interface to Yahoo! Mail Beta. Google also released Google Talk, a voice over IP and Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo message boards service, on August 24, 2005. On October 13, 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that Yahoo! and MSN Messenger would become interoperable. In 2007, Yahoo! took out the storage meters, thus allowing users unlimited storage. Yahoo! continued acquiring companies to expand its range of services, particularly Web 2.0 services. Yahoo! Launch became Yahoo! Music in February 2005. On March 20, 2005, Yahoo! purchased photo sharing service Flickr. That same month, the company launched its blogging and social networking service Yahoo! 360°. In June 2005, Yahoo! acquired blo.gs, a service based on RSS feed aggregation. Yahoo! then bought online social event calendar Upcoming.org, in October 2005. Yahoo! acquired social bookmark site del.icio.us in December 2005 and then playlist sharing community webjay in January 2009. Yahoo! (2006–2008) Yahoo! Next is an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies currently in their beta testing phase, similar to Google Labs. It contains forums for Yahoo! users to give feedback to assist in the development of these future Yahoo! technologies. In early 2006, Yahoo! offered users the chance to beta test a new version of the Yahoo! homepage. However, it currently only supports Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Users of other browsers, such as Opera, have criticized Yahoo! for this move. Yahoo! says they intend to support additional browsers in the future. On August 27, 2007, Yahoo! released a new version of Yahoo! Mail. It added Yahoo! Messenger integration (which included Windows Live Messenger due to the networks' federation) and free text messages (not necessarily free to the receiver) to mobile phones in the U.S., Canada, India, and the Philippines. On January 29, 2008, Yahoo! announced that the company was laying off 1,000 employees, as the company had suffered severely in its inability to effectively compete with industry search leader Google. The cuts represented 7 percent of the company's workforce of 14,300. In February 2008, Yahoo! acquired Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Maven Networks, a supplier of internet video players and video advertising tools, for approximately $160 million. Yahoo! announced on November 17, 2008, that Yang would be stepping down as CEO. On December 10, 2008, Yahoo! began laying off 1,520 employees around the world as the company managed its way through the global economic downturn. Acquisition attempt by Microsoft Microsoft and Yahoo! pursued merger discussions in 2005, 2006,