This post was part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2007 feature. The voting has now closed and readers have chosen Google Inc. as the company of the year. Be sure and let us know in the comments if you are pleased with this result.

Corporate America, the markets, and Wall Street are lumbering through a so-so year -- one likely to be characterized by mediocre U.S. GDP and earnings performance, along with ample portions of market volatility.

To be sure, no one will confuse 2007 with a peak year during the "Roaring '20s" or even the "Roaring '90s." Still, there were several standout performances, which we summarize in our "Company of the Year" award.

Facebook

Facebook deserves an honorable mention. The online directory shows considerable promise as an online community and networking device. Provided information is kept confidential and is not released or sold to unauthorized third parties, the business model can serve as another meeting room for groups that might not otherwise be able to meet for geographic or other reasons.

Starbucks (SBUX) has begun a series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration and appreciation of coffee. I've just listened to the first one so that you don't have to! Using podcasts (and blogging) as tools to educate your consumer base is nothing new, and Starbucks actually does very little of it. This series is tied in with the company's 35th anniversary, and will run weekly this month. Yep -- that "fad" company from Seattle is, in a couple incarnations anyway, thirty-five years old.

They've run a short "promocast" of this series, that Frank Barnako of MarketWatch listened to and described as "lukewarm." So I ignored that and dove right into the full-length premiere today. Well, full-length turns out to be only twelve minutes long, so I don't know how much time I'll be saving you here. Say, nine minutes, if you read fairly fast, but every little bit helps ...

Insider Blogging looks at the employees blogs of our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information."

Yahool! has been busy with its mission to "expand the user's visual space," otherwise known throughout the blogosphere as the Yahoo! homepage redesign. Over at Read/WriteWeb, in a podcast interview with "VP of Front Doors" Tapan Bhat describes the challenges of using the programming language Ajax, and the extensive testing that was required. The interface is wider (but, not hugely wide -- plenty of white space on my tiny but self-described "widescreen" laptop), more muted (so Web 2.0), tab-heavy and more multi-media-rich. There's plenty of effusion at the Yahoo! User Interface Blog, where you can tour the "patterns" behind the redesign ("this is similar to creating a play. At any given time the view on the stage is only a small part of the action. The backstage, props, and other actors are all being prepared for the next scene. A home page can provide ways to allow a user to take a 'sneak peek' at additional content and essentially 'open up' the page space") and the many benefits of "Ajax-ifying" the design.

"Gas prices are just going up, up, up, just like Google stock, baby, just like the Google stock," says Om Malik in his podcast with Niall Kennedy. eBay isn't, and in fact it is considering partnering with Microsoft (or maybe that's just a rumor it is putting out there for more bargaining power with Google).

eBay isn't working hard enough to improve the user experience, says Niall, and despite the coolness of Skype and Paypal, the core business - the auction business - is really where it needs to grow if the company is going to continue to increase its earnings.

What does eBay need to do to accomplish that? Simple, Niall and Om tell us, do these five things:

1. Integrate Paypal with the same address system, and with other services like Evite;
2. Develop a shareware application;
3. Have the ability to resell digital media like iTunes (maybe this is what they're thinking about with the Skype deal?);
4. Create a separate eBay 2.0 company that helps facilitate digital assets;
5. Buy Quicken and add it on to the eBay product line.

Of all these I like the ideas about Quicken and the Paypal integration the best. What do you think?

Skype, long the darling of VOIP newbies like me, is nothing if not a bandwagon-jumper. The company, acquired by eBay last September, has never stayed true to its phone calling roots, dabbling in everything from instant messaging to voicemail to videocasting. And we know it: everybody's doing ring tones.

The latest bandwagon, straight from the playbooks of the rest of the phone calling world: music downloads. Today Skype signed agreements with a number of the music biggies, including Warner / Chappell Music, EMI Music Publishing, and Sony / ATV Music Publishing. These agreements will allow Skype to distribute many of its ringtones "lawfully" (was it unlawful before, I wonder?) from artists like Madonna, Depeche Mode, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

So I've got to know: how long before Skype launches a campaign where they play some hip-shaking song from the most commercially over-exposed group on television, the Black-eyed Peas? I predict it won't be long.