We're dead, we're over, we're roadkill, we're AltaVista.

Look, I would never admit this to anyone in public, but the truth is that our deal with Google marks the end of the first great battle of the Internet era -- call it Internet 1.0 -- and we've lost. That's what it means. We've capitulated. We've surrendered. We're dead. We're over. We're roadkill. We're AltaVista. We're Lycos. We've admitted we can't survive on our own and have turned to our biggest enemy to save us. When they write the history of the Internet, Yahoo! might be more than a footnote, but not much more.

Sure, we'll try to spin it otherwise, but we won't have much luck because we're about as good at spinning as we are at running our company, which is to say, not very. Have you ever seen our PR people in action? Me either. Do we even have any PR people? I have no idea. Whatever we're paying them, it's 100% too much. Who else could go into a PR battle against Microsoft and come out looking like the low-IQ side of the equation? Honestly, I've never ever in my entire life seen an organization that handles marketing and public relations as badly as we do, except maybe Facebook, but that's only because they don't do anything at all. They don't even try.

The Secret Diary of [Steve Jobs] Jerry Yang: The first great battle of the Internet is over...

Microsoft's pursuit of Yahoo

"It is a shotgun marriage, but the person holding the shotgun is Google."

Vint Cerf on Internet security

Vint Cerf is vice-president and “chief internet evangelist” at Google. If the internet needs proselytisers, Mr Cerf, 64, is more than qualified – he is considered one of the architects of the worldwide web, having developed the protocols that govern it.

At the weekend the American computer scientist gave warning that poor security and poor software design were undermining the reliability of the internet. He said that he was worried about the robustness of computer software and the exposure of the network to hacks that alter the website addressing system.

Business big shot: Vint Cerf (TimesOnline, 27 August 2007)

DoubleClick: in play

DoubleClick, the New York-based Internet advertising network, is no YouTube: It is an unsexy, revenue-producing business run by grown-ups who keep a low profile. It may also be worth more than YouTube, which Google bought for $1.65 billion: Google, Microsoft and other Internet heavyweights are reportedly willing to pay more than $2 billion for DoubleClick.

If they do, will the purchase boost the fortunes of DoubleClick's competitors? Many of the YouTube also-rans thought the larger site's purchase would increase their value in the eyes of potential acquirers. That hasn't panned out.

The DoubleClick Effect - Forbes.com

Review: Nokia N800 Internet Tablet

My dad, of blessed memory, always used to say "you can tell a man from a boy by the price of his toys."

This one's for you, Pop.

Let's say you've bought into the notion that "the Internet is the computer." Much of the information you use in your daily life is either online or is accessible from there; you're wired to the max at work and at home, you've got a Wi-Fi equipped laptop, maybe you've also got a BlackBerry or PDA, and in short you are, IP-wise at least, extremely well-connected.

You succumbed to an early case of iPhone lust, but then you started thinking about it: Do you really want your mobile telephone, your iPod, and a small-form Internet tablet all in the same device? What's the battery life going to be like on that bad boy if you're using it for all three purposes? Do you really want a single point of failure for all three functions?

I already have a nice, rugged, compact cellphone that pulls a great signal and, you know, makes and receives phone calls. That's truly all I want out of a cellphone. It does those things just fine.

I doubt that anyone is going to improve, any time soon, on the form factor, the ease of use, or the bang for the buck of Apple's 8GB iPod Nano. Even Apple.

And I certainly don't have a burning desire to get sucked into an expensive monthly data-rate plan on a two-year contract with AT&T as a precondition of spending $500-700 on an iPhone when it comes out.

But, you know, the "Internet device in the small-but-usable" form factor is still very attractive. Cellphone screens are just too small for extended Internet use, but there are times when you don't want to be lugging a laptop around with you.

The clever Finns at Nokia have an answer to this dilemma.

Meet the N800 Internet Tablet (retail price $399, street price $375 or so).

Meet the solution.

If you're usually near a WiFi hotspot (in New York City, I'm rarely more than a hundred yards from one, and my office and apartment building are thoroughly saturated) this might be the device of your dreams.

The specs (full details here): The N800 runs an embedded variant of Linux (really), gets its Internet access via WiFi (although it's also capable of matching up with your Bluetooth-enabled cellphone), weighs about seven ounces, is roughly three inches tall by six wide, and half an inch thick. and has a nice, bright wide screen for your webular activities, plus a built-in webcam for still pictures and videoconferencing.

Comparative sizes (an Altoids tin, an N800, and a 13" Macbook)

Three geekly things.

It ships with the Opera web browser; a dedicated RSS reader; e-mail and chat clients; a media player (audio/video) and a host of similar tools; you can also download all kinds of third-party software for it already, including Gizmo (and soon, Skype) if you'd like to use the tablet as a Voice Over IP (VOIP) telephone.

The resolution on the wide, bright touchscreen is an astounding 800 x 480; if you have a pair of middle-aged eyes, rocker switches on the top of the device makes zooming in and out for easier reading a breeze.

Data entry is in three modes: handwriting recognition, which works okay, and two different sizes of virtual keyboard, one that works well with the included stylus, and one that works well with my fat fingertips.

Rated battery life is about four hours of constant use or ten days of standby; in practice, due to Nokia's excellent power management features, I can use the device on and off all day long without recharging, and that's all I really care about.

Some screenshots (click to enlarge them all)

Here's the "default" view when you turn the device on; you can select applets to be displayed on the main screen. I've got a Google search window, an RSS news feed, a streaming audio control with my favorite Internet radio stations, a clock/calendar and a media player ready to go.

Basic view.

A web browser-view in full screen mode:

Web browser.

And yes, it really is Linux under the hood. Shell window screengrab, showing virtual keyboard in stylus-size:

Surprise!

(Xterm not included in the base configuration, but geeks will quickly make their way to Maemo.org, where this and many other Linux-related goodies can be found.)

The only downside, so far: there are very competent text editors, and even a port of the GNU spreadsheet application, but there is currently not any way to edit (or even reliably read) Microsoft Office documents on the N800.

With improved browser support coming, however (a port of Mozilla Minimo is actively in the works) offering access to online applications like Zoho or Google Docs, this problem will soon be solved.

I've had my N800 for about a week now, and after putting it through its paces, it has earned itself a permanent place in the manbag.

And now that the FAA has given the greenlight to WiFi on airplanes (some US carriers may be rolling that out as soon as early 2008), this will be the device that I whip out if I want to get a little work done in my coach seat.

Related: Ecstatic review of the N800 in The Inquirer

Don't be evil (unless, you know, there's a lot of money involved)

Google on Wednesday recommended to its shareholders that they vote against a proposal calling for new policies to protect internet freedoms.

The world's biggest internet company gave no explanation in an SEC filing why it opposed the proposal, which is being put forward by The New York state pension funds, one of the biggest investors in the US, at its annual meeting in May.

The group has submitted an identical proposal for consideration at Google rival Yahoo's annual meeting in June.

Funds press Google on Internet freedoms (Financial Times, April 5, 2007, via MSNBC)

Google may not have explained it, but I can sum it up in one word: China.

Larry and Sergey's famous dictum, "Don't be evil" (in summing up Google's corporate philosophy) clearly has some wiggle room built in.