Mozilla rolled out a new version of Firefox late Monday. While the newest version of the browser contains many new features such as the webRTC chat client Hello, the change users will notice most is the absence of Google as the browser’s default search engine.

As Mozilla and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) did not renew their agreement this year to place Google as the browser’s default search engine, Mozilla struck a deal with Yahoo instead. Neither Mozilla nor Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) have released the terms of the agreement between the two companies, but for the sake of context in 2013 Mozilla announced that it had received $275 million in revenue from Google that year.

Mozilla and Google had been partners for approximately 10 years, virtually since the first day of the Firefox browser’s existence. Relations between the two companies began to get frosty when Google launched its Chrome browser.

For now, the default search engine change will only impact users in North America. Users in Russia, Belarusian and Kazakh localizations will instead see Russian search engine Yandex as their default search engine within the browser.

Another update included in the new version of Firefox is webRTC chat client Hello. This provides an open-source chat, video and voice alternative to Skype or Google Chat.

The post Firefox 34 Marks The Beginning Of Mozilla’s Post-Google World appeared first on VR World.

Yahoo (NASDAQ: YAHOO) and Mozilla announced Thursday that they had reached a deal that would place Yahoo as the default search engine inside Mozilla’s desktop and mobile browsers for the next five years.

“Google has been the Firefox global search default since 2004. Our agreement came up for renewal this year, and we took this as an opportunity to review our competitive strategy and explore our options,” Mozilla CEO Chris Beard said in a blog post. “In evaluating our search partnerships, our primary consideration was to ensure our strategy aligned with our values of choice and independence, and positions us to innovate and advance our mission in ways that best serve our users and the Web.”

It should be noted that this deal is only for the US, as Mozilla explained in a blog post.

“In most countries, including the UK,  Firefox users will not see a change. In the US, Yahoo will become the default search, Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia,” a company spokesperson said.

Since the inception of the Firefox, Google has been the default browser of Firefox. This relationship has brought Mozilla the bulk of its revenue, accounting for nearly 84% of the Foundation’s income in 2010. As Google’s Chrome browser rose in prominence and popularity, the relationship between Google and Mozilla began to grow testy.

In 2011, as Google and Mozilla’s search engine deal was coming up for renewal, Google fired a number of volleys at Mozilla in the form of commissioned report outlining why Chrome was a much better browser platform. However, a rival report found that there were serious methodological errors in the report’s analysis.

“Accuvant disabled highly relevant portions of non-Google browsers’ protection without noting the impact on the overall results,” noted the report. “This error in testing resulted in an erroneously negative assessment of the browsers’ protection capabilities, since some browsers will only block malware during or after download and before execution.

Yahoo, which has struggled to grow in the shadow of Google, naturally welcomed the news.

“At Yahoo, we believe deeply in search,” said CEO Marissa Mayer in a blog post. “It’s an area of investment and opportunity for us. It’s also a key growth area for us”.

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Here is the daily roundup from Japanese consumer tech and tech business websites and news publications for November 11, 2014.

Rohm develops ultra low energy biosensor
Rohm Semiconductor Japan, in cooperation with Kobe University, develops a wearable, all purpose biosensor. The new biosensor has a very low energy current value of 38 microamperes, which is about only a fifth of what current biosensors use.

Sony showcases its 147-inch 4K display projector
Sony (TYO: 6758) unveils its newest ultra-high end display, the VPL-GTZ1. Like its predecessor, it is a display projector with a 147-inch screen size, and uses its proprietary 4K Silicon X-Tal Reflective Display technology. It will be catered to business entities at an estimated price of about $47,000.000.

Sharp’s Japanese tea machine gets an award
Ocha Presso, Sharp’s (TYO: 6753) product line of automatic Japanese tea making machines, has won this year’s Food Action Nippon Award. The award given was in the research, development and new technologies category, earning points for its overall efficiency and innovative build design.

Japanese yen pulls down consumer tech market
A statistical financial report from Japanese consumer tech marketing analysis firm BCN has revealed that Japan’s digital consumer electronics market slightly went down in the past two months. The observed reason for the decreased market sales was the price adjustment of standard commodities, as the Japanese yen value plummeted over the same time period.

Yahoo Japan cuts down on mobile tech services
Yahoo Japan (TYO: 4689) announces that it will soon end some of its lesser used mobile tech services. Starting from November this year to April next year, a total of 12 smartphone applications, three PC-based web services, and two mobile phone services will no longer be active for its current subscribers.

Evernote collaborates with Nikkei for Evernote Context
Evernote opens a partnership agreement with major Japanese economics media company Nikkei, to publish its articles into Evernote’s recently launched Context feature. Evernote has already announced that it has raised $20 million for the collaborative project, with both companies expecting its execution as the year 2015 arrives.

Asus relaunches Chromebox in Japan
Asus Japan relaunches Chromebox locally, this time catered for personal users. Along with its launch, a new line up of Chromebook models is also slated for local release on the same date.

The post Eye on Japan: What’s Making Headlines in Tokyo For November 11 appeared first on VR World.

The cat is out of the bag. After previously declining to disclose income figures related to its startup acquisitions, Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) has shared that it expects to earn $100 million in revenue from Tumblr starting 2015.

Yahoo recently released its Q3 2014 earnings report, in which the company exceeded analyst expectations for the quarter with an EPS of $0.52 compared to $0.33 forecast. However, this particular period has been marked by several one-off items, such as cash gains from the proceeds of sale of shares after the Alibaba IPO (NYSE:BABA), as well as share buy-backs, which resulted in a rise in Yahoo’s stock price.

Front-and-center at this time is Yahoo’s strategy moving forward, particularly with the availability of $12 billion cash and cash equivalent. While small-scale acquisitions have characterized CEO Marissa Mayer’s tenure so far, these were meant to bolster the company’s engineering talent. Activist investors have sought for either a breakup of the company into product-focused components, merger with another major Internet firm or a big product-oriented acquisition.

Tumblr had been one of these high-profile acquisitions by Yahoo, which snapped up the microblogging startup for $1 billion in mid 2013. That particular strategic move is paying off. In an earnings conference, Mayer says Tumblr’s audience has grown by 40% to 420 million users, which include active publishers and users who read microblogs. During this period, the number of registered blogs doubled to 206 million.

“We’ve come really far, really fast,” Mayer said during the call. She added that Tumblr will achieve “positive EBITDA” as of calendar year 2015, which may be considered a surprise by naysayers who believe that the Tumblr acquisition was a failure on Yahoo’s part. Specifically, Tumblr is expected to bring $100 million in revenues, largely helped by its growing audience and the introduction of new sponsored advertising formats. The company is, in fact, actively pitching its new ad formats to marketers, citing the effectiveness of media-rich content across the site’s younger user base, mostly made up of millennials.

Still, it may be concerning that Yahoo reported a decline in display ad revenue as of Q3 2014, which, at $447 million, was 5% lower compared to the same period the previous year. However, Mayer remains optimistic: she targets Yahoo’s native mobile ad business to earn $250 million, which may be an indicator that the company intends to use its resources to improve its ad platform with focus on mobile devices.

For Tumblr users, this is good news, as it means Yahoo intends to keep the platform going, in contrast with other apps and services it has scuttled after acquisition. But a piece of bad news: it will mean ads, ads and more ads.

Feature photo: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer with Tumblr Founder David Karp

The post Good Buy: Tumblr to Bring Yahoo $100M Annual Revenue appeared first on VR World.

Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) has published its third quarter 2014 report, with a positive outlook after outperforming estimates. But given that many of these gains are brought about by recent one-off transactions, it will be up to CEO Marissa Mayer and management to determine how Yahoo’s strategy moving forward will leverage these gains.

Yahoo’s earnings per share in its Q3 2014 report was at $0.52, exceeding analyst expectations of $0.33, with revenue likewise exceeding expectations at $1.09 billion vs. a $1.03 billion estimate.

“We had a good, solid third quarter. We delivered $1.094 billion in revenue ex-TAC [traffic acquisition costs, or commissions paid to web publishers] and $1.148 billion in GAAP revenue,” says CEO Marissa Mayer in a statement. “This represents 1% growth in revenue ex-TAC and 1% growth in GAAP revenue. We achieved this revenue growth through strong growth in our new areas of investment – mobile, social, native and video – despite industry headwinds in some of our large, legacy businesses.”

Revenue from search grew 4% year-on-year to $450 million this quarter, while display ad revenue is down 5% to $396 million. However, what’s interesting is that Yahoo decided to unbundle its revenue from mobile, which it has reported at $200 million for Q3 2014, which amounts to 17% of its revenue this quarter. The company expects to exceed $1.2 billion in mobile revenue throughout the year. “We have invested deeply in mobile and we are seeing those investments pay off,” says Mayer. “Not only are our mobile products attracting praise and engagement from users and industry awards, they are generating meaningful revenue for Yahoo.”

One-off gains

Yahoo earned a significant amount of cash from the Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) IPO, after selling $6.3 billion (net of tax) worth of stock from its stake in the Chinese e-commerce giant. The company’s EPS figure would be markedly lower if it excluded this sale.

This quarter, Yahoo also booked a repurchase of 8 million shares of common stock at $282 million. The company also entered into an accelerated share repurchase from a financial institution, buying back 23.5 million shares.

Its current cash, cash equivalent and marketable securities holdings are now at $12 billion. Analysts contend that Yahoo’s future would largely depend on the strategies that Mayer and management will undertake, in view of its cash position. It can be noted that after Mayer’s appointment as CEO, the company had acquired $1.8 billion worth in several technology startups, but these acquisitions were mainly made in order to bolster the firm’s engineering talent.

With its cash holdings, Yahoo is in a better position to acquire companies that will strengthen the company’s revenue-generating activities. “We are moving from a company that makes Web pages and monetizes them through banners to a company that makes mobile apps and monetizes them through native ads,” Mayer said in Yahoo’s earnings conference call.

For instance, Yahoo is reportedly in talks with cross-platform digital advertising service BrightRoll for a potential acquisition. In addition, activist investor Starboard Value have proposed mergers with major Internet and media companies like AOL, in order to further bolster Yahoo’s position in the industry.

The current calendar year has been a mixed one for Yahoo, so far, demonstrating flat growth in key areas in Q1 and missing earnings and sales expectations in Q2. With a turnaround in its Q3 earnings report, Yahoo will be a company to watch in terms of what it will do to maintain momentum.

Feature image credit: Katherine Welles / Shutterstock.com

The post Yahoo Exceeds Q3 2014 Forecast, But What's Next After One-Off Gains? appeared first on VR World.

Ireland is set to put an end to the so-called “Double Irish” tax loophole that has effectively rendered the country a tax haven for technology companies in the past couple of decades. This has been prompted by pressure from the international community, although businesses involved face the prospect of suddenly having to pay billions of dollars in taxes once the changes come into effect.

With the Double Irish system, businesses can minimize their tax liability from international operations by setting up two subsidiary companies within Ireland — thus the “Double Irish” nomenclature. One is an Ireland-resident company that runs the operations and books revenues. Another is a registered corporation resident in a separate, tax-free jurisdiction such as Bermuda. The Ireland-resident company passes on its revenues as royalty fees to the other company for the use of intellectual property, and this is booked as non-taxable revenue because of its residency in a different (usually lower or non-tax) country, thereby minimizing tax liability by the first company.

This is the model employed by companies like Apple (NASDAQ: APPL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and other major companies in various industries with international operations. Firms like Apple actually employ an additional scheme called the “Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich” regime, in which products and services sold by the first Irish subsidiary are first booked by a Netherlands-based subsidiary, thereby resulting in even lower tax liabilities.

About 1,100 multinational firms employ about 160,000 Irish nationals through subsidiaries — the lenient tax regime had originally been intended as a means to encourage investment into the country. As of 2012, US companies with subsidiaries in Ireland enjoyed an effective tax rate of 2.6%, which is significantly lower than the standard 12.5% corporate tax rate other Irish firms have to pay. By comparison, US corporate tax rates can go as high as 39.1%.

Anti-competition?

However, it has been deemed as anti-competitive by the European Commission, along with similar schemes employed by companies in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. In a move to be more compliant, Ireland has announced a few changes in its latest Budget statement. Michael Noonan, Ireland’s Finance Minister, says changes will take effect by 2015, during which new companies registered in the country are required to be Ireland-resident, and therefore no longer able to employ the double-Irish scheme. Existing companies will have to gradually phase out of this scheme until 2020, during which these would have to make changes to their accounting systems to be compliant with the new regulations, or look for alternative means for minimizing tax liability.

To help maintain a business-friendly environment, regulators are looking into developing a “knowledge development box” that seeks to provide lower effective tax rates to companies that do business on the basis of certain intellectual property. This is the same case with other countries, such as the Netherlands, which uses an “innovation box” scheme that charges companies a 5% tax rate for businesses that employ certain patents — nominally lower than the standard corporate income tax. The UK has a similar scheme, which results in 10% tax, about half compared to the usual 20% to 21%.

While neither Ireland nor the companies involved share figures, analysts estimate that the change in tax regime could collectively cost technology companies billions in the years to come, even with the “patent box” model and a significantly lower tax rate for these firms. Reduced after-tax earnings would possibly mean lower valuations and reduced dividends. Or, tech companies could start passing on cost increases to customers.

Tax avoidance to continue

The argument being that tax avoidance does not equate to tax evasion, legitimately avoiding or reducing tax liabilities does have an impact on international relations and competition. For instance, the European Commission has investigated Apple’s case, in which it effectively gets a 2% tax rate through its Irish and Dutch subsidiaries. Its preliminary view (PDF) are that earlier tax rulings by Ireland “in favour of the Apple group constitute State aid” and that “the Commission has doubts about the compatibility of such State aid with the internal market.”

Authorities have therefore been requested to submit documents pertaining to the Apple group in its jurisdiction, including cost-sharing arrangements between the subsidiaries, as well as details on the intellectual property covered by the sharing agreement. The point here is that Ireland is considered to be unfairly competing with other EU nations for job creation and economic growth by attracting foreign firms to set up shop locally.

Some believe that Ireland’s decision to put a stop to the double Irish scheme might not necessarily result in shutting down of tax avoidance strategies by business entities altogether. Rather, the shift toward an IP-based “knowledge box” system is likely to result in similar tax savings, but with better transparency. Analysts predict that Ireland might go for a tax rate close to the 2% Apple is currently enjoying, or at best it will be less than the 10% that the UK charges for IP-based profits. This way, Ireland will remain a lucrative destination for multinationals, while avoiding the ire of the rest of Europe for uncompetitive practices.

As a matter of economic policy, a loose fiscal policy — which includes reduction of tax rates — is a means by which governments can stimulate economic growth. This is something that Ireland has taken advantage of in its need to stimulate the economy during the past two decades. However, as of 2015, Budget is set to put an end to seven-year austerity measures in an attempt to further stimulate growth. As per Finance Minister Noonan, these “proactive measures” are not necessarily going to put an end to the tax benefits that multinationals get, but are meant to introduce stability. “By taking action now, we are giving certainty to investors about our corporate tax regime for the next decade.”

The post Ireland to Plug Tax Loophole, May Cost Tech Companies Billions appeared first on VR World.

According to the NextBigWhat, Yahoo’s Bangalore software development center will be laying off nearly all of its workers and shuttering the entire operation. Supposedly, only 250 people will remain, many of whom will be given an option to move to the company’s Sunnyvale HQ in the US.

While no official figures about layoffs or timeframes were given by Yahoo, the rumor states that they are all to be given the axe on November 7th, and that most of them will be getting five to six months of severence, which should hopefully give them enough money and time to find new jobs. If not, maybe it will give them enough start up capital (if they band together) to start a new company of their own. The article mentions that this doesn’t appear to be part of any Yahoo cost-cutting measure but rather a move by the company to consolidate its development centers.

Either way, Yahoo is not the thriving company it once was and there’s no doubt that these cost savings from closing the Bangalore development center are going to reflect positively for the company in the future. The real question is how this will affect the company’s ability to execute in the future and whether or not they really did need this 2,250 person development center. They also managed to catch wind of rumors saying that it was only 600 people and that those people were mostly engineers, which may also be true. However, Yahoo did issue them the following statement:

“As we ensure that Yahoo is on a path of sustainable growth, we’re looking at ways to achieve greater efficiency, collaboration and innovation across our business. To this effect, we’re making some changes to the way we operate in Bangalore leading to consolidation of certain teams into fewer offices. Yahoo will continue to have a presence in India and Bangalore remains an important office.”

So yes, there is going to be some form of downsizing at Yahoo in India’s Bangalore offices, we simply don’t know whether to believe the entire staff or just 600 and that’s why this is still a rumor.

The post Yahoo to Lay Off Most of Indian Staff appeared first on VR World.

A security researcher has discovered that Yahoo has become a victim of the newly discovered Shellshock vulnerability (also known as bash bug) via Romanian hackers gaining access to Yahoo’s systems. There is already confirmation of the fact that Yahoo has been hacked via an email from Yahoo’s security team. This was originally submitted to Yahoo, but isn’t eligible for their bug bounty program, which for some reason doesn’t reward people for finding chinks in Yahoo’s armor for them before hackers do. This appears to be a significant flaw in Yahoo’s security policies and must be addressed by Marissa Mayer herself.

He states:
Disclosure and disclaimer: This document is being released due to several high profile companies being infiltrated using the recent Shellshock vulnerability, and what I have deemed as an improper response, or lack thereof, to resolving the issue from certain key companies contacted, as well as the FBI. Amongst the affected companies are Yahoo! and Lycos, major players and names in the technology world. This breach affects ALL of us in one way or another, and it’s crucial that this problem be resolved with haste. The FBI took the information down and went on their way. Yahoo! has not responded at all. I’ve attempted to email them, call them, and resorted to contacting Marissa Mayer directly via both email and Twitter, neither to which I have received a response as of yet. The ignoring of this issue is grossly negligent and even almost criminal. As such, I felt that for the safety of anyone using these services, it would be best to publicly disclose as much information as needed to get them moving and working towards resolving the issue before things get worse. All research and testing discussed in this paper was performed by Jonathan D. Hall of Future South Technologies.

Yahoo has been struggling to gain back trust from users after their email data breaches and the overall meltdown of the company as an internet destination for most users. Under Marissa Mayer’s rule, the company has tried to become more of a content provider rather than a search or news destination. Their most popular applications like Flickr have struggled to really retain their audiences and regain the losses to other services like 500px due to simply being too unwilling to listen to the community and simply give them what they want. Flickr was once the default destination for professional and amateur photographers and since the service’s decline tons of viable competitors have cropped up to give people what they want.

The problem here for Yahoo is that they simply are not taking security risks seriously and continually find themselves the targets of hackers. Why? Because they appear not to take security as seriously as they say they do. And Yahoo still has a fairly large user base, especially Yahoo mail, which means that they become a big juicy target for hackers that know that Yahoo is slow to adapt and secure. The security game is an ever evolving one and if your security team is not constantly working to address new threats and actively working to prevent them, then you are going to end up like Yahoo, a sitting duck and popular target.

Yahoo has said to Bloomberg that three of their servers were compromised but that no data was taken, which may still need to be evaluated if only three servers were accessed.

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