Search News & Articles

Google has received significant public reprimand for their "a little more Google for everyone" Google+ powered Search Plus Your World. Twitter was outraged. Facebook was disappointed. Microsoft was...wait, why isn’t Microsoft saying anything?

With all the news of Facebook's IPO this week, Google's still-fledgling social service marched over another user milestone as the improvements and other changes in the Google ecosystem keep on coming.

So say Google's critics about a company which, lets face it, is only 14 years old. We know what they're like; trying to grow up quickly, but really still a kid at heart. And that pretty much sums up the company's week as it keeps trying to please users while trying to obey the grown-ups.

Being true to its settlement agreement with the FTC in March of last year, Google pre-announced yesterday a comprehensive update that consolidates some 60 privacy policy documents, plus a refresh of its terms of service agreement. Both are to begin March 1, but are available now for review online.

This policy shift is generating buzz online over concerns of privacy, search anonymity and control over just what information gets shared.

Google briefly shocked investors with poor fourth quarter results which, on top of its recent troubles, can be defined as a distinct wobble in the company's otherwise stellar evolution. But, down at the coalface, it continues to tweak its search systems, throw out new apps and improve features in its fledgling social network.

Google is on the rack this week for ignoring Twitter from its "plus Your World" expanded search feature and over-focusing on its own Google+. We look at the ramifications of that, a ruckus in Africa and see what else happened in the wide world of the company this week.

Google announced several new features to its search service yesterday that leverage information from your Google+ social identity to deliver what it hopes will be more personalized and contextually accurate results. Google is calling it Search plus Your World: vocal opponents are calling it bull cheating.

This week in Google, the search engine gets some further refinements, and it's making moves on the tablet front while Google TV moves from Intel to ARM.

Google fell under new management this year, and the shake up resulted in some heavy changes. A new idea of what legitimate content should look like, a social network that the company refuses to call a social network, and the loss of an experimental playground are just a few. In case you missed a beat, here's a look back at the highlights.  

Word came from Mozilla of a new revenue agreement between Google and Mozilla, makers of the Firefox Search engine. The announcement on the official Mozilla Blog called the deal a "new agreement for default search in Firefox," extending the search relationship with Google for three more years.   

In early December, the web was abuzz with word that the long-standing deal between Google and Mozilla (Firefox) had not been renewed. While the companies were in negotiation throughout November, the hour passed, and the default search engine relationship that started in 2006, practically the Stone Age in web chronology, was dead.

The developer of the document search application for SharePoint, Atidan, is closing off the year by uniting two of the biggest-selling apps of the year through its own DocExplore application. As of today, iPad and iPhone users will be able to search documents stored in SharePoint using Atidan’s mobile app.

Calling it an important step in moving the Web forward, Microsoft announced plans to automatically upgrade all Windows customers to the latest version of Internet Explorer, starting in January.  

With 40% market share, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) dominates both the worldwide and US browser markets, and the company wants to leverage that position to make the Web a safer place from the likes of malware and other malicious software.

In a boost to Adobe's newest digital marketing initiatives, Searchmetrics announced its search and social analytics software can be turned on via the Genesis Wizard, in both Adobe SiteCatalyst and SearchCenter+, opening new levels of transparency to Organic and Paid Search on an international scale, from one underlying data set.  

It's a significant advancement that now allows e-marketers to simultaneously view and measure their organic and paid search campaigns, side-by-side. 

Since the Xbox 360 launched in 2005, it has slowly evolved to keep up with the times -- a little Twitter, some Facebook and on-demand content. Now, it presages Windows 8 with a major update that adds a "Metro" interface and cloud support to become a pretty smart smart device.

With the popularity of smartphones and tablets in both enterprise and consumer settings, mobile phones, tablets and other portable devices have become a big part in the professional's job search arsenal.