search engine

As Baidu announced Thursday, it intends to focus its future mobile Internet investments on its core search business, targeting to dominate the next big Internet space.

According to Baidu representative, China’s leading search engine sees its broader future investment priorities to include mobile Internet and ecommerce initiatives in the B2C space.

Google is participating in a provision of affordable housing for low-income families. U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation (USBCDC), a division of U.S. Bank, announced it will manage an $86 million Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) fund for Google. The fund will be a major source of funding for the construction and operation of 480 affordable rental housing units for low income families and senior citizens in seven communities throughout the West and Midwest, U.S. Bank says.

A spokesman for Google reported that Google had acquired a social networking start-up Angstro which sorts news and information across social networks like Facebook. Angstro has developed applications to find photos on Facebook, combine Caller ID with LinkedIn profiles and other tools for Twitter.

"The struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning," Angstro co-founder Rohit Khare said in a blog post last week.

Google did not disclose the terms of the agreement.

A UK-based SEO posted a video that shows Google is testing a new iteration of its search engine that rejiggers results pages as you type. The video suggests that Google refers to this as "streaming" search. As you key new characters into the search box – or remove characters – the entire search results page changes accordingly. "You don't even need to hit the 'Search' button anymore," says the SEO, Rob Ousbey. "Google updates the results for you while you're typing." Thus, the “Suggest” tool that has been deployed for a time so far is taken to a new level by Google.

Groundswell Productions and producer John Morris bought the movie rights to Ken Auletta’s 2009 book Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, according to Hollywood.com. They will use the book as the blueprint for a feature film that tells the story of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the fast rise of the juggernaut web business that made them billionaires.

Social networking giant Facebook has acquired the search company Chai Labs for over $10 million as reported by All Things Digital. The purpose of the transaction remains unlear.
It is known that Chai Labs specializes in making platforms that allow for “structured content extraction” and semantic search. In other words, it makes search better. Customers include NBC Local, Associated Content, and the Travel Ad Network.

China Mobile is partnering with Xinhua News Agency over creating a new search engine company as reported by Xinhua. The two companies want to develop a new search engine but the details on what it would be and other terms were not disclosed by Xinhua, a state-controlled media agency. China Mobile is the country's largest mobile operator.

At the moment the search market in China is dominated by Baidu which has a 70% market share according to Analysys International. Google follows on the second place with 24.2% of the market.

Alibaba Group is entering the search engine market with the acquisition of a stake in a search engine operated by Sohu.com Inc. While the terms of the deal have not been yet finalized Sohu announced in a statement that it will sell 16% share in its Sogou search engine unit to Alibaba and a fund owned by its chairman, Jack Ma. Another 16% would be sold to a fund operated by Sohu Chairman Charles Zhang.

At present time the main leaders in Chinese search market are Baidu with a 70% share and Google with 24.2%. Sohu's search engine controls only 0.8 percent of the market.

Google was ordered to defend itself against a lawsuit by its former manager who had been allegedly fired for being too old. The California Supreme Court unanimously agreed that a trial court erred in dismissing a complaint by Brian Reid, who was hired in 2002 as a director of operations and engineering, and fired less than two years later at age 54 after being told he was not a good "cultural fit." It means the case returns to the trial court.

Facebook made a statement that it “knows all about Google’s social product plans,” and has obtained copies of proprietary Google documents outlining their social strategy, reports TechCrunch blog. The statement was made by a Facebook engineer at the TechCrunch party at August Capital on Friday to all within earshot.

In a move to outstrip its rivals in providing federal and state agencies with new technologies Google Inc released a special version of its Web-based productivity software which is believed to be compliant with stringent U.S. government security requirements. Monday the search giant said that it will be the first company to offer email, calendaring and other "cloud-based" software products with a special government certification vouching Google's systems and practices meet hundreds of federally-mandated security controls.

Japanese largest Internet destination Yahoo Japan will reportedly partner with Google Inc to adopt its search engine instead of teaming up with Microsoft. Yahoo Japan and Google will work together to control Japanese search market.

All Things digital, a technology blog owned by Dow Jones newswires, reports that Google seemed to be zeroing in on a deal with Yahoo Japan while the Nikkei business daily also said Yahoo Japan would probably make the switch.

A research firm Strategy Analytics reported last week that Google slightly lost its positions in the second quarter this year as a result of its temporary retreat from Chinese market which in turn benefited local search engine Baidu. The report unveils that Google’s market share dropped to 69.7% from 71.1% in June.

"Google's search revenue growth continues to slow down as the Western search market reaches maturity and Google struggles to gain share in the fastest-growing Asian markets," said Martin Olausson, analyst at Strategy Analytics.

 It was announced that China has renewed Google's Internet license to operate a Chinese website after it pledged to obey censorship laws and stop automatically switching users to its unfiltered Hong Kong site. 

Earlier in March China decided to close its Chinese search engine however it still offers music and other services in China. A decision to let Google continue operating was taken a bit earlier, on July 9 however the statement on this matter was issued only today. 

Latest report released by Hitwise shows that Microsoft Bing had the most search growth for the month of June, growing 7% on month-over-month basis to 9.85% of the total market share in the US. Meantime, Google took 71.65% of the search market with 1% decline in month-over-month. Yahoo’s growth almost unchanged with 14.37% of the market share.