San Francisco - Shares of ailing internet pioneer Yahoo plunged more than 10 per cent Friday after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reiterated that his company was not interested in reviving its takeover bid.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang this week urged Microsoft to buy the company, just a day after Google said it was dropping plans for an advertising alliance with Yahoo, which would have boosted Yahoo's income by up to 400 million dollars per year.

San Francisco - Yahoo and Google are substantially narrowing their proposed advertising agreement to meet the antitrust concerns of the US Justice Department, according to reports Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

The new proposal shortens the term of the deal from 10 years to two years, and places a limit on the revenue that Yahoo can generate from Google to 25 per cent of Yahoo's search revenue, the reports said.

Under the deal, Google would place ads next to some Web search results on Yahoo and split the revenue with the ailing web giant.

In a last-ditch effort to win US antitrust approval, Yahoo Inc and Google Inc have drastically scaled back the scope of their search advertising deal, calls for Google to place ads next to some Web search results on Yahoo, lifting Yahoo's revenue.

The companies had said in June that the search ad deal was expected to boost Yahoo's cash flow by up to $450 million in the first year.

San Francisco - Google and Yahoo are set to drop their proposed ad alliance possibly as early as next week because of antitrust objections by the Justice Department, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The report came a day after officials from the two companies met with regulators and appeared to be unwilling to make the compromises needed to satisfy Justice Department concerns that their combined power would overwhelm the online advertising market.

The deal was announced in June and proposed that Google start selling its search ads throughout Yahoo's US properties.

Recently, the developers were invited by Web portal major Yahoo Inc. to access in their tools and data and thus construct social network applications.

During the month of April, the Sunnyvale Company had committed to open some parts of its code for developers to contribute applications for their platform.

Jay Rossiter, Senior Vice President at Yahoo, wrote in a company blog entry, "The business hopes you'll enjoy some incredibly unique and creative new experiences that we would never have thought of."