these limits may be concerning,” said Thor Mitchell, product manager of the Maps API at Google.

“However, with the continued growth in adoption of the Maps API, we need to secure its long-term future by ensuring that even when used by the highest-volume for-profit sites, the service remains viable. ”

Dr Search has long debated the accuracy of Google Maps- they are linked to the flawed StreetView and Places options within the Google databases.

Don’t worry if you do feature Google Maps on your website as there are FREE alternatives available from at least Yahoo and Microsoft at: http://www.bing.com/maps and http://www.maps.yahoo.com

LinkedIn now has over 120 million users worldwide, including six million in the UK. Two new members join every second and there are nearly one million groups on the site.

It is now the mainstream tool for professionals to network online – and that is why it can’t be ignored as a marketing tool.

An increasing number of businesses are promoting their brands through staff profiles and presence on LinkedIn.

However, making the most of the social media website is a science- as with all social media websites information and security are key issues.

Here are some hot tips on how you can market your business successfully through Linkedin:

• Tell a compelling and authentic story about who you are, how you got to where you are, what you do and why you enjoy it. It is critical that a profile is “personally professional”. Individual profiles that only talk about the company or brand are a big turn off. Encourage your staff to take the same approach.
• Join relevant discussion groups and get involved in them. This can be interesting and rewarding and helps to raise your company’s profile.
• Make sure that your profile and all employees’ profiles link directly to your company page. An individual’s profile should also include information about your company, its products and offerings.
• Ensure you have a comprehensive company page including detailed pages on all products and services.
• Ask for and publish recommendations from satisfied customers for your products and services section on your company page.
• Ensure staff have profiles that are 100 per cent complete. LinkedIn is not like Facebook – individuals are representing a company or brand in a professional capacity on LinkedIn. The more visible your staff are on this network, the greater the visibility of your brand. But this only works if your employees are actively using their LinkedIn account.
• Encourage employees to use blogs, PowerPoint presentations and videos promoting your brand in their profiles and help them with the material.
• Provide guidelines on how to effectively communicate, reminding staff that their activities are representing the company- and can be read my literally millions of people- including your competitors.
• Provide all staff with copy to use to describe your company within their profiles. This ensures a consistent approach and helps avoid disclosing commercially sensitive information to competitors.
• Start your own group to build a community where you can indirectly promote your brand.
• Remember that search engine optimisation is important for every article, profle and group. LinkedIn allows open profiles which means that the search negine will alos pick up on your activities.

Yahoo has reported a quarterly profits fall of 26% as it struggled to boost earnings from online advertising.Net profits in the third quarter were £188 million compared with £247 million during the same period last year.

Last month, Yahoo sacked chief executive Carol Bartz after its online earnings failed to keep pace with those of rivals Google and Facebook.

However, its performance beat market expectations, and its shares ended 3% higher.

Yahoo’s net revenue in the three months to September was £668 million, compared with £700 million the year before.

“My focus, and that of the whole company, is to move the business forward with new technology, partnerships, products and premium personalised content,” said interim chief executive Tim Morse.

Yahoo has been looking for a new chief executive since firing Ms Bartz in September amid mounting frustration at failed efforts to turn the firm around.

Analysts say that in recent weeks there has been increasing speculation that Yahoo, or parts of its business, might be sold to an assortment of buyout firms.

There have been rumours that Microsoft is considering a second attempt at a takeover. Microsoft last offered to buy Yahoo for £29 billion in 2008.

China’s internet firm Alibaba has already said it might be interested in buying Yahoo- however american political sensivities will complicate any chinese purchase due to data spying senstivities of the Yahoo email system.

Google has reported a large rise in profits and sales in the three months to September.The search engine said net income in the third quarter surged 26% to £1.74 billion, up from £1.44 billion in the same period of last year.

Earlier this year, Google launched Google+, a social network to take on Facebook.

“People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate,” claimed Google head Larry Page.

The profits were well ahead of market expectations, and shares in the company rose 6% in trading after the market closed.

This is the fourth successive quarter that the company has increased it’s sales income.

Sales revenue rose 33% to £6.48 billion ($9.72 billion) – just shy of having a quarterly turnover of $10 billion.

Mr larry Page said “We had a great quarter,” he said. “Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark.”

Facebook by comparison has around 800 million users.

As well as generating money through advertising based on search, Google also makes the increasinly popular Android mobile phone operating system.