Google ups the Ante in MicroHoo soap

Google just upped the ante in the MicroHoo soap. Just two days ago I commented on Microsoft's Steve Ballmer saying "Now is the time to strike a deal with Yahoo." In my blogpost I wrote that the teaming up of Microsoft and Yahoo would be their only chance to stand a snowballs chance in hell against the rise of Google.

First one to act on Ballmer's remarks is not leaderless Yahoo, but the upperdog, Google as it appoints former Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schacter.

Joshua Schachter, the creator of one of the most important consumer web applications in recent time, has joined Google, according to venture capitalist Josh Koppleman. Schachter's social bookmarking service Delicious was acquired by Yahoo! three years ago last month. Schachter was required to spend 2 years at the company after the acquisition but has now been a free man for six months. Schachter was working on some sort of secret project and worked with Upcoming.org co-founder Andy Baio, also rich and free years after a Yahoo! acquisition of his site, on one of the coolest Greasemonkey scripts we've ever seen.

Apparently all that innovative energy will now go into Google. Schachter was vocally frustrated in his final days at Yahoo! with what a drag it was to try to innovate inside that company - we hope he finds a more supportive environment at Google. We assume he doesn't need to work, so he must have gotten himself a pretty sweet gig there. We are excited to see what Schachter and his new friends at Google come up with together.

We've asked Schachter for details about his new job and will update this post with anything we learn. (Updated: Schachter stopped by here but didn't have anything to say other than telling us to spell his name right.) TechCrunch smartly noticed that Schacter's LinkedIn profile now says that he's a "member of the technical staff at Google." Congrats on the new Job, Josh!

(Source: Read-Write-Web Jobwire)

As the article reports, Schachter has the inside info on Yahoo where he got frustrated. Microsoft might be looking to get a frim foothold on the search market by acquiring, or teaming with Yahoo, but Google is changing the ballpark instantly. Adding a social heartbeat like Del.icio.us to searches might lead to interesting ventures.

Feed Out - Feed in

Every morning I wake up I stumble towards the coffee maker for a cup of coffee, then turn on my screen to have a look at my launchpad, a netvibes portal. Default tab is metaverse news.

After several weeks, or months of producing glitchy links 3pointD has been removed from my startpage. A great blog has died. Another blog I removed was Metaversed.com. Sad but true, it no longer produces the information I'm interested in.

At this moment there's only one blog that came to mind in replacing these two: Roy Cassini's Digado (Digital Adaption) who has a great blog with a broad interest in the metaverse with a focus on the marketing side of life.

So, two feeds out on my daily starting page, one blogfeed in. Means there's an empty spot. Which blog should fill that empty space?

Also, a number of additions have made it to my Del.icio.us list and will appear in my blogroll (once I fixed the max count in the template) on the left (if you use IE):

• Meta Live
• Happy Creations
• Metaplaces (NL)
• SLAndreaMedia (Fr)
• iVinnie