Search News & Articles

In a half-billion dollar cash deal between two technology titans, Microsoft agreed to sell up to 70% of the patents it recently acquired from storied AOL just two weeks earlier for about twice that sum (US$ 1.056 billion) in cash. Terms of the Microsoft/ Facebook deal include ownership of 650 AOL patents and patent applications, plus access (via license) to the patents and filings that Microsoft will retain. 

Earlier this month we pointed out that Yammer has moved past basic social networking and into primary productivity tool territory. But that news was nothing compared to its latest announcement -- universal search.

Google, as ever, has been rolling out the changes across its range of products with more integration betweern Gmail and Google+ and many other additions. As we wait for the big Drive unveiling (will it be this week? Will it, will it?) we catch up on all the Googling fun that's gone in the past few days.

In his Australian SharePoint Conference (#AUSPC) talk entitled “Driving Value with SharePoint Search: Working Smart, Not Hard” SharePoint MVP and founder of SharePoint Analyst HQ, Michal Pisarek talked about how to build out search to meet business needs and end user expectations for the platform.

Amazon Web Services has released its cloud search offering, CloudSearch, which has been rumored for months. The new service is based on the same technology that powers product searches on Amazon.com. Amazon is the first company to offer search-as-a-service, but something tells us the Internet giant’s competitors will soon be scrambling to keep up now that Amazon has entered the market.

As widely rumored, Yahoo has just announced 2,000 redundancies spread across many of its units, as the company aims to slim down, focus on core profitable areas and return to looking after users and advertisers.

The formidable power of Facebook and the social revolution got a boost from a new online study that shows consumers find social sharing equivalent to Google search in helpfulness when looking for a product to buy. So says the Sociable Labs consumer research study Social Impact Study: How Consumers See It. 

Competition in the smartphone and tablet market is getting tougher between Apple and Google. Apple is reportedly reducing its dependence on Google in various online and mobile services, and with recent reports that Baidu will soon be a default search engine for iOS mobile devices in China, Google might just lose its already weak hold in this market.

Despite the vast amounts of revenue generated from the service, Google's search service has remained relatively staid for users, bar the odd funky logo. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, it will soon be getting up to speed, offering direct answers to questions and more relevance via semantic searching.

In the last flailing act of a wounded beast, Yahoo won't do the decent thing and go quietly into the night, but will throw lawsuits at anyone it can claw some money from. The latest target is Facebook and the weapon of choice, some super-simple patents.

When you have a name like mine, Google searches can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. One false move on my part and it won’t be hard to hide from search results. Additionally, if you have a common name, it’s not always easy to ensure that potential employers, suitors or others likely to Google you are getting the results that represent you. Sure, you can try to boost or push down your own results, but it’s not always easy to figure out. Until now. Thanks to BrandYourself, users can optimize the links you want to push up in Google results for your name.

Google is in the wars again this week, reinforcing use of its own Wallet product and banging heads with Apple. While on the desktop, it has been busy with the smaller changes, tweaking Gmail and Google+ a little more.

As Google faces legal opposition over its new privacy policy in Europe, expect more long, drawn-out legal battles. Meanwhile, the company is clamping down on spam in Google+, as Chrome's browser share shrinks and Android 5.0 Jelly Bean moves closer to an unveiling.

Graphs are so 1999. Today, it’s all about the infographic -- the busy composite images with lots of metrics that simultaneously cater to my ADD and lust of for semi-useful details. Local search provider, Localeze, has  published a new infographic that details the growth of local search.

If it's time for a change, we've got a shopping list of hot jobs for you to browse. Our bi-weekly featured jobs list is a great collection of opportunities spanning specialties and continents. Here's who's hiring this week (and if you're hiring, post your job openings here).