Twitter’s displeasure with Google’s “Search plus Your World” may have been the most loudly heard reaction, but tech commentators also took to their blogs to criticise Google’s latest enhancement to personalised search this week.
Yahoo talks up video, content strategy
Yahoo executives meeting with investors and analysts on Wednesday did what they could to assuage concerns about the company’s minority investments in China and Japan before moving on to the sunnier topics of a surge in display advertising and the big potential for video.
In fight with content farms, round one to Google
When Google hit out at the content farms earlier this year with a change to its ranking algorithm, it was the opening blow in what looked like being a long fight.
Demand Media admitted late on Sunday that the change hurt traffic at its biggest site, eHow. But it brushed off the damage (and a 10 per cent hit to its share price) by affirming its financial guidance and saying that it had redoubled its efforts to attract eyeballs – including from Facebook.
Google accuses Microsoft of plagiarism
Google’s accusation today that Microsoft’s Bing is copying its search results feels like a telling moment in the long-running Search Wars.
When I caught up just now with Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search quality, he didn’t mince his words: “It’s crazy. I haven’t seen anything like this in ten years in search.” For Microsoft, it raises an uncomfortable question: after years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars, is it still unable to match Google without hanging onto its coattails?
Google: we can do better on spam
Google has hit back at growing criticism of the quality of its search results, with a blog post pledging to tackle “content farms” and admitting: “We can and should do better.”
The move has been seen as a threat to Demand Media, one such producer of low-cost articles and videos designed to suck up search traffic, which has just priced its initial public offering.
Yahoo Japan gets clearance to lean on Google
Japan’s antitrust authorities have cleared Yahoo Japan’s plan to rely on Google for algorithmic search results, rejecting complaints from Microsoft and others that the combined service would field as much as 90 per cent of the nation’s search queries.
Japan Fair Trade Commission officials told wire services that they would not block the deal announced in July but would continue to monitor it for any harm to the market.
Google’s Android to add physical payment system
The version of Google’s Android operating system for smartphones due out in a few weeks can be used with specialised chips to authenticate the precise location of the mobile devices, paving the way for secure payments at physical stores, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said Monday.
Because the Near-Field Communication chips can store and exchange precise data about the phones, well beyond ordinary GPS, their adoption will allow phone owners to tap their gadgets against a physical surface to confirm their presence and identity, Mr Schmidt said.
Google raises the search stakes again
Google Instant provides the clearest evidence for years that Google is still prepared to throw its engineering might – and its wallet – into raising the stakes in the search business.
This turns out to be more than the one-off launch that we wrote about last month. Rather, Instant has become a rolling series of changes that together amount to a very sizeable challenge to anyone else who wants to stay in the search business long term (are you listening, Microsoft?)
This is how Johanna Wright, director of product management for search, described the latest twist to Instant, unveiled on Tuesday: “We’ve had to take images of every page on the Web, and to know where every word on the internet sits.”
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Older entries
