Microsoft Plus Yahoo vs. Google, So It Begins
The Microsoft and Yahoo marriage has been blessed by antitrust regulators both in Europe and over the pond, giving the two companies green light to implement their anti-Google search alliance. On the morning of February 18th, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Antitrust Commission have wrapped up their reviews of the Microsoft-Yahoo search agreement. With the alliance between the two giants cleared without restrictions, the duo will now move to implement the deal.
“Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone,” said Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer. “I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo! will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers.”
Microsoft claims that the search agreement was announced in late July 2009, but the company has been flirting publicly with Yahoo for a total of over two years, but there’s no way of telling just how much time had Ballmer actually spent on this deal ahead of the start of 2008. The debut of February 2008, brought with it an unsolicited offer of $44.6 billion from Microsoft, which at the time was trying to acquire Yahoo. Making sure that the deal fell through was Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, then occupying the position of CEO. Read more
Google Launches Google Squared
The amount of online data is increasing exponentially and everyone trying to keep track of it is having a harder time doing so. Even Google isn’t having it any easier and it has acknowledged that the current keyword-based search won’t be able to keep up for long. Adding structure to the data online, using it more like a database, would make it much easier to manage the volume of information. This is what the search giant hopes to do with its Google Squared project.
Having the web all organized, labeled and structured is what many companies are trying to do for the search engines of tomorrow. A recent popular example in this regard is the recently launched Wolfram Alpha, which works differently from most search engines, including Google’s, because instead of just indexing the data on the web it gathers it and stores it in its internal databases. Read more
Google to Allow Free Music Downloads in China
On Monday, Google Inc. has announced that it has begun offering free and legal downloads of licensed music on its Chinese servers, after the American company reached an agreement with the four largest music producers and distributors in the world – Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music. Google will pay for the songs by sharing some of its advertising revenues with the music companies, one of the first attempts made by the music industry to cash in on the large Chinese market.
In China, the most popular search engine is not the leader of the market, but trails behind giant Baidu.com Inc., which has the most visitors and registered searches per day. The President of Google for greater China, Lee Kai-Fu, said that one of the main reasons why the company lagged behind Baidu was the fact that Google offered no music downloads. “We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads. We were missing one piece – we didn’t have music,” Lee stated. Read more
Chrome Looks Shiny
Google’s entry into the web browser market should liven things up; it will certainly give Microsoft and Mozilla something to think about. If you haven’t already tried it then I suggest that you give Google Chrome the once over.. It’s early days yet, and this is the Beta version so take the usual precautions of setting a new Restore Point, but so far it looks quite promising. My favourite feature so far is the integrated address window/search box, naturally it defaults to Google but you can change it to Yahoo, MSN, Ask or the search engine of your choice on the Options menu. It imports all of your bookmarks and quick links so installation is smooth and quick, though I’m not so happy at the way it also seems to know all of my passwords, I would have preferred it to ask before importing those. Read more
