Yahoo! Search has transitioned to Bing in the US and will be rolling out elsewhere as part of the agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo! where Bing will be the search engine powering Yahoo! and Yahoo! managing the ad sales for searches originating from its search site as well as from Bing’s own site.

This is part of the efforts from Yahoo! to focus more on it’s key areas as well as a joint effort by the companies to take on Google which is the reigning search engine.

Looks like finally we Nokia/Yahoo! users are in for some treat. As per the official blog post, Nokia and Yahoo! are partnering once again (they had previously partnered to offer Yahoo! Go on N series Handsets most notably the likes of N70, N95 and so on).

So, you must be wondering, what’s in it for us: the users? Here’s a brief from the post I would like to reproduce for you:

As part of the alliance Nokia will be the exclusive provider of Yahoo!’s maps and navigation services, branded as “powered by Ovi.” Nokia brings its ample experience in top-drawer, location-based products and maps to Yahoo!’s users. In turn, Yahoo! will become the exclusive global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services, branded as “powered by Yahoo!.” Yahoo! brings its expertise in world-class internet offerings to the table for Ovi users.

From what I see, this pact is a kind of “switching of services” pact between the two giants. Nokia’s Maps services would power Yahoo! Maps as “powered by Ovi Maps” and Ovi Mail/Chat would be run by Yahoo! in return (also to be credited as “Powered By Yahoo!”).

For us Nokia and Yahoo! users, we would definitely gain. Especially, the crowd which owns Nokia phones and use Yahoo! services.

I can’t wait to see the difference that this pact would bring to the overall user experience.

Both the companies are at a difficult juncture in their remarkable success paths. Nokia is facing an onslaught from the various wannabes and they are well equipped indeed (And, you thought being an industry leader was easy! Nokia should learn lessons in industry dominance from Intel), while Yahoo! has been struggling to expand its profits by focussing on areas where it holds expertise. (Fact: Yahoo! is still the most visited homepage on the internet today).

Let’s see what comes out of this exciting collaboration.

Links of Use:

• Yahoo! Yodel Anecdotal (Official Yahoo! Corporate blog)
• Nokia Conversations (Official Nokia Blog)

You can now chat with me live, right here on my website. Plus you don’t have to create any ID whatsoever. It’s simple and easy. And fast and quick!

I love this. This will allow users to chat with me in realtime (if I am online on Yahoo! Messenger) and express their views or whatever.

With the Pingbox, Yahoo! becomes the first major IM service to provide a tool such as this for users to integrate on their favorite social network or website. In fact this flash based tool is easy and customizable and you can put it up on any website.

I have done it here. Will be doing it on my other webpages, where I can. You can do it too. Create your own Pingbox.

Well, I must say that even though my preferred messenger (I have been using the service ever since there was v5.0 of the damn good messenger!), these days there’s been a lot of IM spam on it.

Since spam is like an evil that we have to live with. Pretty much the same way as we have to live with the fact that we haven’t found any extra terrestrial life and yet we (being as curious as we are) keep searching for even the faintest sign of even a micro-organism out there (in the big black space).

Anyway, let us get back to what we really are talking here.

Well, a band of former Google executives have put together a cuil (pronounced ‘COOL’ ) search engine. Or atleast that’s what they have thought of it themselves.

So, what does it have for us? Well, we have to test the results from this new search engine and check it out. I might test it for a couple of days from now and then match the results to that from Google’s own engine.

Yesterday, after finally accessing Yahoo! Mail, I decided to switch to the older version of the Yahoo! Mail client (which is now called Yahoo! Mail Classic).

Well, to my surprise, I found quite a number of changes in the client and then spotted the link at the top right, saying “What’s new?”, which would of course display to us what were the changes that have been made. It does include a complete list of changes but I will mention just some of them here for the rest you can read the complete list of features at Yahoo! Mail:

In another sign of how low corporates can stoop to, just to gain or retain market share, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s MSN have signed a ‘Self-Discipline’ pact regarding their internet services that will make them confirm to the strict compliance of Chinese authorities.

This article reports more on this issue, Yahoo!, MSN sign ‘self-discipline’ pact.

Jerry Yang who recently took over as the new Chief Executive Officer of Internet giant Yahoo! speaks about his new role in the company and the future of the company on the company’s blog.