Internet search

Microsoft filed this week a formal complaint with the European Commission against Google on allegations that the search engine giant systematically prevents Internet search competition.

The complaint is the first time Microsoft has made a formal filing with regulators over competition issues.

Microsoft claims that Google practices a "pattern of actions" that impede competition unfairly. It should be noted that Google owns 90% of the search market in Europe.

Chinese Internet search giant Baidu Inc posted higher than expected profits for the fourth quarter beating all estimates. Shares of Baidu rose 7.7 percent in after-hours trade following the upbeat earnings report on Monday.

Last year Baidu got more market share after rival Google Inc curtailed its operations following a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship.

A new search engine is being released a test version to rival Google with a key ingredient that is allegedly missing from the world’s top Internet search destination.

Blekko states that the Web is too saturated with spam-like websites, specially designed to pop up in Google's search results. Thus, Blekko Chief Executive Rich Skrenta says that the solution is to narrow searches to groups of websites that people, not computers, have pre-approved as being the best sources of information for particular topics.

Google Research head and the company's former director of search quality Peter Norvig said he is currently exploring some sort of new-age search engine aimed specifically for students. The statement was made at the search-obsessed SMX West conference in Silicon Valley.

"I'm starting to work now on education search," he said.

According to a recent report from Chitika Research the presence of Google on the iPhones is more significant than it is thought to be. Chitika says that Google searches alone reach over 50% of all Internet traffic from mobile device running the iPhone OS. Thus Google outstrips all other traffic, including other search sites and all visits to Websites in the phone's browser.

The report also reveals that across the Internet as a whole--not just iPhone or mobile Internet--Google search makes up nearly 31% of all the traffic.

Google Inc. introduced its annual April Fool's joke with characteristically deadpan delivery on Wednesday. The company presented an animated Panda CADIE that can do all of the thinking and feeling needed while creating e-mail messages and performing other tasks online.