A sad day for comedy: Its sayonara to one of big businesses loose cannons, Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo, who is stepping down at big boss. He’s been entertainingly under fire from his staff and board after cocking-up a sale to Microsoft earlier this year and then waving goodbye to Google in a proposed internet advertising tie-up. He wrote to employees to say he would find another buyer, and never did. Yahoo is surprisingly popular outside of the UK, where Google is king, and a new boss might just be the shot in the arm the company needs, so definitely put them on your “possible employer” list. Yang’s e-mail to employees ended with the words: “All of you know that I have always and will always bleed purple” - in reference to the predominant colour on the company’s logo. Er…which is red.

Here in the UK, about 25% of us bother to use our mobiles to access the internet. So there’s 75% there to grow into…over in India (200m mobile users) the handset is the most used means of getting online. Brit firms are beginning to wake up to this potential, and we’re leading the way in finding new ways to exploit the internet through the mobile – in fact London has eclipsed the USA’s Silicon Valley for mobile start-ups. Flirtomatic is a mobile-only dating service; Mippin, a web-content aggregator for mobiles; Reporo, which brands itself as Bebo for your mobile; Actionality lets companies to develop mobile ads around games; eBuddy is a mobile messaging service; and Plazes, a social networking offering that is based on the user’s location, has been sold to Nokia. This is a good space to be in: despite the credit crunch, which has put the brakes on many private equity investments, this sector is still attracting cash – thanks in part to mobile users spending six times more while on the web than those of us using it sat at a desk. Estimates suggest that as many as 1.2 billion people could regularly be accessing the web via their mobile by 2012. Kerr-ching! Get in!

The publisher Penguin has launched an online dating website with Match.com to bring sex-starved literature fans together. Members will be asked to list their favourite books in their profile and will be able to search for suitors with similar literary tastes. You get the idea: “I like Bret Easton Ellis, I like fine dining, red meat and watersports…” Dragging the book industry into the 22nd Century, Penguin will promote the site in the final pages of more than two million paperback novels. It hopes the site will restore “the importance of the written word to modern courtship”. And it is important….that and booze. Like the idea of publishing? The for heaven sake watch our videos on the industry.

In the music industry, if someone illegally downloads a track, you roll over and sack a few staff. Fittingly, when it happens in the computer gaming industry, you go to war. 25,000 people in the UK can expect a knock at the door from Atari, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump, Techland and Codemasters demanding a £300 out of court settlement, and a court summons if they refuse to pay. The firms have appointed Davenport Lyons to deal with the individuals for breach of copyright, having identified them by asking internet service providers for personal-details of file-sharing website users (hmmm…that sounds like one for the lawyers in itself…). Its estimated that 6m people in Britain alone share games illegally. This week Isabela Barwinska became the first person the download vigilantes caught up with. She has been ordered to pay £16k to Topware for downloading Dream Pinball. Nightmare.

Despite the dark clouds of recession, we’ve still got to keep the Hun from our door. No wonder then that our defence companies seem immune to the gloom. Just so for little Dorset-based, Cobham, who has announced a deal worth £14m to acquire US-based intelligence and surveillance company,  GMS. Getting a Stateside presence, (where paranoia is listed as a positive in lonely hearts ads) gives it access to a huge customer base on the West Coast. Not bad for yokel spies.