These days, it is a cool thing for major internet companies to look for the emerging market called India.

Why shouldn't they? We are the best in the world for software and have set apart huge enclaves in several cities for IT related industries. Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad are just three such metropolises that have rolled out the red carpet for them.

One of the companies to jump into this bandwagon is "Yahoo."

Yahoo.com has pumped in mega bucks to popularise Yahoo.co.in – in other words Yahoo India.

But is it such a good thing for us?

Before discussing that, a little general knowledge about Yahoo! would be in order.

Almost everyone amongst us by now knows about Yahoo Inc. but few would know the names David Filo and Jerry Yang – the two yuppie founders of the company.

Many old timers in India would remember the Hindi matinee idol of yesteryears – Shammi Kapoor, who lip synched a number beginning with the word "Yahoo!" in the sixties and it had become an instant hit.

Come to think of it, Kapoor too is computer savvy and his blogs are very well known in the internet.

But Filo and Yang didn't pick up the name from that shout because they probably   hadn't heard of Kapoor.

According to a press release from Yahoo Inc., their company's name is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

Probably to say so would have been very snobbish for Filo and Yang who were students when the company was started in a campus trailer in 1994.
 
They then said that Yahoo's definition was "rude, unsophisticated and uncouth." 

One doesn't know from where they got this definition, but the Oxford Dictionary says the word "yahoo" means "a rude, coarse, brutish person," quoting the eighteenth century author Jonathan Swift.

But, the dictionary says immediately in its next entry that the term means "expressing great joy or excitement."

Should we jump with joy because Yahoo! is expanding in India?

Yahoo! had started its Indian operations sometime ago. From January 30 this year, George Zacharias has been appointed Yahoo! India's managing director.
 
How much will India benefit from Yahoo apart from the television channels advertisement revenue?

One simply doesn't know. But recent incidents involving Yahoo! have enough cause for concern.

Here are some of the details:

Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Changsha Intermediate People's Court of Hunan Province, China in April 2005 for "providing state secrets to foreign entities." According to a claim from Shi Tao's family, "the secret" refers to a brief list of censorship orders he sent from a Yahoo! Mail account to the Asia Democracy Forum before the anniversary of Tiananmen Square Incident.

[The world would have forgotten the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 – between end of April and early June. No one knows for certain how many people died during those tumultuous days. The Chinese Red Cross initially reported 2,600 deaths, then quickly retracted that figure under intense pressure from the government. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded.

To come back to the 2005 case, the verdict stated Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) confirmed that an IP address, registered by a Hunan newspaper that Shi Tao worked for, accessed to the mail account at a particular time. He had sent the message through an anonymous Yahoo! account, but police had gone straight to his offices and picked him up. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is concerned with the ease with which Shi Tao had been caught. In April 2006, Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) is under investigation by Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data.

Criticism of Yahoo! intensified when the court document stated the company aided Chinese authorities in the case of dissident Li Zhi. In December 2003 Li Zhi was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for "inciting subversion."

In recent months Yahoo! has also followed the directive of United States government officials in turning over information which the United States deems as key for continuing its global "war on terror." However, Yahoo! says that it would indeed respect the laws of governments in jurisdictions where it is operating.

India has no issue with Yahoo! for the present.

But, the free world itself is divided on this issue.

On 2 June 2006, the union representing journalists in the UK and Ireland ( NUJ) called on its 40,000 members to boycott all Yahoo! Inc. products and services to protest the Internet company's reported actions in China.

Is that all?

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is NO!

Last week Yahoo! suffered a setback after it announced that it would soon use Mexico's Teotihuacán archaeological site to launch its "time capsule" into space but was denied permission..

The "time capsule" was to be "catapulted into space" by using a laser beam on October 25 from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, "to communicate with extraterrestrial life." The Mexicans withdrew their permission after realising that it would adversely affect one of their time honoured heritage sites.

But Manuel Mazzanti, the head of marketing, Yahoo Mexico tells a different story.

"We did have the permit, but Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) suddenly told us that it could not be done," Mazzanti was quoted as saying.

An INAH spokesman averred that the event might damage Teotihuacán which is an ancient site in Mexico City and also is the world's third largest pyramid dating back to 200 BC.

Mexicans believe that their ancestors morphed into Gods from the unique pyramid at Teotihuacán.

Despite close proximity to the USA, Mexico is fiercely independent and tries to protect its archaeological sites.

Obviously Yahoo! is looking for an alternate launch site.

Could the site be in India, which has an older civilization than Mexico and therefore has more archaeological sites? If yes, which ancient site in India will encounter danger due Yahoo's insistence on starting a "dialogue with extraterrestrials?"

Watch this space for the next few days!

Yahoo's Indian boss George Zacharias was not available for comment. Efforts to contact his secretary Gladys   and Yahoo! India's head of communications – Aarti in Bangalore were fruitless.