They had tries this feature last year during the Indian Premier League cricket matches, and they will now go ahead with this service on a regular basis.

An announcement on the site says, “Today, we’ll also start gradually rolling out our live streaming beta platform, which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube. The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we’ll roll this offering out incrementally over time.”

For these live broadcasts, users can turn to http://www.youtube.com/live.

They will start with a live relay of ‘The DigiTour’ which will be running for 6 weeks across various cities in America.

YouTube partners, in the cities where the concerts will be held, will be able to make the most of this opportunity by reaching out to a large audience during this event as also during all future live events.

Live programming on YouTube will be available only to the four selected media partners, and not to individual users. These partners are:

• Rocketboom – a news and entertainment channel
• Young Hollywood – a celebrity and lifestyle programming channel
• Howcast – an instructional video service
• BarelyPolitical – Next New Networks’ political satire channel

Live streaming on BarelyPolitical’s YouTube channel

While YouTube has experimented with streaming live video in the past, such as on the occasion of U.S. President Obama’s first State of the Union address and the Indian Premier League cricket matches these were exceptional instances. This time, YouTube will be testing a new technology that will allow their partners to stream live videos continuously over an extended period of time.

The new service will eventually allow users to chat and interact with broadcasters and other users directly, even as they watch the video. They will only require a webcam or external USB / Firewire camera to do so.

Live streaming and live comments tested on YouTube

While this development from Google may be seen as a move to check Facebook, which has been eating into YouTube’s video market share, it will also lead to competition with other live streaming sites like Justin.tv, Ustream and Livestream.

YouTube has not yet set a date by which live streaming will be available to the general public. However, it is believed that the live streaming facility will be limited to professionally content producers only. The service is not likely to be extended to all individual users.

According to sources, Microsoft has declined to make any upfront payment or revenue guarantee, which Yahoo! had initially asked for.

Microsoft search technology will now be used on all Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will also be able to sell search ads on its own sites as well as on Bing through the Microsoft adCenter technology.

The deal, though not quite as all encompassing as expected, gives Yahoo! the control it wanted over its advertisers and consumer data.

According to details available, the partnership for online search and advertising will be for a period of 10 years.

In a joint statement issued by the companies, the deal was forecasted to increase Yahoo’s! annual operating income by about $500 million, while also reducing their capital expenditure by$200 million.

The deal is likely to give Microsoft a larger share of the search market, thus helping it to fight rival Google. According to the latest reports from comScore, Google has about 65% of the U.S. search market, while Microsoft Bing has 8.4% and Yahoo! has 19.6%. Jointly the two companies will account for about 30% of the market share.