Online News Squared ™

Our friend Jeff Jarvis flips the bird at the Associated Press and is urging civil disobedience against the wire service for its heavy handed tactics over using even small amounts of AP content online.

“The AP is flouting fair use and fair comment. It is ignoring the essential structure of the link architecture of the web. It is declaring war on blogs and commenters,” Jarvis wrote on BuzzMachine Thursday night. “So let’s fire back. I urge bloggers everywhere to go to the AP and reproduce a story at length in solidarity with Cadenhead and Drudge Retort” (to which AP issued a take-down notice over “copying” that ran from 39 to 79 words).

Jeff then quoted a nice chunk of an AP story.

And now, 203 words worth of of Squared Solidarnosc.

Yahoo embraces Google after ending Microsoft talks

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE – 18 hours ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo Inc.’s efforts to revive takeover talks with Microsoft Corp. have reached a dead end, prompting the Internet pioneer to hire online search leader Google Inc. to handle some of its advertising sales.

The news disclosed Thursday caused Yahoo shares to plunge 10 percent as investors abandoned hope that Microsoft would renew a nearly five-month quest to buy the Sunnyvale-based company.

While a stock sell-off is never welcome news for any company, Wall Street’s disenchantment comes at a particularly bad time for Yahoo and its board of directors.

Yahoo is trying to fend off a shareholder mutiny led by activist investor Carl Icahn, who has vowed to replace the company’s board because of the way the directors handled the Microsoft negotiations.

But Icahn has been hoping to engineer a sale to Microsoft, so some shareholders may be reluctant to support his attempted coup unless he can demonstrate his slate of directors has a better turnaround plan than the current board.

Icahn did not return phone calls seeking comment Thursday.

The fate of Yahoo’s board is scheduled to be determined at the company’s Aug. 1 annual meeting.