The last CEO, Carol Bartz, had been asked to go by chairman Roy Bostock quite unceremoniously last September, and CFO Tim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the beleaguered company.

Yahoo! has now announced that they have found a suitable candidate in Scott Thompson, to lead the company. He has been the president of online payments firm, Paypal, which is a subsidiary of eBay.

Mr. Thompson has a tough task ahead of him, to say the least. He will not only have to focus on rebuilding the core business of Yahoo! but he will also have to carry out a strategic review of what new investments to make and existing business lines to dispose off.

According to Stuart Miles of technology blogsite Pocket-lint, Thompson will have to decide on whether they should concentrate on product innovation or content creation.

Yahoo! was founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang in January 1994 and was incorporated in March 1995. The company had a great run for the first decade or so. It was around 2005, with the rapid growth of Google that their troubles started. In 2008 they had to lay-off several employees, but when Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to take over the company at $33 per share, they refused the offer, saying that they were being under-valued.

However, the company has never fully recovered from that set back, and the share price continues to hover around $15 ever since. Will Scott Thomson change Yahoo!’s fortunes?

If this deal, reported by the Wall Street Journal, is finalised, Google will provide retailers with data about their users, which the retailer can then use to target specific ads and special offers to users in their vicinity.

In addition to being extremely beneficial to users and retailers, thereby driving adoption of Android mobile phones, this service will help Google earn more through ad revenue.

Holders of debit and credit cards from Citigroup and Mastercard will be allowed to activate a mobile payment application on their Android 2.3 phones. This will eliminate the need to carry separate debit and credit cards.

Google will be able to manage the credit card accounts as well as track the spending habits of the customer, through a special application.

Verifone Systems, a company that makes card readers, will make the contact-less devices required for this purpose. This system will function on near field communication (NFC) technology, much like the mobile payment system Orange plan to launch in the UK.

The near field communications technology used in these devices is far more sophisticated than the magnetic strip in the traditional debit or credit card and hence it will be safer to use.

Expected to be launched some time this year, this new service is expected to face competition from Apple and Blackberry, who will also soon make use of similar technology in collaboration with other credit card companies and financial institutions.

Google will, however, have to ensure that they do not upset the advocates of user privacy when they provide user data to retailers in their efforts to drive more ad revenue.

The service is being introduced jointly by Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR, in conjunction with computer services group Atos Origin. The service will be called Buyster and is likely to be introduced in France by summer this year.

www.buyster.fr

Buyster will allow users to make payments for purchases made online, by linking their mobile phone to a bank card. The new service will be based on the same Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that Orange is using for mobile payments in the UK. Users will be able to just wave or touch their mobile phones against an in-store reader to make a payment.

Mobile operator Orange estimates that the service will soon be made available to more than 50 million users. French online retailers are extremely happy with the news of this service, as the convenience it will provide can only help to improve business.

Laurent Bailly, head of marketing at Buyster, said that the service will later be extended across Europe. However, many observers are raising doubts about the possibility of the success of the service outside of France.

The Street reports that the deal is in the final stages of completion. Reliable sources have even revealed that the deal may be announced as soon as the 26th of October, when PayPal holds its developers conference in San Francisco.

So far, Google has only offered their own payment system, CheckOut, as a mode of payment for users who buy various applications from the Android Market. This system, which requires users who don’t already have an account to create one or enter their credit card number is a little cumbersome, and can dissuade potential buyers.

The mode of payment that Google has used so far has created difficulties not only for users, but also for the developers. The introduction of PayPal as a mode of payment, will not only simplify the payment procedure for those who buy apps from the Android Market, but this will also help Google to compete with Apple’s App Store and iTunes, which use a single click mode of payment.

Developers have also had several problems with Google’s payment system, including the fact that foreign currencies are not easily accepted. Google accepts paid apps in only about 13 countries, while Apple does so in about 90 countries.

A deal between Google and PayPal could help streamline all these hassles, and at the same time, give competitors such as Apple and BlackBerry a run for their money.

This is also one of the steps the site is taking to generate for more revenue for itself, which should definitely make their investors happy. According to Silicon Alley Insider, the introduction of an ad network is another step they are taking with the same goal in mind.

TechCrunch spotted a ‘Pay with Facebook’ button on the Group Card application. This new system for payments will be available to all accounts that use Group Card.

This new button is similar to the Facebook Connect button, which had been introduced a while ago.

When a user clicks on the ‘Pay with Facebook’ button, an overlay opens, asking the user to confirm that he/she wishes to pay through his Facebook credits.

Other payment modes, such as Visa and MasterCard will continue to be available to users.

This service will shortly be extended to other applications as well.

If this virtual currency is combined with Facebook, it could open up the possibility of a new business model which would have a large scope. If this happens, the internet would cease to be dependent on credit cards for the various transactions occuring.

Facebook has already got some experience with virtual currency, thanks to their app Acebucks. However this was not an official Facebook currency, and hence could not be used for buying and selling of items on the net.

If they do launch an official currency, it could be used across any Facebook application for financial transactions.

If a user buys the currency from Facebook, he does not need to use his credit card, every time he makes an online purchase. The purchase can be made at a single click of the mouse, thus making it easier to conduct various online transactions. The nominal transaction fees being generated from each such purchase would end up providing good revenue to Facebook.

If this currency is then combined with Facebook Connect, the scope would grow manifold. It would then be possible for users to connect to any site they desire, make their purchases their and the money could simply be deducted from the facebook account f the user. Donations can also be made in this manner.

Paypal, which has a similar format, has not really turned into a very big success so far. One of PayPal’s co-founders, Peter Thiel, had expected PayPal to replace the dollar and be able to move money around the globe easily.

Peter Thiel happens to be on the board of Facebook and his experience in this field, could help Facebook to succeed where PayPal has failed.

Gareth Davis of Facebook said at GamesBeat conference in San Francisco, that Facebook was considering this step, but it would have to be done carefully.

Obviously, the most important thing to remember here is that Facebook will have to take appropriate steps to guard against frauds and scams.

On the other hand this currency would allow millions of users to buy items online, without giving out their credit card information.

Users can make a one-click purchase, of the currency, in multiples of $10 or 20 and can then spend even as low as 25 cents at a time. A single credit card transaction for such small amounts is not viable as the developer will have to spend more money than he would earn out of such a transaction.

PayPal and Google Checkout are both services provided by eBay and Google respectively to enable online shoppers to pay for their shopping easily. While PayPal has been around for a long time, Google Checkout was launched only in April 2007.

While PayPal has the advantage of a wider user network it is not without its fair share of customers complaints. The main grievances customers have with PayPal are their high fees and their policy of freezing customer accounts, without calling or trying to understand the nature of the clients’ business, on usually flimsy grounds.

EBay users and other online vendors have looked for alternative payment methods for long now, and are extremely hopeful that Google Checkout will at least cause PayPal to wake up and correct their arbitrary practices and become more customer friendly.

According to Heather Dougherty of Hitwise US, alternative payment methods have been growing in popularity, at the expense of established players such as PayPal and Google Checkout. Leading this group is newcomer Bill Me Later, whose ‘buy now, pay later’ and ’90 days same as cash’ options have propelled its traffic up 271% up from last year.

While the Google Checkout and PayPal are direct competitors, their manners of functioning are slightly different and their main client bases come from widely different sources. PayPal sources its clientele mainly from its parent company eBay and a few other email and social networks, with only about 2.2% of their customers coming from non-auction shopping and classified sites, while 45.3% of Google’s customer base is retailers.

It is expected that Google checkout will gradually incorporate a few new features in its services, which will make it a real threat to PayPal’s dominance of the market, especially through the much wider user base of its parent company, Google.