Bing to oust Google as default iPhone search?

Apple and Microsoft may be in talks to expel Google as the iPhone’s default search engine, in favor of Bing, according to BusinessWeek. The Apple-Google battle for the mobile throne is getting heated.

This is all coming from “two people familiar with the matter,” so, you know, eat a bowl of salt or whatever, but it sort of makes sense in a Machiavellian kind of way. Windows Mobile 7 notwithstanding, Apple’s competition in the mobile arena isn’t Microsoft, but Google, and so it’s not really that outlandish, especially considering that Bing isn’t necessarily a worse search engine than Google. Apple avoids throwing unnecessary support to Google (although the iPhone will still feature Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail) while Microsoft gains a huge market for Bing. Everybody wins, except Google, which only mostly wins.

If Bing were the default search engine on your phone, would you go through the necessary steps to change it to Google? I have a feeling a lot of people just might not care. (Via BusinessWeek).

Popularity: 7% [?]

What’s Islam? Don’t Ask Google

Google’s search engine returns common results to most queries as you type. But the “don’t be evil” company appears to be censoring its results when it comes to Islam.

Type “Christianity is” into Google and you’ll get a list of common searches. But the engine appears to suppress results for “Islam is.”

Type a few words into the search field on Google’s home page and the engine automatically returns a helpful list of popular, similar searches for the words you’ve typed in so far — a convenient way to find the right information.

Enter “Christianity is” and you’ll find results that, while offensive, at least indicate common discussions on the Internet. Likewise, type “Judaism is” and Google suggests other, potentially offensive searches such as “Judaism is false” and “Judaism is not a race.”

But type “Islam is” into the search engine and Google’s auto-results pane mysteriously vanishes, leading some to conclude that Google, whose mantra is “don’t be evil,” is censoring its search results.

According to Google’s Web site, the query suggestions that appear as you type are drawn from from searches you’ve done (if you’re logged in), searches done by users all over the world, sites in the search index and ads in Google’s network.

The company also explains that “We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms. If you encounter a term that should not be suggested, please let us know by posting in the Google Web Search Help Forum.”

Perhaps the returned results are so inappropriate that all results have simply been turned off, an option some Internet users label ‘cowardly.‘ After all, search for hot-button items such as “scientology is” or “Muhammad is” and the results are even more offensive.

A Google spokesman explained that the weird absence of results is just a software problem: “This is in fact a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can.” But the company would not respond to requests for clarification.

An intriguing corollary: Google offers search suggestions for future tense queries as well. Ask “Christianity will” and Google suggests “Christianity will end, it will disappear,” and “Christianity will end.” Ask the same about Islam and Google notes that “Islam will dominate the world” and “Islam will destroy Europe.”

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Google adds translation to main search engine

Google has began weaving an automated language translation feature into its universal search service.

A new “translated search” tool lets people direct Google to seek results from Web pages written in an array of languages and then deliver results in a searcher’s preferred tongue.

The feature has been available at the Google Translate service, but is becoming part of the California-based Internet firm’s popular main search engine.

“Now, when you search on Google for something in your own language, you can use this tool to search the web in another language,” Google technical lead Maureen Heymans and product manager Jeff Chin said in a blog post.

“We’re integrating it fully into Google search, making it easier for you to find and read results from pages across the web, even if they weren’t written in a language you speak.”

The tool can be found in a menu revealed by clicking on “Show Options” at the top of a Google search results page.

Search keywords are translated into languages that appear relevant, such as French and Dutch for a query about Belgium, and Web pages found are presented in the searcher’s language.

“We’ll algorithmically select the best language(s) to translate your search query into and then return you translated results from those pages,” Heymans and Chin said. “We’ll even display results from multiple languages.”

Searchers can look for Web pages written in any of 51 languages. The tool will display results from as many as five languages at a time, according to Google.

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Google Squared gets more data, better filters

Google has released a few enhancements to Google Squared, its attempt to build spreadsheets out of search results.

Google Squared is a Google Labs project first unveiled in May at its Searchology event and set loose on the world a month later. The idea is to take the search results for a given query, such as “U.S. presidents” or “European countries,” and present the results as a table with facts and dates helpfully sorted for easier research.

The company announced on Friday “a number of improvements to the amount and quality of information you can find with Google Squared, as well as new tools to sort and export the data,” it said in a blog post. For example, Google Squared can now return 120 facts organized in rows and columns, as opposed to just 30 at launch. The filters have gotten better as well, which was a definite problem with the first batch of Google Squared results.

It’s still not ready for prime time, however: according to Google Squared, the Milwaukee Brewers play home games in both Milwaukee and San Diego. It had no idea what city is home to Yankee Stadium–let alone which New York borough–and it also seemed to miss the grand opening this year of a new Yankee Stadium to replace The House That Ruth Built.

Google said Squared is an experiment in “understanding structured data from across the Web to build new tools for organizing and presenting information.” Despite plans to offload its back-end search technology, Yahoo is trying to keep its name in the game as a search company by conducting much of the same research.

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Twitter to introduce live video-tweeting

Twitter users may soon be posting real-time video tweets in addition to text tweets under plans to modernise the site.

The upgrade, which is being discussed by Twitter’s founders, will enable Twitter users to upload brief video snippets to their profiles directly from mobile phones, laptops and other devices.

Third party sites Twiddeo and Tweetube already allow Twitter users to post video tweets but only by creating links to their sites.

Both Twideo and Tweetube have so far failed to gain as much popularity as similar external service Twitpic.

Twitter’s founders hope by adding live video-tweeting it will help boost its prominence as a fashionable social-networking tool again.

In recent weeks both British singer Lily Allen and Hannah Montana actress Miley Cyrus have snubbed the site by closing their Twitter accounts. Allen’s last tweet read: “I am a neo-Luddite, goodbye.”

Some of Britain’s biggest tweeters include Stephen Fry with 810,000 followers, Sarah Brown, the prime minister’s wife, with 840,000 followers, and rock group Coldplay who have more than two million followers. Sarah Brown’s Twitter following is already believed to be five times larger than the entire membership of the Labour party.

Although many tweets describe mundane activities, the site has played a role in news events. Twitter was an active platform for protesters during the Iranian elections and in January, a ferry passenger was the first person to post pictures of people being rescued from an airliner in New York’s Hudson River.

Twitter has also been used as a campaign tool by Barack Obama and British politicians in support of the NHS.

The site has yet to make a profit or find a way of making money but has been valued at £603m. Twitter has 54 million users around the world every month.

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Is Orkut trying to Imitate Twitter ?

I have found Google’s Orkut to be always different for some or the other reason. It is generally considered as a place for friends groups to chit-chat. But never have i thought about it as a link sharing or a social media sort of website. Now as many people might have noticed, Orkut has announced a new feature that lets you promote your content to your friends firstly and then they can share it with their group of networks. It is called as “Orkut Promote”.

Here, you can share links, photos and also videos to your friends using this new and valuable feature. Your content gets promoted in your friends circle on Orkut network. If your friends like it, they can “spread it” among their group of friends. In addition to this, you can actively keep a track on your promotions as in how many people shared or clicked on your promoted content links, etc. Its that simple.

So, in making a similar feature as to Twitter, is Orkut trying now to imitate Twitter?

You can also view the help video below that will explain you the way to use the content promote.

It is a really cool feature that Google orkut has started. Anyone with a orkut account can use this feature. People who have a personal blog or website can also take advantage of this feature in promoting your products or services thorugh Google Orkut promote.

We shall also keep a track on this new feature by Google orkut and keep you updated of any news.

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Google turns 11 with an eye on Microsoft

Eleven years ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. with a search engine and a plan. Now their company has grown into an online behemoth battling head-to-head with industry giant Microsoft Corp. while the term Google is a verb that means Internet search.

Obviously, a lot has changed for the company and its founders since Sept. 27, 1998.

Google celebrated its anniversary this year quietly, doing little more than changing the famed doodle on its search page from the usual Google to Goog11e .

But whether it celebrates its birthday or not, Google is one of the great Internet success stories to date. The company not only owns the search market with a share of more than 64%, it has branched out over the years with its hosted Google Apps applications like Gmail along with Google Maps , Google Earth and other products.

More recently, Google has moved to take on Microsoft and its widely-used Internet Explorer in the browser business, and even disclosed plans this summer to develop an alternative to the Windows operating system. Just yesterday, Google announced plans to release an early version of its Google Wave collaboration tool to 100,000 users and developers for testing.

“I would say Google is the most influential Web company out there,” said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research Inc. “It’s rare to have a company grow like that, but we’ve seen others. It’s just that the others either flamed out, were acquired or haven’t yet reached a sustainable state. Look at Netscape, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook.”

Caroline Dangson, an analyst with IDC, noted that in a survey undertaken by the research firm last year, Google was easily the top consumer brand.

“We have found that with consumer surveys, [Google] is the number one consumer brand,” she added. “We conducted a survey including Yahoo, MSN, eBay, Amazon … different consumer Web properties. Google was number one for all of our questions, from ‘How much do you like the brand?’ to ‘How much do you use the brand?’ to ‘How much do you trust the brand?’ There are few companies that are able to grow and dominate in this way.”

Google has grown to the point where it’s become a threat to Microsoft , which has had a long and storied history of high-tech industry dominance. There was a time not so long ago when few believed that any company could rattle Microsoft, let alone a Web company like Google .

But Google’s vice-like grip on the lucrative search market forced Microsoft to spend massive amounts of money to overhaul its old and unexciting Live Search engine to create Bing , which was unveiled this summer. Microsoft went a step further by signing an agreement that calls for Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. to use Bing as the primary search engine on its various sites.

At the same time, Google was developing its Chrome browser to take on IE, and was looking to develop an operating system to compete with Windows.

The Chrome browser , unveiled about a year ago, hasn’t hurt Microsoft yet, but the company isn’t giving up. Last week, for example, Google released a plug-in called Chrome Frame that lets users embed the Chrome browser into IE. The plug in, which is said to boost IE’s browser’s notoriously slow JavaScript speed, drew a quick response from Microsoft , which warned that it could cause security problems for users.

Google in July announced plans to take on Windows with an open-source operating system, also called Chrome, that could run Internet-centric computers like netbooks as early as the second half of next year. Many other companies have tried and failed to take on Microsoft in the operating systems business, but analysts say that Google has the financial muscle, the engineering might and the industry clout to actually put up a realistic fight for market share.

Google also moved this summer to make its hosted applications suite more attractive to large government users by announcing plans to tailor its cloud computing services for various federal agencies.

“In Microsoft’s mind, Google is probably the biggest threat to their bread-and-butter operating system and desktop application businesses,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “Google’s dominance of the search business is also Microsoft’s biggest opportunity in terms of new revenue and revenue growth. So to a large extent, the two companies are going to do battle on several fronts, which is good for consumers as it keeps innovation high and prices low, and it’s also fun to observe.”

Google, with a focus on its core business along with an ingrained innovative track, is also influencing a whole lot of up-and-coming Web 2.0 businesses, according to Olds.

“The Google model of developing a killer application, optimizing it to provide high user value and gain user loyalty, and then monetizing it has been the model of choice for social networking companies. Take a look at Twitter,” he said. “Google has gone from zero to industry giant in a record amount of time, starting with just a bunch of guys with a search engine to a company with a $156 billion capitalization in just over a decade. It’s a company worth emulating.”

Popularity: 7% [?]

Google invites feedback on super-secret search upgrades

Google is upgrading its search infrastructure and it’s being really shady about it.

In a post on its Webmaster Central blog, however, Google engineers Sitaram Iyer and Matt Cutts insist that ordinary users won’t even see the difference.

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search,” the post reads, making it all sound vaguely like some kind of elf workshop. “It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.” The user interface is unchanged.

Developers are encouraged to try out the new technology on a “sandbox” page and then offer feedback by including the word “caffeine” in Google’s feedback text field, secret-password-style.

The company acknowledged that “some parts of this system aren’t completely finished yet.” But the industry buzz is obviously a huge part of it: There’s a legitimate new contender in the search engine market, Microsoft’s Bing, which is fueled by heavy marketing dollars and has begun to inch its way up in market share since its debut earlier this summer.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives the impression that he isn’t particularly worried about Bing. But it’s hard to not look at a shadowy blog post about under-the-radar upgrades to Google’s search index and not take it as a Googly way of saying, “game on.”

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Flickr Updates Its Search Feature

Flickr is one of the largest and most used photo sites, but its search function hasn’t always been the most intuitive. This week the company announced a noteworthy redesign that makes searching for photos easier.

Forstarters, the new “View” control (located at the top of the page, just below the search box) will display results in a thumbnail gallery view across different sizes and formats (small, medium, detail, slideshow). As Flickr’s blog states,”both small and medium views have an ‘i’ icon on every thumbnail.” Clicking on it will generate a full-sized image of the photo, which means you no longer have to navigate away from the page to get up close and personal with your favorite photos.

Flickr has also added a new sidebar with links to groups, photographers, tag clusters, and more. All in all, a much-welcome set of tweaks.

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Yahoo deals with Microsoft and Gives Up on Search

In a very long awaited pairing aiming to compete with Google, Yahoo will handle ad sales while Microsoft gets the real deal, data on who’s doing what online.

Ever since when Microsoft made its official bid of $45 billion for Yahoo in early part of 2008, it was clear that the software masters were serious about competing with its rival, Google in the lucrative Internet Search business. And now, after almost a year of more talks after Yahoo had denied that bid, it’s become clear that Microsoft has finally been able to achieve its goal. Is the reports about the deal between the two are proved, Microsoft will emerge as the clear No. 2 player in search business.

In short this deal, Yahoo is almost signaling its departure from a industry in which it once dominated the headlines. Yahoo will now scrap its own efforts of taking on Google in search and instead will rely on Microsoft’s recent debutant “Bing” according to the “The Wall Street Journal” and BoomTown blog. The ads that are placed next to those search results would now be served by a Microsoft technology called AdCenter, and not by Yahoo’s ad platform “Panama” says another report from Advertising Age. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz “is essentially giving up on search,” says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land.

Yahoo’s sales team will most likely continue to sell the search ads that appear both on Yahoo sites and on Bing. And the company that sells an ad—in this case, Yahoo—may get as much as 80% of the resulting revenue. But Microsoft would nevertheless attain a reward that’s even more valuable in the long run. The data on computer users’ online search and buying habits would ultimately reside on Microsoft’s computers, thereby improving its ability to automatically serve up the most relevant ads. “If Microsoft is running the underlying ad technology, it doesn’t matter who is selling the ads,” Sullivan says. “In the end, Microsoft will hold all the cards.”

He adds that most advertisers place ads by filling out online forms, with no involvement from salespeople. Maintaining control of sales makes the deal “sound rosier for Yahoo than it really is, because in the end Yahoo won’t have the technology needed to compete.”

Microsoft however, wins in other different ways. The deal gives a big boost to Bing. The combined search market share of “Yahoo” and “Microsoft” would approach 30%. That’s still far below Google’s 65%, but analysts say it may provide enough of a critical mass at least to stave off further Google advances and help the enlarged search engine gain some ground. At a minimum, the deal doubles as a kind of insurance policy for Microsoft, in case all of the positive buzz about the Bing search engine doesn’t translate into actual market share. By adding Yahoo’s 20% market share, Bing assures its place as the only search engine provider other than Google with size that really matters.

So what’s in it for Bartz? For starters, Yahoo can slice millions of dollars in technology development costs, while continuing to bring in or even grow its search ad revenue. That’s because its salespeople will sell not only ads running on Yahoo sites, but also on Bing. The recently appointed CEO also buys time to hone Yahoo’s strategy and improve other moneymakers, such as placing banner-style display ads that appear on Yahoo’s highly trafficked portal and e-mail pages. And by continuing to sell search ads, she maintains relationships with key advertisers rather than let Microsoft walk away with them. “Yahoo doesn’t want to look like they’ve sold off their crown jewel for short-term gain,” Sullivan says. “This creates the illusion that they have more control of the situation than they probably do.”

It’s an illusion that will likely work with Yahoo’s long-suffering shareholders. Indeed, the deal will probably be welcomed by investors in both companies, since it lets each play to its respective strengths. Yahoo is most successful as a media company—and that includes selling advertising.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is a technology powerhouse, with vast software development capabilities and the cash to build the billion-dollar data centers needed to run search engines and ad platforms. The roles represent a stark reversal from half a decade ago, when Microsoft used both Yahoo’s search technology and its search-ad system. “It’s good for both of the companies,” says Sandeep Agarwal, an analyst with Collins Stewart (CLST.L).

An Antitrust O.K. Is Needed

It’s not yet clear whether the final terms have won approval by both companies, and it could be delayed beyond the expected today’s (July 29, 2009) announcement date. But the reports indicate that negotiations, which recently heated up after more than a year of on-again, off-again talks, are essentially complete. Yahoo and Microsoft declined to comment.

The arrangement will also have to get a nod from antitrust officials. It probably will, given both companies’ relatively small market share next to Google’s, and advertisers generally are likely to be in favor of the deal since it bolsters a competitor to the market leader. But Google no doubt will raise objections, which could at least slow down the approval of the deal.

Moreover, the complexity of the deal means it will take the two companies longer to integrate operations than if Yahoo simply outsourced search and search ads to Microsoft, as Microsoft originally proposed. “It’s certainly a deal with a bunch of moving pieces,” says Tim Cadogan, CEO of the online ad technology and services firm OpenX and a former Yahoo ad sales and search executive.

But if and when those pieces fall into place, it will become abundantly clear which party gained the upper hand in the arrangement, and which one has a fighting chance against Google. We will have to just wait and watch now.

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