Yahoo hasn’t done overly well when it released its figures to the public. Their net profit for Q3 2008 was US$54 million down from US$151 million for the same period in 2007.

Overall revenue figure of SU$1.78 billion is only 1% increase from Q3 last year.

Yahoo has struggled compared to the like of Google, MySpace and Facebook. Seems like the worldwide crises have hit Yahoo! pretty hard as people close their wallets on advertising budgets.

The company announced that they expect “to reduce its global workforce by at least 10% during Q4 of 2008″. This will reduce their costs by approx $400 million. When asked during a phone interview when Yahoo! intends to do so, Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, said “We want to do it before the holidays”.

Yahoo is yet to get an approval from the US Justice Department in regards to their deal with Google and if it can go ahead. A decision is expected soon.

However, should the deal go through Yahoo would make millions (as I am sure Google would too). Over the last 3 months Yahoo!’s shares have dropped over 40%, but rose 7% (in after trading hours) when the layoffs were announced.

Maybe Microsoft can pull them out from this mess – this time at say $15 a share? Come on Steve Ballmer, make that phone call!

In an anticipated move, Google has finally announced that they will indeed be releasing a web browser of its own. Called Google Chrome, it will be available to download on Tuesday (US time, so we wait a day). The first version will run on Windows only environment, but Google said that they are currently working on Mac and Linux versions.

This news comes a week after Microsoft announced a test version for IE8 (I’m using it now, and its a bit buggy, but works decently).

Google took command with it’s search engine, and slowly got its audience to some of their other products, such as – Google Docs, an online version of the alternative Micrsoft Office. Obviously this seems more appealing with the fact that your documents are online and hence accessible from any computer with an internet connection. However, personally, I don’t really like the interface and prefer Office any day.

But Google hasn’t always been successful in this approach – the Google IM or Google Talk hasn’t come anywhere close to the services of MSN and Yahoo.

On the flip side, Microsoft have had a tough year themselves – the Yahoo buy out fell through and they have invested a good amount of money in various companies, more recently at Ciao. Plus on a non-online topic, they are slashing Xbox 360 prices to be competitive against Nintendo Wii.

Microsoft’s response to Google Chrome was – “The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips … and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online,” said Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Internet Explorer (what a job title!).

So the question is, where to from now for both companies on the browser competition? While Microsoft has a market share of 75% using IE, where will Google’s Chrome come in?

UPDATE: You can now download Google Chrome from the official website – http://www.google.com/chrome

Sheraton New York has been mesmerized by Microsoft and have adopted the Surface application in their lobby.

Take a look at the clip below.