Clint Boulton

Semantic search startup Powerset launched its first product May 12, a search engine focused on finding articles on Wikipedia. The technology has wowed analysts, some of whom proclaimed it a potential Google killer in the hands of Microsoft, a company capable enough to wield it. Those comments came amid rumors that Powerset is being pursued […]

Following key data portability announcements from MySpace and Facebook, Google May 12 introduced a service that helps Web site owners add social features for their visitors without having to do any programming. Google Friend Connect lets site operators add a snippet of code to their Web sites to add user registration, invitations, member galleries, message […]

Analysts are bullish on Google’s $500 million investment in and agreement to become a key search, ad and applications provider for both Sprint and Clearwire, which opened a new beachhead May 7 on the elusive island of speedy Internet known as WiMax. WiMax, which pipes data at up to 70M bps to an area that […]

Noting that social activity on the Web is controlled by a handful of social networks, Google Director of Engineering David Glazer said Google’s new Friend Connect service aims to let users use any application on any site with their friends. Unveiled as a preview on select Web sites May 12, Friend Connect represents an effort […]

Facebook Chief Technology Officer Adam D’Angelo has left the company and will not be replaced, a company spokesperson told eWEEK May 12. The company confirmed it is looking to hire a vice president of engineering in his stead. While the blog AllFacebook.com reports that the arrival of Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg from Google is […]

Facebook May 9 announced Facebook Connect, which allows the company’s almost 70 million users to port their identity and friends list securely to other Web sites. Connect comes a day after MySpace unveiled Data Availability, which allows users to move data to eBay, Yahoo, Twitter and Photobucket, and a couple days before Google will announce […]

In anticipation (or fear) of a Google-Yahoo search outsourcing tie, 16 organizations comprising rural and minority groups opposed the pact in a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice Friday. The Google-Yahoo deal was tested last month, but so far, the vendors have yet to formally announce the partnership, in which Yahoo would run Google […]

The words “Google” and “cloud” are becoming as common in sentences together as “Google” and “search.” With more than 3,000 businesses signing up for Google Apps daily, the company is widely viewed as a new challenger to Microsoft and IBM in the collaboration applications front. Google may be seeing rampant adoption of its Google Apps, […]

Stepping up its Web security game, Google’s Postini unit May 8 rebranded Postini software that protects corporate networks from malware and provides URL filtering. Priced at $36 per user per year, Google Web Security for Enterprise also enforces IT policies at the user, workgroup or company levels and generates reports on Web traffic coming into […]

Live Blogging: 1:05 p.m.: MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe unveils the MySpace ‘Data Availability’ initiative, a “ground-breaking offering” to let MySpace users share their public profile data to Web sites of their choice throughout the Internet. 1:08: COO Amit Kapur says rather than updating information across the Web (e.g., default photo, favorite movies or music) for […]

MySpace’s Data Availability initiative may break the ice for other social networks when it comes to data portability, especially with Yahoo, eBay, Twitter and Photobucket lending it legitimacy by participating. But one of the glaring absentees from the effort, which will let users move MySpace data onto other sites, was Google. To this point, Google […]

MySpace said it will soon allow its 117 million users to move their profile content from its site to other Web sites through its Data Availability initiative. MySpace executives said in a conference call May 8 they would let users begin moving files, photos and other information stored on MySpace to participating sites Yahoo, eBay, […]