Corporate Bits | Google is hitting the road for user feedback

Google is about to embark on an old-school search, swapping its Internet algorithm for a custom-built van that will cruise across the U.S. to find out how people use its online services and react to new features.
The white van emblazoned with Google’s colorful logo and an invitation to “shape the future” of the world’s most powerful Internet company is scheduled to pull out today on a six-week road trip.
Google is using the van to help it break out of its Silicon Valley bubble. The van will make multiday stops in seven states, stopping near colleges, libraries, parks and some of Google’s own regional offices in hopes of finding out how average Americans are using the company’s multitude of digital offerings.
About 500 walk-up volunteers will be invited to step inside the van designed to serve as a mini-version of Google’s Silicon Valley laboratories, where most of the company’s user studies are conducted.

juneyao air aims to double fleet as disney lands in shanghai

Juneyao Airlines Co. aims to double its fleet by 2020, expecting the mid-year opening of Disney’s Shanghai park and more tourist travel to further drive flight demand as the privately run Chinese carrier considers joining a global alliance.
“The potential for growth is huge,” company Chairman Wang Junjin said in an interview yesterday on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing. “In a country with a population of 1.3 billion people, there were only something more than 400 million passenger trips made last year.”
The Shanghai-based carrier, which Wang says has been China’s most punctual since November, expects to grow its fleet to 100 from the current 50. The airline, whose Chinese name means “fortune,” has been in talks with alliances without a presence in Shanghai and will make a decision whether to join one by the end of this year, he added.

yahoo snubs activist shareholder with two new directors

Yahoo has set up a battle for control of its board by appointing two directors likely to further agitate an activist shareholder threatening an attempt to oust CEO Marissa Mayer unless she bows to demands to sell the company’s Internet operations.
The decision increases the likelihood that the unhappy shareholder, Starboard Value, will nominate an opposing slate to run against Yahoo’s board of nine directors in a proxy fight. If the confrontation occurs, it would escalate the challenges already facing Mayer and the rest of Yahoo’s board as they try to reverse a prolonged decline in the company’s revenue and figure out a way to avoid paying taxes on the gains from a roughly USD28 billion stake that it holds in China’s e-commerce leader, Alibaba Group.