Yahoo joined rivals Google and MySpace to work on the OpenSocial platform, a common set of standards which will enable interoperability. Several business newspapers allege that Yahoo was pondering the move for months but was concerned about Google's influence over the OpenSocial alliance.

"Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users," said Wade Chambers, Vice President - Platforms at Yahoo in a statement.

NYT claims that Yahoo decided in favor of joining the open platform after Google made assurances that it will give up its tight grip on the technology. Instead, control was yielded to the OpenSocial Foundation, a non-profit group whose founding members will include Google, Yahoo and MySpace. The new organization will be created within the next three months.

"The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open," said Joe Kraus, Director of Product Management at Google in the joint statement.

Google, seeking to take on Facebook right after the latter received a cash infusion from Microsoft last year, announced it offers Internet developers an open system to create applications across Web sites. Thus OpenSocial was born.

What its open social network platform will practically mean is that participating software developers will only have to code their applications once, leaving it to Google to ensure they are compatible with all the Web sites in its network. For its OpenSocial project, the search engine king has brought in business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle.

MySpace worked along with Google to develop the API tools in order for the users to build and test applications for MySpace and it will let developers to create programs like those used by programmers on rival site Facebook.