Yahoo! is striving to turn its fortunes around in the wake of company layoffs and the rejection of Microsofts popular and unsolicited takeover bid, which CEO Jerry Yang believes stimulated his company. Two important announcements from Yahoo! have analysts speculating about a possible revival for the company. Yang and Yahoo! president Susan Decker recently announced the introduction of a new advertising platform known as Apex, a new web-based platform intended to simplify the process for advertisers when purchasing ad inventory across Yahoo!s network and partner sites, as well as other networks. The very next day, Yahoo! introduced the beta version of Yahoo! Buzz, which features content in the form of news, blogs, posts, images, and video from third-party sources across the Internet that is selected based on evaluating search patterns in addition to votes from users and their submissions. Yahoo! stated that the launch of Yahoo! Buzz signifies the initial step in creating a more open system for Internet content. While Yahoo! is trying to stay afloat by offering such new technologies, the struggling online giant still stands under the looming shadow of Microsoft. If Microsoft succeeds in its pursuit of Yahoo!, the combination of Yahoo!s online presence and Microsofts technology reputation would create a strong opponent to Google. A silent player in the game is AOL, which is primarily a portal but has a powerful online presence. Some in the marketing industry look forward to there being one fewer search engine on which to purchase ads, enabling them to purchase more ads on the remaining sites with more traffic. The big question that remains is whether or not Yahoo! still has any playing power in the industry. Yahoo! can continue to stand alone, but it remains to be seen if it will be allowed to remain independent.