According to the MSN Virtual Earth Blog, Ask.com has thrown out its mapping platform for Ask Maps and is now using Microsoft Virtual Earth as its new platform.

Ask.com is using Microsoft Virtual Earth for Ask Maps, Ask City (search for Businesses, Events and Movies per US City) and their Web Search including the Bird’s Eye view. The new integration is as of now visible in the United States only. However, speculations are that other countries such as Japan, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK that are still running the Ask Maps in the Beta phase will be reverting to the new platform very soon.

Yahoo! has announced, the completion of formalities for its multi-year advertising deal with the retail-king Walmart. The new deal will enable Walmart to use Yahoo’s advertising platform and simultaneously, Yahoo! will be become the sole platform for the online display of Walmart’s advertisements and inventory.

As per the new deal, Yahoo! will use its existing abundance of leading brand advertisers for Walmart, as its primary marketing and sales channel for its video display and advertising. Through the use of Yahoo’s AMP (Advertising Management Program), Yahoo! has also taken the responsibility for Walmart’s ad pricing, targeting, delivery and reporting. This would mark Walmart as another addition to Yahoo’s AMP. In a related AMP news, Yahoo! has also announced its multi-year Global Partnership with Havas Digital, where Havas too, will be borrowing heavily on Yahoo’s AMP.

Google and Yahoo! have finally done it. Yahoo Inc and Google have announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement. Yahoo! Press Releases give out the details of the partnership and also state that Panama will be functioning just the same. Yahoo! shares still dropped Friday in spite of this good news. Henry Blodgett from Silicon Valley Insider thinks the deal is very good for Yahoo, even better than the strange “wacky chop-shop plan Microsoft proposed” that has now died.

More at Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo! Press Release:

Agreement Advances Yahoo!’s Open Strategy; Enhances Ability to
Compete in Converging Search and Display Marketplace

360 Enterprises Inc. which is the parent company of TextLinkBrokers.com and SponsoredReviews.com has announced, that it has acquired the SEO & Social Media firm HybridSEM.

The owner of HybridSEM, Joe Whyte in a statement said, “Access to 360’s resources allows HybridSEM.com to scale our services from a niche market to a massive market. I am proud and excited to be working with such talented and energetic industry leaders who share the same innovative vision.”

360 Enterprises intend to add HybridSEM’s video marketing, link bait, on-page SEO and social media services to its list of services provided.