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Follow the latest news, insight, analysis, blogs and product reviews of search engines and search related topics like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), the top search engines, search engine submission, enterprise search, information management, search servers and enterprise search tools.
Top Search Engines News
Google and the authors and publishers with which it is trying to settle a five-year copyright feud ask the judge hearing the case for another delay so that they can make the deal more palatable for the Department of Justice. Legal eagle Michael Boni of Boni and Zack adds that the parties in the settlement have met with the DOJ as recently as Nov. 6. What this latest delay means for the planned December or January hearing date is unclear.
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Google took aim at the mobile display ad market Nov. 9 when it bought AdMob for $750 million in stock. Google has made some headway in providing mobile search ads to the so-called third screen, but it has been lagging in providing mobile display ads, or in-application ads. AdMob fills those needs, ideally helping Google reach advertisers trying to engage smartphone users, and helping content publishers and mobile application developers get a cut of the money collected from ads paired with their content. This is key to Google's mobile Web strategy, where it's competing with Yahoo and Microsoft in the green field of mobile ads.
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ComScore Nov. 6 said some 27 billion hours were spent on the Internet by 1.2 billion worldwide Internet users in September 2009. Microsoft Websites led the way, but 70 percent of the time spent on its sites was through Windows Live Messenger. Google came in at No. 2, with 9.3 percent of the minutes (2.5 billion hours). Yahoo was third with 6.3 percent of the minutes, or 1.7 billion hours, but dropped by 14 percent from its September 2008 share of almost 2 billion hours. Facebook nabbed the fourth spot, with 5 percent of the minutes, or 1.4 billion hours.
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News Analysis: Google again finds itself in a no-win situation, this time with Google Dashboard. Some claim Google collects too much data in Dashboard, and others say it doesn't provide enough. Dashboard summarizes the data from the Web services associated with a user's account. It will list how many Gmail conversations we have going, how many Google Docs we have, Google Calendar appointments and even Web history if we've enabled it. But it does not include detail Google collects on us from its server logs, cookies and ads.
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Reframe It says Google's Sidewiki service is too close to its own Web annotation service for comfort. Reframe It CEO Bobby Fishkin argues that Sidewiki's features mimic Reframe It's right down to the icon buttons. Google denies any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, an intellectual property attorney says Reframe It could make a patent or copyright infringement complaint against Google, depending on its IP. eWEEK has published side-by-side comparisons of the two Web apps on Google Watch.
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience in Tokyo that the Microsoft-Yahoo agreement over search-and-advertising could expand beyond the U.S. into worldwide markets. Although the deal is currently under evaluation by the U.S. Department of Justice, neither Microsoft nor Yahoo have publicly expressed concerns about whether it will successfully close in early 2010.
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Twitter Nov. 5 began the slow rollout of its retweet button, which blasts out tweets users are fond of to their followers in one fell swoop. This is a sensible alternative to making Twitterers copy, paste and tweet links they love, and add the names of the tweet authors with an RT (retweet) tag. Twitter also said it is experimentally tweaking its trending topics to help users find more relevant tweets. The idea is to thwart spammers, which are rampant on Twitter, littering the trends with porn-baiting tweets and other garbage.
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Mozilla will introduce a new version of Thunderbird, its open-source e-mail application, in mid-November. Built on the same rendering platform as Firefox 3.1, Thunderbird 3 will include features such as tabbed e-mail, filtered search and a one-click address book.
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Google Nov. 5 launched Google Commerce Search to let online retailers power their online stores with Google's search technology. Preparing for the holiday e-commerce rush, Google will host this enterprise search product on its own servers in the cloud to assuage customers' concerns about handling holiday traffic spikes. Smaller companies such as Endeca, Vivisimo, Coveo and Microsoft's Fast enterprise search division already duke it out in the e-commerce search vertical, but now they will have to contend with the goliath in search.
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Microsoft rolls out a revamped MSN homepage incorporating social networking features such as Facebook and Twitter feeds, and putting its Bing search engine at the interface's front and center. Microsoft's revamp follows Yahoo's own homepage revision in September, as both companies seek to compete more heartily against Google in the search and advertising space.
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Google Nov. 4 added a section to Friend Connect accounts that lets users share information about themselves for serendipitous discovery, as well as a private e-mail feature to let users connect with others they may meet online through Friend Connected Websites. Google also added an AdSense section to let Friend Connect site owners serve Google ads matched both to their site's content and to the interests users publicly share on the site. Though not a social network like Facebook, Friend Connect is being used by more than 9 million sites, with over 500 million unique viewers of Friend Connected Web pages each month.
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NEWS ANALYSIS: Although Google is enjoying some of the best performance it has ever had, the company can't succeed in a vacuum. It's still facing off against Microsoft. And the longer that battle rages, the more Google should be concerned.
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Google has a lot riding on its Google Chrome Web browser. The search engine Nov. 2 added bookmark sync for its latest build of Chrome to let the browser's 30 million users to keep their favorite Web pages up to date across multiple computing devices. The Chrome 4.0 beta is also 30 percent faster from the current stable release. Speed is a big deal for Chrome and Google's forthcoming Chrome Operating System, which will be the Linux-based launching platform for the Chrome browser and Web applications. Google Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently gave the Chrome team a multi-million-dollar stock bonus for creating the browser.
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Blogging celebrity Anil Dash examines Twitter Lists as a way to tag real-time Web feeds, while the Bivings Report says getting added to a Twitter list is more of an endorsement than getting followed. Dash says Lists is a winner because users must be signed in, creating an authentication and relationship requirement that reduces spam. Meanwhile, the Bivings Report says Lists could bring a beacon of light to one of the dark sides of Twitter: the stat padding that Twitterers engage in to gain more followers, thereby appearing important or influential.
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Microsoft has touch-optimized its Bing mobile site, allowing owners of the iPhone, Zune HD, Verizon Imagio and other devices to navigate the search engine via their multitouch screens. Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.5, the latest version of its smartphone operating system, also includes touch-screen functionality. The increased popularity of devices such as the iPhone has made touch screens a vital component to consider for developers of mobile software.
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Conventional wisdom has it that the combo of Microsoft's Bing search engine and Yahoo's market share will loosen Google's stranglehold on the search market. But there is something worse than a monopoly when it comes to stifling creativity and competition, and, with the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, we're heading straight for it.
No longer a beta, Google's Chrome Web browser is an able challenger to Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Chrome offers strong new features, such as integration with Google Gears, a hybrid search address bar and solid security offerings. However, the search company's browser lacks some basic features found in IE, Firefox and Opera, and limits users who want to define settings and customize their browser. Despite its shortcomings, browser users should give Google Chrome a try.
Search giant Google in its new Chrome browser has souped up JavaScript, calling it V8. Although Google Chrome's V8 sports neither fuel injection nor dual-overhead cams, it does have full compilation even for dynamic languages and new garbage collection features, resulting in much faster Web 2.0 applications.
Google's new Chrome browser has a lot to offer in terms of new technology. Google has recognized that something needed to be done to enable browser technology to catch up to the current state of Web application development. Jeff Cogswell looks under the hood to see what makes it tick.
Review: Microsoft closes the gap between its browser and rivals
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