Yahoo Japan is, if you’ll recall, not exactly the Yahoo most Americans know.  Yahoo only owns 33 percent of the organization, while Softbank controls a 42 percent stake.  And Yahoo Japan’s also on a different path in other respects, considering it’s arranged to make use of Google’s search tech.

It might make sense for Yahoo to collect some cash and walk away, then, which is what a Reuters article suggested will happen.  Nadia Damouni and Tim Kelly wrote earlier this morning, "Yahoo Inc is in advanced talks to leave its Japanese joint venture in an effort to sort out its dysfunctional Asian partnerships and free up as much as $8 billion to fight Google and Facebook."

In response, shares of Yahoo Japan shot up on the Tokyo Stock Exchange even as the rest of the market declined.  Shares of Yahoo are up this morning, too, and Evercore upgraded its rating.

Again, though, Softbank has said nothing is in the works, telling the Dow Jones News Service, "We have no intention to acquire the shares."

We’ll be sure to report any significant developments.

In the six months ending September 30th, Softbank’s profits reached 46.46 billion yen.  In the same time span in 2006, the company only managed to hit 14.44 billion yen.  “Impressive” is something of an understatement, since those amounts correspond to around $405 million and $126 million, respectively.

In other areas of growth, the number of Softbank’s mobile customers rose by around 12 percent, and the number of its outlets increased by roughly 30 percent.

So what is Softbank?  To simplify the matter: Softbank is a major player in Asian telecommunications and media markets.  Also, although there are some rather complicated relationships present, a diagram from Softbank itself nicely illustrates the company’s relationship to Yahoo, Yahoo China, the Alibaba Group, and Alibaba.com.  .

As for the future . . . Softbank told the AP “it’s expecting to book investment gains in the third quarter from the listing of its subsidiary Alibaba.com Ltd. on the Hong Kong market.”

Yahoo Still Top Search Engine In Japan

Yahoo’s beating Google by a considerable amount – according to comScore, it received 10.2 million more visitors in the month of August alone.  Yahoo’s even doing well compared to the Japanese competition; Maru Sato, comScore Japan’s managing director, told bigmouthmedia, “Since our first official ranking in June, we have seen Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft sites remain unchanged as the top three properties in Japan.”

So how did the American also-ran manage to become a Japanese success story?  Well, the company didn’t unveil some special new feature set.  And I’m not sure that it has anything to do with different cultures.

Instead, as 24/7 Wall St.’s Douglas McIntyre wrote, “Perhaps the most important thing is that the company has several large shareholders including Softbank, a large multimedia company with interests in broadband, telecom, and wireless operations.”   Money and business connections are sure to have an influence anywhere, regardless of the land’s technological capabilities.

So take note: when our robot butlers finally arrive, Yahoo may not be their preferred search engine.

A little background information may be necessary, however: “KickApps Corporation enables any web site to quickly and easily add advanced social media functionality to increase audience growth, deepen consumer relationships and create new revenue opportunities.”  A press release also notes that the company’s worked with entities like HBO-Cinemax, BET, and Autobytel.

KickApps’s new pile of money should make it an even more attractive partner in the future.  SoftBank, which led the way with funding, acknowledged, “It’s exciting how quickly the market is embracing social media.  It has changed the way publishers and brands interact with their customers and audiences.”

While we’re on the subject of “exciting changes,” a few more KickApps stats might as well get tossed out; it seems that, in the first six months of 2007, “Videos delivered grew by 11,850 percent,” “Photos delivered grew by 1,580 percent,” and “Audio files delivered grew by 1,473 percent.”

And as a final sort of fun fact, courtesy of VentureBeat’s Dan Kaplan: one of KickApps’s customers is the radio program known as “Dee Snyder’s House of Hair.”

The one-time backer of several pre-dotcom bust businesses has finished raising $600 million and will now focus its efforts on China and other Asian countries, according to Silicon Beat.

One of SAIF’s partners provides some scathing criticism of US startups. Joe Zhou, based in Beijing, commented on SAIF’s change of strategy. He seems to hold the potential of American firms with contempt.

Zhou attributed this change in strategy to the superior performance of Asian companies in the first portfolio. By comparison, U.S. deals are too risky – early stage and expensive to fund, not to mention technology-heavy.

“Let’s say I put $10 million in a U.S. company – it probably lasts 18 months,” said Zhou, “and when I do that it’s probably not even profitable. In China, chances are that when we do the $10 million deal the company’s profitable and [the funding's] going to last a long time.”

Mr. Zhou must still be a little sore over SAIF’s ill-advised $125 million USD investment in online grocer WebVan just before its pricey IPO and subsequent crash.

Another fund partner, Cisco Systems, may share similar sentiments based on comments made by its CEO, John Chambers, who said “If I wasn’t American, I would be Chinese.”

Mr. Chambers has earned total compensation of $40.2 million during his tenure as Cisco CEO. Not bad for a businessman who has to endure the horrific US business climate.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.