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YAHOO! and Microsoft have finalised the details of their planned internet search and advertising partnership. The companies hope to implement the deal next year with the approval of anti-trust regulators. "Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010," the companies said in a joint statement. "Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value and more innovation."...

BEIJING — The leaders of two of the world’s major news organizations said Friday that it is time for search engines and others who use news content for free to pay up. The comments from Tom Curley of The Associated Press and News Corp. [NWS]’s Rupert Murdoch come as the media industry struggles in the Internet age. Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material. "We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news...

IBM is taking on Google in the cloud-computing based hosted business email service with LotusLive iNotes, which will be offered beginning Monday. Software as a service is a popular option for companies that want to rent, instead of buy, software and Google has been a big player in that area.

It's interesting to see what the different search engines thing of Flag Day this year. Here's a short list:DogpileBingGoogleHmmmm...

Wolfram|Alpha, the "computational knowledge engine" you’ve been reading about here, is now open to the public for testing.**************************snip********************** As of now, Wolfram|Alpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. Built withMathematica—which is itself the result of more than 20 years of development at Wolfram Research—Wolfram|Alpha's core code base now exceeds 5 million lines of symbolicMathematica code.

Microsoft has confirmed it is testing a new search engine called Kumo, based on technology from its Powerset acquisition, that is likely to be an early version of a soon-to-be-rebranded Live Search product."Microsoft is using the Kumo.com URL for internal testing purposes only," the company said via e-mail through its public relations firm Tuesday. "Given the depth and breadth of our current online service offering, we recognize a need to sharply define and align our online brands."Microsoft added that it has "nothing new to announce at this time." However, the company has been rumored for some time to be renaming...

Many of us already know how much "in the tank" Google is with Obama. Google's CEO first met Obama way back in 2000 and has since had several meetings. It is also true that Google was caught censoring what they deemed negative content against Obama during the election. It will also likely be true that Google will eventually censor information for the Obama administration - this is a no-brainer as they have already done so and are tightly coupled. I am now introducing a new search engine that I personally feel is very good. Some of you may have heard...

Cuil is a search engine website (pronounced as Cool) developed by a team of ex-Googlers and other top notch people from institutions like Altavista and IBM. Cuil, termed as the 'Google Killer' was launched on 28th July, 2008 and claims to be world’s largest search engine, indexing three times as many pages as Google and ten times that of Microsoft's. I have been following Cuil right from its birth and it surely has come a long way in case of accuracy and proper indexing of search results. So let us take a look at Cuil and decide if it can...

Citing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s technological savvy and technology policies, Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt expressed his support for the Illinois senator yesterday at the Law School. Schmidt and Obama’s technology advisor Julius Genachowski made a stop in Charlottesville yesterday in an effort to garner support for the presidential candidate and his technology policies. The pair spoke on a wide variety of issues from income disparity to using the Internet as a means for civic engagement, but the primary focus was Obama’s technology policies.

Earlier this year I wrote what, at the time, I thought was a tongue in cheek column titled, "Obama The Antichrist? Hmm." The commentary was in response to what I believed was an irrationally positive response to the Obama presidential run. There seemed to be a mystical quality surrounding Obama's campaign. People were fainting, journalists were saying their legs were tingling while listening to Obama's speeches, it seemed very strange to me. In fact, it seemed so strange, I tried to make light of the situation with my commentary. However, since I wrote the piece, I have learned some Obama...

While on a recent vacation, a reader sent me this message: If this makes sense, write an article on why it's stupid to use dictionaries in hardcore religion debates (I remember Dictionary.com was used in a "faith" argument I was in). I see people refute concepts of omnipotence and faith by using dictionaries. I'm sick of it, and I would like it if you would write about this issue. I received this message while at a public library in North Carolina, and somewhat ironically, saw as I exited a cover story for Atlantic Monthly that fit right in with this...

Yahoo search to 'battle spyware' SearchScan is a free tool embedded into search Yahoo is introducing new technology to its search engine which will warn users if they are about to click on a website that hosts viruses, spyware and spam. SearchScan uses security firm McAfee's SiteAdvisor technology to warn users about "potentially risky sites". The service, which is switched on by default, produces an on-screen alert. "Our goal is to protect users by allowing them to make a more informed decision about the sites they visit," said Yahoo's Priyank Garg. Rival firm Google introduced similar technology in 2006....

Google may eventually be displaced as the pre-eminent brand on the internet by a company that harnesses the power of next-generation web technology, the inventor of the World Wide Web has said. The search giant had developed an extremely effective way of searching for pages on the internet, Tim Berners-Lee said, but that ability paled in comparison to what could be achieved on the "web of the future", which he said would allow any piece of information — such as a photo or a bank statement — to be linked to any other. Mr Berners-Lee said that in the same...

Barack Obama was the most sought-after Democratic presidential candidate in 2007, while Fred Thompson finished first among the Republican contenders -- at least, in terms of whose name was entered most often in the Ask.com search engine. No significance was attached to Ask.com's summary, released Wednesday. Obama finished first overall, with fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton second. Thompson came in third, well ahead of the other GOP contenders. Here's the complete list: 1. Barack Obama 2. Hillary Clinton 3. Fred Thompson 4. John Edwards 5. Mitt Romney 6. John McCain 7. Ron Paul 8. Rudy Giuliani 9. Mike Huckabee 10. Dennis...

Yahoo Inc.'s Search Assist program exited beta Tuesday and became available to the public, the company said. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) said the program integrates audio, video and photos directly into the search results and goes beyond basic search "suggestions" to provide real-time query suggestions as well as related topics and concepts. Also appearing are Shortcuts, which Yahoo said contain the most useful information found on the Web and contributed by other online users. The features are available now in the U.S., and Yahoo said they will launched in the near future in the United Kingdom.

Google's privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users. In a report released Saturday, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." None of the 22 other surveyed companies - a group that included Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and AOL - sunk to that level, according to Privacy International. While a number of other Internet companies have...

Search engine giant Google has slammed Sweden's proposed wiretapping legislation as illiberal and incompatible with Western democracy. Speaking on a visit to Sweden on Tuesday, the company's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, warned that Google would rule out making any major investments in Sweden should the controversial bill become law. "We have contacted Swedish authorities to give our view of the proposal and we have made it clear that we will never place any servers inside Sweden's borders if the proposal goes through," Fleischer told Internet World. The proposal, which would allow the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets Radioanstalt -...

Web wars ensnarl ferries Wikipedia article altered repeatedly to criticize Lake Express By LARRY SANDLER lsandler@journalsentinel.com Posted: Aug. 27, 2006 As if high waves and a busted gear weren't enough, now someone is firing Wiki-pedoes at the Lake Express high-speed ferry. Advertisement Since March, a Wikipedia article about the Milwaukee-based ferry has been altered repeatedly to emphasize the vessel's cancellations, delays, mechanical problems and passengers' seasickness - and to link to a Web site that compared the Lake Express unfavorably to the competing S.S. Badger. Meanwhile, the Badger has the opposite issue: Wikipedia recently flagged a glowing article about the...

For all of the hand-wringing that has occurred, and is occurring regarding the use of surveillance schemes by the NSA to uncover terrorists communications, the loss of personal privacy has been a recurring theme in the press, as well as the left blogsphere. More than anything, I think, it boils down to a distrust of the Republican administration. Not unlike the right's distrust of the previous Democrat administration. Remember the FBI files? Unless you conduct all of your transactions in cash, use shielded and encrypted internet connections, and stay away from telephones, you have no privacy. I'm not even sure...

Fellow FReepers, I am looking for search engines other than Google, Yahoo, and MSM. Your suggestions are appreciated. Thank you, TJI