The Washington Post’s Post IT tech blog tells us that the highly anticipated (and a little dreaded, in some quarters) merger between Google and Yahoo — called “Goohoo” by some — has been delayed to allow time for the U.S. Justice Department to further review the deal.

The announcement delays slightly (less than a month, according to the article) a huge deal that has far-reaching implications to the world of online business. These two companies have been negotiating a deal for months now, and have even tested programs together.

Combined, Google and Yahoo would comprise an enormous majority of the online advertising marketshare. Google’s software, which places text ads in conjunction with results on its hugely trafficked search engine, succeeds more than does Yahoo’s. It’s believed that Yahoo wants to use that software to boost its own earnings and avoid another acquisition threat, such as that attempted by Microsoft earlier this year.

Federal overseers have been taking their time approving the deal, amidst very real concerns about monopoly. Hence, the slight delay announced last week isn’t a huge surprise.

From the Post IT article:

When the cooperative agreement was announced on June 12, Google and Yahoo said they would give the U.S. Department of Justice about three and a a half months to review the deal. That time period has lapsed, however, and after meetings with Justice Department officials today, Google and Yahoo lawyers have agreed to delay its implementation.

Under the agreement, Google will provide advertising to run alongside some queries conducted on Yahoo’s search engine.

Google and Yahoo said consumers will benefit because Google has a better way of matching relevant advertising to search queries. But critics said the deal would allow the two companies, who rank number one and number two in the booming search advertising industry, to operate as a monopoly.

What do you think? Would this semi-merger create more opportunities for online ad revenue, or less? Would it be best if the two companies remained competitors, or would you prefer that they merged ever further for the sake of convenience?

Read “Goohoo Delayed To Allow Justice Department More Time To Review” by Peter Whoriskey here.

Did you see Google’s favicon? It’s such a small change but I think it’s important. I spent a good couple of minutes trying to find the right tab–I couldn’t find it because of a change to a very small image from a section of the browser I hardly every look at. You never realize how much these small things really incorporate into your overall web image. I’m amazed that such a small detail can prove to be so important to such a huge audience.

So why the change? What’s the point? Is there something coming? I can’t imagine such a departure from the branding just being nothing. What do you think? Do you have a favicon for your website? How’d you decide what it should be? What comments have you had?

Today is April 1 — that’s right, April Fool’s Day, the holiday where everybody gets to be a comedian. As you’ve probably noticed, pranks can get a little carried away today, especially on the Internet, where it’s often hard to tell what’s real or not on a normal day.

So, today we’re taking a little break from the world of online business to highlight the best of today’s annual pranks.

Virgle: Virgin and Google are going to the moon! Do you have what it takes to be a space pioneer? Click here to find out!

Wish email could do even more for you? Now it can! Google’s Gmail system announced “Custom Time” – a way to send emails into the past and future! Click here to read about it.

Is your flight overbooked? No problem! Fly WestJet and ride in the overhead compartment!

The Microsoft - Yahoo merger has already happened, according to this fake report from InfoWorld.

Lastly, Pizza Hut had some glitches in their attempt to fool the world into thinking they’ve changed their name to Pasta Hut. Click here to read more, or here to check it the website, but do it quickly — April Fool’s Day is almost over.

If you’re in the eCommerce game, and you’ve never checked out this docstoc list of 68 great SEO tools, we’d like to encourage you to give it a look.

It’s a collection of basically everything you need to analyze and optimize your site’s SEO situation (not to mention, a great way to take a peak at how your competitors are stacking up against you). The list features a link to and brief description of a huge variety of tools. Everything from Firefox add-ons to almost two dozen resources from Google, from Web CEO to a Meta Tag Generator Tool, and much much more, can be found on this comprehensive list.

Even if you already take advantage of some of the more popular of these tools, it’s worth checking it out to discover some that you may not have heard of. And, even if you already know and love them all, the page is still a great place to find them all in one convenient location.

Thanks to the fine resources at docstoc.com for the list.

With the recent addition of Yahoo, the new lineup of the OpenSocial Initiative is now comprised of the three biggest names in Internet commerce — or what CNET calls “the Justice League of social media: Google, Yahoo, and News Corp.’s MySpace.com”.

“The OpenSocial Foundation is expected to be formed within 90 days, with more OpenSocial partners from across the Web on board in addition to the three responsible for the announcement,” stated the CNET article from earlier today.

So, just what is this new organization? According to Google’s official page, “OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”

A common API means you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by a broad set of members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the API and host 3rd party social applications. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

OpenSocial is built upon gadgets, so you can build a great, viral social app with little to no serving costs. With the Google Gadget Editor and a simple key/value API, you can build a complete social app with no server at all. Of course, you can also host your application on your own servers if you prefer. In all cases, Google’s gadget caching technology can ease your bandwidth demands should your app suddenly become a worldwide success.

The CNET article adds a bit more detail:

The specific purpose of the new nonprofit, according to a release, is “to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the Web.” It’s a particularly crucial move for Google, which has been eager to emphasize that OpenSocial is a community standard, not a Mountain View project.

“OpenSocial has been a community-driven specification from the beginning,” Joe Kraus, Google’s director of product management, said in a joint statement from the three companies. “The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open.”

Indeed, the OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent entity with its own intellectual property and governance policies. Related assets are expected to be in place by the beginning of July.

Google first announced OpenSocial in October as a response to the plethora of announcements on behalf of social-networking sites that they would follow in Facebook’s footsteps and create developer platforms of their own. With so many disparate developer strategies, the social-media landscape could grow even more fragmented, and Google launched the OpenSocial API (and later the Social Graph API) as a means to provide some connectivity. Major players like MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, and Plaxo, along with a host of smaller social networks and many that are unknown in the U.S., all opted to participate in the new initiative.

Although the project was announced last year, it’s now picked up a huge amount of steam (helped in no small part by Yahoo’s entry into the collective) and is expected to go live within the next 90 days. “Some OpenSocial platforms, like foundation partner MySpace’s, are already live,” reports the CNET article. “Others are still in testing phases or have yet to make any kind of debut.”

Interestingly, Facebook, the site that first kicked off the recent social-networking craze, is sitting this one out.

“As the largest contributor to the memecached system, Facebook has long been a leader and supporter of open source initiatives but will not join the foundation,” a statement from the company read. “The company will continue to evaluate partnership opportunities that will benefit the 300,000 Facebook Platform developers while improving the Facebook user experience.”