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Microsoft Offers to Pay News Corp to "De-List" From Google

Justin Kerr — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:39:00 -0600

When Rupert Murdoch announced that he was thinking of taking his News Corp web properties out of the Google search index, speculation as to Microsoft and Bing's involvement was rampant. Turns out, there might have actually been something to the rumors for once. According to the folks over at The Financial Times, Microsoft is willing to grease Murdoch palms to go exclusive with Bing, a move that newspapers will no doubt welcome.

The idea is essentially to force Google to pay for content, something it has historically never done. The news certainly came to the disappointment of Google which tends to endorse the "openness of the web", but Google's UK director Matt Brittin told a conference last week that Google doesn't need news content to stay afloat. "Economically it's not a big part of how we generate revenue" he said. In the end Google will likely still gain indirect access to the content by crawling third party websites that link to News Corp stories, but it will certainly impact Google News and start a new and possibly disturbing trend.

Steve Ballmer has admitted that he is willing to spend heavily for many years to make Bing a serious rival to Google, and Rupert Murdoch is but one of many struggling old media mongrels eager to cash in on the competition in search. If the two parties do end up inking an agreement, expect to see Bing advertise heavily as the only place to find The Wall Street Journal and possibly more deals to come.

Will this earn Bing market share? And what effect do you think this will have on the open web?

Google Now Lets Parents Lock SafeSearch in Place

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:39:41 -0600

Google has clearly revolutionized internet search. The Internet being what it is, it isn’t uncommon for Google to pull up some, shall we say, risqué material. That’s why Google created SafeSearch. By changing the search settings, Google will automatically filter out inappropriate results. Now the big G is providing a way to lock SafeSearch on all Google domains.

When SafeSearch is locked, a series of orbs will be in the upper right corner of all search results to confirm that SafeSearch is locked. These settings even remain in place if a user logs out of the Google account in question. A user will need to log in to the original Google account to change these settings.

While it’s better than nothing, it has its flaws. Running a different browser circumvents the system, allowing the settings to be changed. If any parents think their kids aren’t smarter than them when it comes to the internet, they need to think again. This system may still be handy for employers that want to keep workers on task, or for playing pranks on friends. If you want to give it a shot, whatever your reason, hit the story link above for a full walkthrough

Bing Licenses Wolfram|Alpha for Computational Searches

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:24:42 -0600

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has announced the roll out of a new feature. Now when you search from Bing, you can get access to the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine. The Wolfram Alpha engine was developed by noted scientist Stephen Wolfram. It launched in May of 2009.

Wolfram Alpha tends to be a little on the confusing side. It makes sense to integrate it into a more consumer oriented engine where people might get some use out of it. One possible use scenario highlighted by Microsoft is that of tracking health and nutrition.

Say you need to know the nutritional value of a steak, now Bing can tell you in detail. Already ate it? Bing can also use the Wolfram Alpha algorithms to determine your BMI and compare it to the rest of the population, thus making you sorry you ate the steak. Of course, you can still do all the complex math calculations that Wolfram Alpha is known for, but who really needs that in Bing? So, does any of this sound useful to you?

Bing Takes on New Role as Video Portal

Paul Lilly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:04:35 -0600

Microsoft has revamped its Bing Video interface, and over the next few days will be rolling out a new unified online video destination, the software maker announced. The overhauled service, which meshes MSN Video with Bing, promises to be more organized and contain plenty of high-quality content.

"With the New Bing Video you can now access videos from across the web, MSN's array of high-quality videos, and videos from sites such as Hulu, ABC, and YouTube," Microsoft said on its Bing blog. "Bing videos viewing options are nearly endless."

Microsoft said its video portal grants users access to over 900 television shows, all of which it says are organized and easy to sort through, even if the episode you're looking for is from last season. Users will also be able to share videos, and the portal now includes a 'dim the lights' feature.

Give Bing Videos a peek here, then tell us what you think in the comments section below!

Microsoft to Give Away Free WiFi if You Search with Bing

Ryan Whitwam — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:48:48 -0600

Microsoft's Bing and JiWire have a proposition for you. Free WiFi in exchange for using Bing. Interested? The promotion would give users free Internet access at participating hotspots if they do just one search with Bing. In conjunction with JiWire’s advertising network, Microsoft will be extending the offer to various hotels and airports.

The campaign was started in September at several thousand locations. It managed to attract between 30 and 40 percent of visitors to the hotspots. This is extremely high, as most ads only get interaction from 0.1 to 0.2 percent of people. Microsoft reportedly plans to continue with the promotion, which is a part of JiWire’s Ads for Access campaign. The campaign allows companies to give customers something in exchange for their time. This can be taking a survey, watching a video ad, or (in this case) using the Bing search engine.

The next time you’re in an airport, keep an eye out for these ads. It could get you free access courtesy of a certain Redmond software giant.

Ten Interesting Facts You May Have Never Known About Google

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:00:15 -0600

Google has risen to become a behemoth in the tech world in just a bit over a decade. Even in that short time, enough weird tidbits of information resulted that it makes an entertaining read. Perusing this list of ten interesting facts about Google will make you chuckle and scratch your head.

For instance, did you know that the original name for Google’s PageRank algorithm was “BackRub"? PageRank is probably better and less creepy. Have you ever used Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button? Well, that button costs Google about $110 million per year, because it skips past the ads on the results page. Hit the story link for the full list.

Microsoft and Yahoo Need a Bit More Time to Negotiate a Deal

Paul Lilly — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:26:58 -0500

In a filing with the SEC, Yahoo said more time is needed to complete the search and advertising deal with Microsoft. The two sides had agreed in late July to have everything squared away by October 27, but hammering out the details of a long term deal is taking longer than expected.

"The parties are working diligently finalizing the agreements, have made good progress to date, and have agreed to execute the agreements as expeditiously as possible," Yahoo wrote.

Assuming the two sides can get this done -- and both sides said they are committed to doing so -- Microsoft's Bing will power Yahoo's search results in exchange for those all important advertising dollars. In a joint statement, Microsoft said the companies are "optimistic" they'll be able to close the deal by early 2010, but did not specify a new deadline.

Image Credit: BusinessInsider.com

Google Adds More Customizable Options to Custom Search

Paul Lilly — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:25:26 -0500

Up until Bing, it was pretty much unfathomable that Google would ever see any kind of real competition in the search market, and perhaps Bing's early success has been a wake up call. It seems Google has been aggressively trying to improve the search experience as of late, including a bunch of just-released updates to its customizable search service.

Google Custom Search now comes with six additional themes to play with, all of which can be customized by changing fonts, colors, backgrounds, promotion settings, and various interactive features like tabbing and mouseovers, Google said. Even the search box and results placement are tweakable.

In addition to cosmetic tweaks, Google also launched a new Custom Search feature called Structured Search. With Structured Search, end users can look up information based on specific attributes instead of general terms. For example, if a Web publisher includes an author's name as an attribute in the app's metadata, users can ping the Internet for just a specific author and only get results that match the query.

Image Credit: Google