Search Engine Optimization Company and SEO Services - Real SEO Firm

Opera to design new browser for mobile devices

In February 2003, Opera vowed never to produce a browser that worked with Microsoft's operating system for mobile devices.

Now the Oslo company said it will design one, citing strong demand for the software from makers of cell phones.

"We're going back on that because our customers are asking for it," said Rolf Assev, executive vice president for business development, marketing and strategic alliance from Opera's headquarters in Oslo. "Now is the first time that we see a demand for Microsoft from the operators and from the handset manufacturers."

Assev attributed new demand for Microsoft-compatible browsing software in part to Windows Mobile's appeal to makers of high-end phones, which make up a small but profitable part of the cell phone market.

A study performed this year by market research firm Canalys found Microsoft had a mere 4 percent of the smart phone market for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. That market remains dominated by the Symbian operating system, found on 94 percent of smart phones.

Microsoft did not return calls. The Norwegian software maker declined to say which handset manufacturers had asked for a Microsoft port, but said at least three major companies had requested a Windows version, but had not previously asked for one.

Opera has sustained itself selling browsers amid Microsoft's dominance of that market by focusing on cell phones. It also markets a desktop browser that has a small but loyal following among those who dislike Internet Explorer, Microsoft's market-leading browser.

The Oslo company has maintained a contentious relationship with Microsoft, sparring repeatedly over compatibility issues between its browser and Microsoft's Web sites.

In May, Microsoft settled Opera's claims with a $12.75 million payment. Assev said Opera's decision was unrelated to any detente between the two companies, and said the company had received only technical and not financial support from Microsoft in preparing the new version.

Source: C-Net News

More on local search

While Internet search engines struggle to merge their search results with local yellow pages, in an effort to cash in on billions in potential revenue, Martin Garcia explains, "Local search shouldn't be about pay-per-clicks or keyword advertising".

It should be about promoting your small business as efficiently as possible so that folks in your home town can easily find you-whether you're a deli, an auto dealer, or spa."

"FindLocalWebsites.com is fast, affordable, and user friendly," he continues. "Best of all, the business owner controls all the categories in which he wants to be listed-virtually on-demand-in just minutes."

Studies by SearchEngineWatch.com claim that ten million small-and-medium sized enterprises conduct the majority of their business within fifty miles of their locations.

MSN admits that fifty percent of all searches fail miserably. Martin Garcia can attest to the frustration associated with both these statistics. Garcia vowed that no one should have to feel helpless because of a lack of local information. "FindLocalWebsites.com was born out of a need to help companies and customers connect."

In the race to make local search an accurate and powerful tool for consumers, FindLocalWebsites.com stands at the finish line with the revolutionary new generation of search engine technology. Adds Garcia, "We've been there for years without annoying pop-up or banner ads."

"Local search," he concludes, "is about uniting community and commerce. FindLocalWebsites.com is the People's search engine!"

Chief Executive, Martin Garcia, invites you to discuss with him the new generation of search engine technology FindLocalWebsites.com, the People's Search Engine.

Source: W3 Reports

ClickRisk reduces click fraud

Security developer Inviplex says its ClickRisk service would be released on September 1, 2004. The ClickRisk service is designed to raise awareness of click fraud, which some analysts believe accounts for more than 18 percent of cost per click advertising traffic.

ClickRisk identifies a client's risk profile and analyzes Web server data, helping determine whether clicks are genuine or fraudulent.

"We must raise awareness of click fraud, and find new ways to help identify and stop it, millions of dollars are being lost and jobs are at risk because of it," says Adam Sculthorpe, founder and CEO of Inviplex, Inc.

Sculthorpe said his experience in the security industry led him to create the ClickRisk service. He believes issues surrounding advertising integrity will continue to increase in importance.

"We need to monitor integrity and put tracking of potential fraud into the hands of the paying customer, the advertising providers simply do not have access to their client's equipment and therefore cannot accurately determine whether the click-through is a real one or a fake," says Sculthorpe.

"If a business spends marketing dollars on a cost per click basis they need to know a genuine person is clicking their ad, not a computer program. We can help to resolve that issue with intelligent risk management strategies," Sculthorpe says.

Source: The WHIR

Google delaying its IPO by a week

Google is delaying its IPO by a week because of logistical problems related to institutional investors registering to bid on the shares, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The delay isn't being caused by a technological problem or a lack of bidders, the person stressed. Rather, the process of registering bidders for the auction-style IPO is taking longer than anticipated, the person said.

Part of the problem, the person said, was that Google's IPO, which is being led by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group's Credit Suisse First Boston, is being run through an auction format that had never been tried before. "It's all new," the person said. "We just hit a speedbump."

News of the possible delay was first reported by CNBC.

Officially, Google had never set a date for the deal, though people familiar with the matter had pegged the date for next week.

What's more, Google had said it would be about a week from the time it activated the Web site on which investors can register until they priced. That site was activated last Friday.

Interesting that this is a one source story.

Source: BattleMedia.com

ValueClick buys Pricerunner

Marketing technology and services firm ValueClick is making its first acquisition into the shopping comparison market, with the purchase of pan-European portal Pricerunner.

The company has today agreed to pay $29m (£16m) in cash and shares to the shareholders of Pricerunner. An additional $6m (£3.2m) will be paid if Pricerunner achieves certain performance milestones.

Pricerunner is the most popular comparison shopping site in Sweden and the third most popular site in the UK. The company also operates a site in France.

ValueClick's chairman and CEO James Zarley said that the group had been looking to add comparison shopping services as part of its strategic growth plan for some time.

'Comparison shopping is a strategic fit with our media, affiliate marketing and search offerings, we look forward to working with Pricerunner and helping them expand their presence in Europe,' he added.

The move comes at a time when competition in the European shopping comparison market, particularly the UK, is getting fierce.

In June, two of the large US players, PriceGrabber and NexTag, announced their entry into the UK, just several months after leading European player Kelkoo was snapped up by Yahoo!

Separately, ValueClick also announced a second quarter profit of $6.7m (£3.6m), before taxes and minority interest, up from $1.6m (£860,000) in the second quarter of 2003. Second quarter revenue rose 72% year-on-year to $34.6m (£19m).

Source: New Media Age

Google looking at an emergency stock buyback plan

Google is looking at an emergency stock buyback plan after it realised it had forgotten to register staff shares under federal and state regulators.

The company, which is teetering on the edge of an expected $36bn IPO, is now offering to rescind some 28 million shares and stock options granted to current and past staff, as well as consultants, between September 2001 and June 2004.

In an SEC statement filed yesterday, it said: 'These option grants and stock issuances may have violated the Securities Act of 1933 and the state securities laws... The rescission offer is intended to address these federal and state securities laws compliance issues by allowing the holders of the options and shares covered by the rescission offer to rescind the underlying securities transactions and sell those securities back to us.'

Google is offering to repurchase the shares and options at prices ranging from $0.3 to $80 with its own cash. The company has about $550mn in its coffers.

Shareholders will receive the price originally paid, plus interest, while those with options will get 20 per cent of the price they could buy at, plus interest. There are 1,105 stock holders with 23,240,668 shares, and 301 people with options on 5,592,248 shares that stand to benefit from this offer, which ends next month.

The company said that one of its officers and a 5 per cent stock holder are eligible for the rescission offer, but have indicated they will not take it up.

The proposal has yet to be approved by the SEC.

Source: PC Pro.com

The Internet beats catalogs and direct marketing by a country mile

In 2003, close to 100 million adults completed purchases after doing online research. This is higher than the number of adults who actually purchased through catalogs, direct-mail ads and even telemarketing calls combined, The Dieringer Research Group says in a study released today.

Dieringer noted that 114.1 million adults searched for product information on the web last year, and that 98.9 million of this group went on to make purchases either online or offline.

By comparison, 106.7 million adults made purchases through catalogs, direct-mail and telemarketing, it added. Dieringer’s annual American Interactive Consumer Survey of 3,000 U.S. adults, which was completed in June, also noted that three out of five adults go online regularly and that the majority of U.S. residents now use the web to shop.

"Consumers use of the Internet to research products continues to rise, even though the number of people going online for the first time has dropped considerably," said Thomas E. Miller, senior consultant at The Dieringer Research Group. "Our research shows that the Internet now influences the purchase decisions of as many shoppers as mail order catalogs, direct mail, and telemarketing combined."

Online shoppers are also more brand-impressionable online than ever before, Dieringer said. It noted that online research changed opinions toward brands among three out of five shoppers who researched products online before purchasing. "This represents a 20% increase in shoppers whose brand opinions changed online compared to 2003," Dieringer said.

Dieringer, noting that more than half of online adults now also access financial accounts on the web, said that use of online shopping and financial services rises significantly among adults under age 35 and adults with incomes above $75,000.

"This means that the earliest adopters of the Internet are also the ones most likely to continue to reap the benefits of going online," Dieringer said.

Source: Internet Retailer.com

X1 Technologies updates its desktop search application

Startup X1 Technologies updated its desktop search application with support for more complex queries and broader indexing of file attachments.

X1 Technologies Inc., of Pasadena, Calif., first launched its X1 Search application in February as a way for users to quickly find e-mails, attachments, contacts and desktop files.

It is competing in a space increasingly drawing the attention of operating system makers Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer Inc., as well as Web search providers such as Google Inc.

Rather than a plug-in within an e-mail client such as Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook, X1 Search is a separate client that supports multiple e-mail clients, specifically Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and Netscape Mail.

With the new release, called X1 Search 04.08, X1 has added the ability for users to search for specific phrases by putting a set of keywords in quotation marks and to use Boolean commands such as "AND" and "OR," said Mark Goodstein, X1's founder and executive vice president of business development.

"It's what we call the 'Google standards,'" Goodstein said of the additional query support. "We're supporting a much more complex search syntax."

Beyond queries, X1's new release expands its ability to index and preview file attachments in e-mail. X1 already supported the indexing and viewing of file attachments from e-mail in Outlook and Eudora, and the new version adds attachment support for Outlook Express and Netscape Mail, Goodstein said.

X1 supports about 255 file types, such as PDFs, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Available now, the new version runs on Windows 98 and higher. Pricing starts at $99 for a single copy.

Click here to read more about Apple's preview of a search feature called Spotlight for Mac OS X "Tiger."

Beyond the new release, X1 is working on a version that plugs into Outlook and is considering adding support for Lotus Notes, Goodstein said. The company also is working to license its technology to other technology providers.

Desktop and e-mail search have gained renewed attention as Microsoft promotes its plans for all-in-one search capabilities in its Longhorn release of Windows. Last week, it demonstrated prototypes of integrated search.

The desktop search field also has attracted other startups. One, Outlook Software Inc., developed a search plug-in for Outlook and last month was acquired by Microsoft's MSN division.

Another startup, Stata Laboratories Inc., has created a search-based e-mail client as an alternative to folder-based clients such as Outlook. On Tuesday, the San Mateo, Calif., company announced the availability of the professional edition of its Bloomba 2.0 e-mail client.

As with the personal edition released in June, the professional edition adds an integrated calendar and an improved contacts feature. But it also more directly targets business users by allowing them to share their calendars and to sync their information with Palm-based handhelds.

Source: eWeek

Stolen credit card information available on Google

Short queries using Google can turn up sites that have posted critical credit card information to the Internet.

The lists of financial information include hundreds of card holders' names, addresses and phone numbers as well as their credit-card data. Much of the credit-card data that appears in the lists found by Google may no longer be valid, but CNET called several people listed and verified that the credit cards numbers were authentic.

The query, the latest example of "Google hacking," highlights increasing concern that knowledgeable Web surfers can turn up sensitive information by mining the world's best-known search engine.

"It seems like everyone has their own trick," said Chris Wysopal, vice president of research and development for digital security firm @Stake. "This is really searching for data that should be secret but has been exposed either through misconfiguration or by someone who has stolen it."

There is no shortage of ways to search Google to find such data. Whole sites spell out how to search for financial information and describe software vulnerabilities and vulnerable configurations on Internet machines. Google is the tool of choice because its powerful search options, such as the ability to search for a range of numbers--useful in finding credit card data--is not present in other companies' search engines.

Google would not comment, citing the quiet period before the company's initial public offering. However, a company source did say that the search firm has a tool for Web masters to remove pages from the archive, if they find that parts of their site violate laws or regulations. Moreover, the company has decided to allow anyone to request the removal from search results of any document that includes a Social Security or credit-card number--a note to help@google.com with a link to the page will suffice, the source said.

Keith Ernst--a Durham, N.C., resident and, ironically, a worker at a financial antifraud company--found himself on the receiving end of a data leak earlier this year that resulted in his debit-card number being posted on such a list. Before Ernst canceled his card, the number had been used for a variety of charges. A foreign student had attempted to pay college tuition with the stolen number.

"It was very unsettling to see those charges come up on your account," said Ernst, who normally works to prevent fraud from happening to others. "It was interesting, to say the least, to be on the other side of the issue."

Ernst's information is now posted to an Arabic bulletin board with more than a hundred other people's financial records, at the beck and call of a simple search on Google. His credit union refunded the charges and now he only uses credit cards to make Internet purchases, because fraudulent charges using a credit card are not immediately debited from his bank account.

The FBI could not immediately comment on whether the agency was investigating the sites listing financial information. The sites seemed to be spread out over the globe: One had a Russian domain name, another was written in Arabic, and a third was based in the Netherlands.

The rise of such Web sites has convinced @Stake's Wysopal that major credit issuers should start using Google as a security tool, searching for vulnerabilities and leaked information before other, potentially malicious, people find the data.

"Shouldn't Visa be proactive and do these searches on a daily basis?" he asked. "The bad guys are doing it, so why aren't the good guys doing it and beating them to the punch?"

The sentiments echoed statements made at the Black Hat Security Briefings in Las Vegas last week, where security researchers and hackers were surprised to learn the extent to which Google can pinpoint weakly secured servers and databases.

Visa already has many sources to pinpoint fraud, said Rosetta Jones, a spokeswoman for the company.

"When we run them against a database, it is very common to find that, in most cases, we have known that the credit card was stolen," she said.

While the company may not use Google to track when sites containing credit-card information appear, it has moved to have many such sites taken down when tipped off to the situation. So far this year, Visa has had 20 sites pulled from the Web for trafficking in stolen credit cards.

With 4 billion Web pages on the Internet, Google is not able to police its archives very effectively, a source at the company said.

The firm has legally positioned itself as an intermediary of content beyond its control, which releases it from being held responsible for any content the company archives or to which it links.

That means consumers are left to carefully watch their information. Yet, the degree to which fraud has become more common makes consumers like Ernst fatalistic.

"I am sure that the information is out there," the fraud-fighter said.

Source: C-Net News

Google and others hit with lawsuit over gambling ads

Gambling ads on Google, Yahoo and other major Web sites are illegal in California, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The 60-page filing, presented in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that the companies sell rights to Web advertisements based on searches for terms such as "illegal gambling," "Internet gambling" and "California gambling."

The online businesses also use geotracking software to target particular regions, including California, for illegal gambling ads, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit demands that the companies stop accepting the advertisements and give California "millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains," said attorney Ira Rothken, one of several attorneys from firms involved in the class-action lawsuit.

The suit is the latest to involve Internet gambling, which has become a multibillion-dollar-a-year business and is usually focused on online poker or blackjack. Wireless interests, including European cell phone service providers, also offer gambling opportunities to their subscribers.

Yahoo and Google, in turn, rake in a majority of the millions of dollars gambling firms spend on advertising, according to the lawsuit. Representatives from the two companies did not return a call seeking comment.

In all, about a dozen high-profile Web companies are named as defendants. Included among them is CNET Networks, publisher of News.com.

Source: C-Net News

Get a bidder ID number for Google's IPO

Many investors still aren't aware of some important parts of the IPO bidding process, including the fact that if they don't get a bidder ID number soon, they won't be able to bid at all.

On Tuesday, some of the 28 brokerage firms offering customers a chance to bid for Google's first public shares of stock started displaying blurbs on their Web sites, announcing their participation in the deal. But the blurbs said little else.

``Before you can participate in the offering through us, you will need to obtain a bidder ID prior to the opening of the auction,'' said identical notices on Web sites for E*Trade, W.R. Hambrecht and Fidelity Brokerage Services.

Each steered investors to Google's IPO Web site, www.ipo.google.com, to get the 20-digit number.

When the auction starts, which could be any day now, Google will stop offering bidder IDs to investors, said some people briefed on the deal.

Brokerage firms haven't said much so far because they are still awaiting approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission for the way they'll explain the complex auction to customers.

Here is how the events may unfold:

• Last Friday, July 30, until probably no later than this Friday: Those interested in bidding must get bidder IDs at www.ipo.google.com.

• By Friday or Monday: Bidding will open. Access to bidder IDs will be shut off.

Investors are expected to have about four days in which they can enter the number of shares they want, and at what price, by filling out IPO bidding forms at their brokerage firm's Web site, or by calling their brokers. Investors can make multiple bids, and amend them during this time, as often as they wish.

Investors should be prepared to have enough money in their brokerage accounts to pay for all the shares they have bid for, should their bid be accepted.

There may be only a short window of time between when the bidding stops and when investors are informed that their bid has been accepted. If an investor doesn't have enough money in his or her account during that time -- which could be as little as an hour -- the brokerage firm may cancel the investor's bid or bids.

• Next week, possibly Aug. 10 or 11: Investors will get an e-mail from Google saying the company has asked the SEC to declare the deal ``effective,'' the last step before closing the auction bidding.

• The day after the ``effective'' e-mail alert: Investors will get an e-mail from Google saying the deal is effective, meaning the auction could close in as little as an hour. Soon afterward, investors will be notified that their bid has been ``accepted.'' They can cancel their bids until they receive that notification, but not afterward. Investors won't be notified if their bid has been rejected.

• Later that day or night, on ``effective'' day: Investors will get an e-mail from their brokerage firm telling them whether their bid was among the winning ones. They'll learn how many shares they got at the IPO price. They shouldn't get fewer than 80 percent of the number of shares they bid for at prices at or above the IPO price.

• Day after ``effective'' day: Google shares will start trading on the Nasdaq stock market, under the symbol GOOG.

Source: Silicon Valley.com

67 percent of people find Web searches are the fastest

About 67 percent of those polled by Harris Interactive and MSN, feel Web searches are the fastest way to find information, though what they are searching for varies widely.

Whether because of curiosity, boredom or perhaps the need to find someone from one's past, many people use search engines to find out about the activities and whereabouts of friends, family and ex-boyfriends or girlfriends (the practice is widespread enough that it has acquired a name — "googling" someone — though the sponsor of the survey, MSN, probably hopes to change that with its recently revamped search engine).

The most popular person-search of all, however, is users looking up themselves. Just under 40% of respondents have done a query on their own name to see where they pop-up. Searches for friends and family polled a bit lower, and, surprisingly, only 17% have searched for an old flame (or at least admit to it).

Aside from searches based on personal relationships, a wide variety of topics prove popular depending on the demographic group surveyed.

The popularity of each topic relative to each group is often logical and sometimes telling.

For example, respondents in LA are most likely to search for entertainment news, while New Yorkers are the biggest searchers for financial news.

Adults ages 59 and older tend to look up information about their family ancestry, as well as their investments, while baby boomers are more interested in topics like health, weather and recipes. Generation X tends to search the Web for online dating and relationship topics. Men are more likely to search for information on cars, technology and science, while women prefer information on health, fashion and celebrities.

Harris Interactive and MSN surveyed over 2,200 adults in six major cities in late June and early July 2004.

Source: eMarketer

A billion people online by 2010

It is expected that, by around 2010, a billion people will be clicking away on the Internet. However, generating a profit out of some of the newly wired portions of the world could be more difficult.

The number of PC users is expected to hit or exceed 1 billion by 2010, up from around 660 million to 670 million today, fueled primarily by new adopters in developing nations such as China, Russia and India, according to analysts.

The number of PC users worldwide is expected to reach 1 billion by 2010, up from about 670 million today, fueled primarily by new adopters in developing nations.

PC and software makers are ready to make new sales but have their work cut out for them. Poverty, unreliable energy supplies, a multiplicity of languages, regional laws and education levels are all potentially major obstacles.

"It took more than 20 years to grow the worldwide base of PC users to 600-plus million. By 2010, I expect that to grow to 1 billion, due to opportunities in emerging markets and new scenarios and form factors," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote in a recent e-mail to employees, outlining the company's growth potential.

Selling computers to people in these countries, however, won't be easy. Poverty, unreliable energy supplies, a multiplicity of languages, regional laws and education levels are all potentially major obstacles. And they could all get more daunting, rather than easier to manage, as time goes on.

"The problem isn't with the first billion, but the second or third billion," said Roger Kay, an analyst at IDC.

To penetrate these markets, companies are creating the sort of nation-building programs more often associated with organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations.

Microsoft, for example, has set up an initiative called the Local Economic Development Program for Software, in which company employees advise government officials on building tech programs at local universities, intellectual-property laws and other issues. Brazil is one of eight countries in the program.

"A lot of companies want to get into the export business, but you have to build your internal capabilities first." -- Maggie Wilderotter, senior VP of Microsoft's worldwide public sector division.

"A lot of companies want to get into the export business, but you have to build your internal capabilities first," said Maggie Wilderotter, senior vice president of the worldwide public sector division at Microsoft, who, as part of her job, meets with people like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and ministers of Jordan's national cabinet.

Designing products to be cheaper is also an issue. Hewlett-Packard's 441 system is an early attempt to grapple with the price and management issues. Introduced in South Africa, the computer features four keyboards with mice and monitors so that four different people--in a variety of the local languages--can work simultaneously. The Linux-based computer may get introduced to Southeast Asia later.

If technology can be seeded in a national economy, the gross domestic product will grow and in turn lead to future customers, said Maureen Conway, vice president of emerging market solutions at HP.

"But you've got to start the cycle somewhere," Conway said. "The low-cost access device is critical to product development."

Paid Inclusion

In South Africa, the company has also taken over an abandoned university to train people on call center procedures and PC repair. In September, President Thabo Mbeki will speak at an HP-sponsored event.

Intel, Microsoft and others are developing cheaper components and software for these regions, along with technologies like voice and handwriting recognition.

Hitting a billion in a few years appears inevitable. IDC estimates that there were 670 million PC users worldwide in 2003. A little more than a 152 million PCs will leave factories this year, and that tally is expected to grow over time. With about half of these going to new users, IDC believes that the PC user population will grow to 1.2 billion by the end of 2009, a 79 percent increase over six years.

Gartner says there were 631.8 million PC users at the end of 2003 and 661 million now. The number will hit 953 million at the end of 2008 and cross over the billion mark in 2009. While those are huge numbers on paper, the annual compound growth rate is about 8 percent, Gartner analyst George Schiffler said.

Prices, however, will increasingly become an issue as the user population expands. A low-end Windows PC costs about $350 without a monitor. That's just above the $340 per-capita income of Vietnam, according to statistics from that country's Can Tho University. Not all the new users will own their own system: Many will likely first learn through places like the PC baangs in South Korea.

"There is a remarkable reliance on cybercafes in many of the emerging markets, especially in Asia and Africa...We are sometimes talking about just a battered old PC sitting on the sidewalk in a lane off a busy street." -- Genevieve Bell, anthropologist.

"There is a remarkable reliance on cybercafes in many of the emerging markets, especially in Asia and Africa--and these are not the cybercafes as we imagine them, either. We are sometimes talking about just a battered old PC sitting on the sidewalk in a lane off a busy street," wrote Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist at Intel who has been researching PC use in Asia for the past few years. "At least 70 percent of the market in India and many other markets is still 'assembled PCs' that are built for a particular person."

Microsoft is already facing some of the thorny price disparities. HP sells Pavilion desktops in China with Windows and Linux. Spot checks at stores show a basic Linux Pavilion with a monitor, selling for $700 (5,499 yuan), while the Windows XP version sells for $60 more.

Dell has certified its business laptops and desktops to work with Red Flag Linux, a local variant of the operating system, and sells some PCs with DOS, which can be loaded with Linux later. Lenovo sells Linux PCs, but only to the government. The price is lower, but a Lenovo spokesman would not specify how much lower.

The price delta gets even larger with regional manufacturers. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a dealer called PC Zone can put together an Intel Celeron 2.0GHz PC and a 15-inch monitor for about $272. Installing Windows XP adds $83, a 31 percent price hike. Piracy, of course, also remains a problem. Microsoft has developed cheaper, cut-rate versions of Windows XP for Thailand and Malaysia.

Wilderotter acknowledged that Linux is gaining popularity in some sectors of the world but asserted that open-source software comes with hidden costs. Additionally, Microsoft has developed programs to familiarize developing nations with its software. In 67 countries, schools can obtain a certified copy of Windows at no cost for a donated PC and can buy a copy of Office for $2.50, she said. The company is also providing millions in educational grants.

Meanwhile, multinational hardware manufacturers must contend with local, often cheaper providers. In Mexico and China, multinational PC makers are making gains. Dell will likely soon become the No. 1 PC maker in Latin America, which is currently the fastest-growing geographical market, according to Charles Smulders, an analyst at Gartner.

But in Eastern Europe, Russia and other places, local manufacturers like Optimus and Kraftway remain strong.

Web Hosting

Component makers, similarly, have to contend with a sea of their own recycled parts. In Western China, some schools are tacking down motherboards and other parts onto pieces of wood to make school computers.

"You can get a PC price tag down to 100 bucks," IDC's Kay said. On the other hand, the opportunity is immense. If 670 million people are currently using PCs, that only comes to 11 percent of the global population. Although declining prices lead to lower profits per unit, low prices can also lead to increased shipments, larger aggregate profits and a ubiquity of use that fuels further sales. That happened in North America, after all.

"The success of the PC platform is its ability to adapt to new forms and capabilities," Smulders said. "That is going to be a major influence."

People in these regions also adapt to technology fairly quickly in the right circumstances, HP's Conway said. In India, HP gave a group of village women solar-powered printers and cameras. The idea was that they would create a business out of making ID cards, a requirement for Indians to have but difficult for rural villagers to obtain without hours of bus travel.

The women have tended to double their family incomes, not so much through ID cards but rather portraits. "Instead of owning a camera, they are very happy to have a picture of their children taken every couple of days," Conway said.

In another Indian experiment, the company has stocked a van with PCs and wireless connectivity that drives between villages and allows farmers to test their soil, get information about crop prices, or receive advice from agricultural experts in Bangalore. HP is now looking at ways to turn the van over to local entrepreneurs.

Developing nations are also not necessarily bargain shoppers. China adopted the Pentium 4 at a more rapid rate than the United States, according to Intel.

Many technology companies have also honed the art of breaking into new markets. Company executives hold high-level meetings with local leaders to discuss the growth of the local high-tech industry. Intel CEO Craig Barrett, for instance, regularly conducts regional sweeps. Partnering with local companies and universities has become commonplace.

In the end, though, it comes down to a question of the PC's utility. "If (potential consumers) see it as a productivity tool, then they can see it as an investment
--like a car," Kay said.

Source: C-Net News

Will the new Google IPO perform well?

Google will become public sometime in August, offering its shares for as much as $135 each.

That would give the company a maximum market capitalization of $36 billion — more than twice the value of Amazon.com and almost three times larger than that of Apple Computer.

Already, the deal — which is expected to raise $3.3 billion — has drawn comparisons to bubble-era IPOs.

"Back then, companies overestimated the Internet industry," said Irv DeGraw, an IPO analyst and finance professor at Washington College in Maryland. "Google may be doing the same thing."

In 1998, shares of theglobe.com opened for trading with a market capitalization of nearly $2.5 billion. At the time, the company had high hopes for its online community business.

"Community sites [are] a solution to the challenges posed by the Internet's growth and complexity," the company said in its prospectus.

Theglobe.com said it expected revenue from advertising and noted that the Internet ad market was expected to grow to $7.7 billion in 2002.

But by 2001, theglobe had lost virtually all of its value, was delisted from the Nasdaq, and traded on the pink sheets for less than 10 cents a share.

Nobody is saying that Google will be a flameout. But even proven brands, like Yahoo!, have been pushed off their peaks. Its shares are more than two-thirds below their all-time high.

And while Google is more financially solid than theglobe.com and other companies that debuted in the late 1990s, the company still has challenges.

"My question is whether or not the search engine business is sufficient enough to warrant this kind of valuation," said DeGraw. "I don't think it is."

"Google has been successful with one product," added Andy Beal, vice president of WebSourced, a search engine marketing company. "They need to diversify."

According to a recent survey by Standard & Poors, six out of 10 Google users said that they would go elsewhere if a better search engine came along.

"They shouldn't rest on their laurels and think, like Netscape did in the 1990s, that they are going to be the market leader forever," Beal said.

The company is attempted to address concerns by aggressively rolling out new features and technologies, such as Gmail, a free e-mail service that includes an unprecedented gigabyte of free storage space.

But according to S&P's survey, less than 25 percent of those polled would readily switch e-mail addresses to get even unlimited free storage.

"Google is not a sure thing," Beal said, adding that among things to watch are search-engine announcements from Yahoo! and Microsoft, as well as the six-month anniversary of the offering, when employees will be able to sell stock.

Source: NY Post

Google used to exploit security vulnerabilities

Google is a popular search engine, and is one of the handiest tools for many hackers, said a security expert on Thursday. Google's ability to record Internet sites' content can be used to pinpoint those with weak security, Johnny Long, a security researcher and computer scientist for Computer Security Corp. told attendees at the Black Hat Security Briefings here.

Though the technique is not new, well-crafted searches turned up so many sites with vulnerabilities that even jaded researchers laughed during the session.

"It is an old dog with new tricks," Long said. "It never ceases to amaze people, all the vulnerabilities out there."

By searching for default server page titles, for example, an attacker can find easily exploitable servers. Applications left in default modes can also be found by searching for error pages generated by the software. And searching for specific file names can pinpoint vulnerable servers connected to the Internet.

"It is the first step to finding vulnerable targets," Long said. A simple search for the log-in page of Microsoft's Web server software, the Internet Information Server, turned up 11,300 sites on the Internet that exposed the page to the public. Gathering log-in information for poorly configured databases is also easy, he said.

The exploitation of Google's in-depth searching capabilities underscores how software with no malicious motive can be used to help online intruders.

The recent MyDoom.o virus hammered Google and other search engines with searches from infected PCs for additional e-mail addresses to which the program could send itself. Security researchers have also theorized that Google and other search engines could be used as a carrier of malicious code.

"I only use Google to find vulnerable servers," said Tim Mullin, security specialist for accounting-software maker Anchor IS. Mullin said other search engines don't have the advanced search option available on Google and don't cache old versions of Web sites. "Not only can I see what exists now, but I can see what the Web site looked like before."

A Google representative could not immediately comment, citing Securities and Exchange Commission regulations regarding the quiet period before a public offering.

For most, the depth of Google searches is just one more potential threat to worry about.

"It's not revolutionizing anything that people are doing now," Long said. "It is just adding another attack vector."

Source: C-Net News

AOL saw strong advertising sales thanks to Google

Time Warner said yesterday that its AOL unit saw strong advertising sales growth in the second quarter, after nearly three years of declines, thanks to help from its Google search partnership.

Ad sales climbed 23 percent in the quarter to $221 million. Paid search revenue through AOL's Google partnership grew 76 percent from a year earlier to $72 million.

"AOL's advertising business is emerging as one of the most exciting growth opportunities in our business," Time Warner chairman/CEO Dick Parsons said in a conference call.

Overall, AOL reported operating income of $276 million, up 31 percent from last year's second quarter. AOL posted $2.2 billion in sales for the quarter, up 2 percent. Ad revenue from Google accounted for 33 percent of AOL's ad revenue and 74 percent of the ad sales growth reported in the quarter.

AOL has become an important partner for Google. In the first half of 2004, AOL accounted for 13 percent of Google's revenue. AOL has used Google paid listings since May 2002, when it dropped Overture Services for Google's then-new paid search offering. The companies signed a multiyear extension in October 2003. AOL and Google declined to give a specific date for its expiration.

The advertising growth offset continued subscriber declines. AOL ended the quarter with 23.4 million U.S. subscribers, losing 668,000 in the period. Its subscriber revenue remained at $1.9 billion.

Don Logan, chairman of Time Warner's media and communications group, said AOL would look to make up for a loss of dial-up customers by using the AOL.com site to attract non-subscribers. In the next year, he said, AOL will add content to the site and use Time Warner sites to promote it.

"We have a plan in place to drive increased traffic there that we will try to monetize with ad sales as well as search," he said.

Time Warner has struggled to turn around AOL since the collapse of the dot-com boom, in contrast to sustained ad growth from rivals such as Yahoo over the past year. Since third-quarter 2001, AOL ad sales have declined with the expiration of long-term deals struck in the late 1990s. In 2003, ad sales fell 35 percent. For first-quarter 2004, they declined 40 percent.

AOL's restructuring suffered a setback in January with the departure of Lisa Brown, the ad sales chief AOL CEO Jonathan Miller brought in only six months earlier. Time Warner ad sales executive Michael Kelly was tapped to replace her.

Time Warner's confidence in AOL's future was highlighted recently with its $435 million acquisition of Advertising.com, a performance-based ad network that will let AOL capitalize on the strong growth of online direct response advertising.

"We're investing to position AOL to return healthy growth in 2005," Parsons said.

Time Warner had 10 percent sales growth in the quarter, reaching $10.9 billion.

Source: DM News

Ask Jeeves second-quarter earnings double

Internet search provider Ask Jeeves said second-quarter earnings more than doubled, after the company increased its market share with the acquisition of Interactive Search Holdings earlier this year.

Second-quarter earnings rose to $11.6 million, or 18 cents per share, from $4.9 million, or 9 cents per share, last year, the company said.

Excluding amortization and other charges, the company had earnings from continuing operations of $15.7 million, or 24 cents per share, up from earnings from continuing operations of $5.2 million, or 10 cents a share, last year.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call estimated Ask Jeeves' second-quarter earnings at 22 cents per share.

Revenue for the second quarter rose 136 percent to $60.3 million from $25.6 million last year, Ask Jeeves said.

The company said it expects third-quarter earnings of $16.5 million, or 24 cents per share, excluding charges, on revenue of $74 million. With amortization charges from the acquisition, the company predicts earnings per share of 14 cents. For fiscal 2004, the company expects unadjusted earnings of $1.03 per share, or 77 cents per share after charges, on revenue of about $260 million.

Analysts predict the company will post third-quarter earnings of 27 cents a share on revenue of $76.6 million and fiscal 2004 earnings of $1.04 a share on revenue of $260 million.

Shares of Ask Jeeves recently traded down 51 cents to $27.35 in after-hours trading on the Nasdaq National Market after ending the regular session down $3.16 to $27.86.

Source: Ask Jeeves

Yahoo releases beta local search engine

Yahoo today released a beta version of Yahoo Local.

This local search engine integrates proprietary Yahoo Search Technology, Yellow Pages, maps offerings and third party user-generated content, to create an improved local search experience for consumers, all in one place.

“A great search experience is about more than just offering users relevant and comprehensive Web search results.

It’s also about creating an experience where we can quickly and easily provide users the answers they are seeking, whether it’s the best Italian restaurant in their neighborhood or the nearest museums while traveling,” said Jeff Weiner, senior vice president of Yahoo! Search and Marketplace.

“This beta launch marks just the beginning of what we are capable of achieving with local and will continue to leverage our world-class search technology and content to provide the most valuable category-specific search solutions for our users.”

“As part of Yahoo!’s commitment to providing the best search experience on the Web, consumers now have a more powerful way to find local information,” said Paul Levine, general manager, Yahoo! Local. “Building on the debut of our innovative SmartView™ maps feature earlier this year, the beta release of Yahoo! Local reinforces our commitment to improving the way people find local content online.”

Available today, Yahoo's Local beta provides users with improved:

-– Precision: When looking for local information, consumers have indicated that precision is paramount. Yahoo! is the first to develop a local service from the ground up with precision in mind. Users can now pinpoint businesses and services around an address or zip code - letting the user define their exact location. Yahoo! Local also features unique narrowing tools that allow users to quickly refine local searches - by distance, rating, category, and more.

-– Comprehensiveness and Freshness: Yahoo! Local starts with more than 14 million businesses found in Yahoo! Yellow Pages - from dry cleaners and dentists to florists and fine dining - and integrates valuable information like store hours, accepted payment methods and products offered.

Yahoo Local also includes professional restaurant reviews, photos, and menus, as well as content from other areas of Yahoo! (like information about movies, tickets and hotels), to offer a more engaging and comprehensive product. Additionally, the product leverages Yahoo! Search Technology to identify official Web sites for local businesses and crawls those sites for content to create a richer, more relevant search experience.

-– Usefulness: With SmartView, a new visual search tool, consumers can use a dynamic map to see where businesses or points of interest are located in relation to each other. For example, one can find a day spa to visit, and plot nearby ATM machines and restaurants on the same map. For some categories such as hotels and restaurants, consumers can even take the next step by making reservations directly through Yahoo! Local.

-– Community Voice: Users can now rate and review almost every business in the country - from dry cleaners and dentists to florists and fine dining establishments. Consumers can also use the “email a friend” feature to share their favorite businesses or services with others who are in - or are planning to visit - their neighborhood.

-– Personalization: Yahoo! Local provides users the opportunity to save their most frequently used locations or view most recently used locations and quickly and easily access that information each time they do a new search.

Source: Search Engine Journal

Google's complaint of Froogles rejected by panel

Google's right to use the name "Froogle" for its online comparison shopping search engine came into fire Friday, when an arbitration panel rejected the company's challenge of a website named Froogles.com.

Two of the three judges on the panel of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, rejected Google's argument that Froogles.com was "confusingly similar" to Google.

"The dissimilar letters in the domain name are sufficiently different to make it distinguishable from Google's mark," the panel found. The name Froogles.com "creates an entirely new word and conveys an entirely singular meaning from the mark."

The search-engine company's loss has no immediate impact on its use of the name Froogle. But it means that the Froogles.com name will remain with Richard Wolfe, a disabled Holtsville, N.Y., carpenter who started the Web shopping site in March 2001, before Google introduced Froogle in December 2002.

But in a separate proceeding in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Wolfe has challenged Google's attempt to register Froogle as infringement of his Froogles.com mark. And in Wolfe's application to register Froogles.com, a trademark office attorney, like the ICANN panel, determined in March that Froogles.com isn't confusingly similar to any other trademark, including Google.

"Google's right to continue to use the Froogle mark is seriously in question," said Wolfe's attorney, Stephen Humphrey. "To the extent they continue to use the mark, they are infringing on Richard Wolfe's trademark rights," Humphrey alleges.

However, the third judge on the ICANN panel dissented, saying the additional letters in Froogles.com "do not distinguish the domain name" from the Google trademark. The name Froogles.com could cause users to believe that the site is affiliated with Google, the judge wrote.

Wolfe is using a confusingly similar name in a bad-faith attempt to compete with Google's business, the judge concluded.

Google didn't immediately return calls and an e-mail asking for comment. But the decision by the ICANN panel, which arbitrates disputes over Internet names, doesn't preclude a challenge in U.S. District Court.

A court would likely hear the case anew rather than as an appeal, according to the ICANN panel's general counsel. Only a handful of cases arbitrated by the panel have been subsequently taken to court.

Humphrey wouldn't comment when asked what Wolfe's next step would be. But he said, "The trademark case continues. We have a lot of options right now."

He added, "This is a variation on David versus Goliath, and the stone has been slung."

Wolfe has said that he would consider settling the matter as his legal bills mount, but that his goal has always been to continue developing Froogles.com.

"It still amazes me that I should have to go through this at all," Wolfe said. "I started my shopping service called Froogles almost two years before Google started a shopping service called Froogle. What more does anyone need to know?"

Recently, Microsoft Corp. paid $20 million to settle a trademark case it brought against Lindows Inc. In return, Lindows will change its name.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., has filed 18 domain name disputes at the ICANN panel, challenging names like "googlesex.com," "google.biz" and "googleme.com." It has won every challenge but Froogles.com.

Source: Forbes.com

Yahoo's Terry Semel wants more shares of Google

Yahoo wants more than its allocation of just 5.5m shares in the upcoming Google IPO, as controversy over the sky-high price of Google's shares announced on Monday.

Yahoo, headed by chairman and chief executive Terry Semel, is demanding more shares from upstart Google in a contract dispute stemming from the partnership that the two companies formed in 2000.

In its filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google said that Yahoo! had been using search technology since June 2000 but nowadays contributed only 3% to Google revenues. Google said it was ending the arrangement this month.

Neither Yahoo! nor Google would comment on the specifics of the dispute but it is understood that Yahoo! is claiming that its contribution a couple of years back merits a larger share allocation.

Google says its share price when it goes public will be between $108 (£58.66) and $135. If Yahoo! sells the 549,888 shares it has been promised for the mid-point price of $121.50 it would net around $67m (£36.4m).

Not only is Yahoo! miffed at its share allocation, it is a party to the only lawsuit of note Google is facing, and which the company admits could hit future profitability. Google is being sued by Overture Services, which in 2002 when the suit was filed was an independent search company. It is now owned by Yahoo!

Overture claims Google's Adwords programme infringes its patent. Google is fighting the case but admits a loss would be damaging.

Google executives, meanwhile, have launched their initail public offering roadshow to 800 analysts at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. The media was not allowed to attend.

The company discussed its latest earnings, which have disappointed some potential investors.

Google reported net income of $143m and revenue of $1.35bn in the first six months of 2004, up from net income of $58m and revenue of $559.8m in the year-ago period.

An analysis of the figures reveals that growth rates and margins came down, particularly during the last three months, as they did with other internet companies, but still not the sort of news that is welcome before a flotation.

One analyst, Connor Browne of Thornburg Investment Management, told reporters he was 'pretty disappointed' with Google's sequential revenue growth of 7% over the first quarter. A year ago that growth figure was 25%.

Source: This is London.co.uk

Online advertising to beat magazine ad spending

The Internet’s ability to target consumers and deliver TV-like advertisements are two reasons why online advertising spending is rapidly growing and will overtake the amount spent on magazines by 2008, according to a report by JupiterResearch.

By then, online ad spending will total $15 billion, compared to magazines’ $14.5 billion, said Gary Stein, a senior analyst.

His report is set for release on Wednesday in New York at the Jupiter/ClickZ Advertising Forum Conference & Expo.

Stein said Web sites have become “more targeted and much smarter” about measuring audiences.

Paid-sarch advertising, which links marketers’ messages to Web content, is an especially attractive vehicle, Stein told the Wall Street Journal.

Source: CBS MarketWatch

Google and Yahoo settle out of court

Google and Yahoo just finalized and out-of-court settlement, resolving two lenghty disputes, with Google tendering common stock to Yahoo.

The leaders -- and bitter rivals -- in search engine marketing services have decided against civil actions.

Google gave Yahoo 2.7 million shares of Class A common stock, which could be worth more than $280 million if Google's impending IPO garners at least the bottom of its suggested price.

In return, Google got out from under a two-year-old patent infringement suit and a dispute over stock warrants owed Yahoo for a 2000 services agreement.

A Yahoo spokesperson said the agreement grants Google a license to the '361 and several other patents owned by Yahoo.

"There is no ongoing licensing fee. It's netting out at a one-time share receipt for the life of the patents covered under the suit," she said.

The agreement also puts to rest the dispute over how much stock Google owed Yahoo. Yahoo had a warrant to purchase 3.7 million shares, but Google claimed the 1.2 million shares it issued to Yahoo followed a conversion provision in the agreement. Yahoo protested the lowered amount.

The companies didn't disclose what proportion of the shares Google parted with covered the patent licenses. A Google spokesperson would say only, "We are pleased to have resolved these issues and pleased with the terms of the agreement."

Yahoo now holds around 8.2 million shares in Google. The Yahoo spokesperson declined to say when settlement talks began or whether the judge handling the patent infringement suit directed them to talk turkey. But after simmering along on the back burner, the case was about to get hot.

Overture Services, Yahoo's subsidiary, sued Google in April 2002, claiming the latter's lucrative AdWords search marketing service infringed Overtures U.S. Patent No. 6,269,361. The discovery in the case was getting ugly: Google claimed that an Overture executive lied in his deposition. Also, despite Overture's success in keeping parts of its testimony out of the public record, the discovery process was bringing to light plenty of information about its business.

In the long term, the patent dispute could have had serious consequences: If its patents were upheld, Yahoo could have refused to license them to Google, bringing AdWords to a screeching halt. However, that day was at least a couple years down the road, according to Randy Lipsitz, an intellectual property specialist with the New York City law firm of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel.

However, that might have changed. Both sides were awaiting one critical ruling: The Markman Order, which defines the terms at issue before the case can go to trial. The Markman hearing took place in March and the decision was expected any day -- perhaps before bidding on Google's IPO shares closed. While these rulings don't necessarily give much indication of how the case may be decided, anything that appeared negative to the public could have dinged the price.

"The big companies really don't like to bet the farm unless they are going up against a much smaller company, one they feel they can over-lawyer or overwhelm," said Konrad Trope, a patent and intellectual property specialist based in Los Angeles. In this case, he said, "You have two giants who in a sense could be doing more damage to themselves by beating up on each other than by settling."

"Most of these cases do settle," Lipsitz agreed. "At some point it may sound good to go after [a rival] and corner a piece of the market. But usually after a couple of years, clients see how much they've spent, how much time, the disruption to the business and its executives, and they realize a settlement wouldn't be so bad."

In the short term, the dispute seemed to have little impact on the market. "There were so many other nuances in the whole situation that no one really focused on the consequences [of the suit] -- anyone relevant at least," Lipsitz said.

Google set the extraordinarily high price of $108 to $135 for IPO shares, although the Dutch auction system being used is designed to determine the price the market is willing to pay. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company's revised S-10 filing that included details of the previously disclosed plan to offer a buy-back program for shares and stock options it failed to register with the SEC gave rise to concerns about its internal governance.

"They were more interesting to read about than an arcane patent infringement lawsuit," Lipsitz said.

Ironically, Google's stock is putatively worth as much as nine times more than Yahoo's. In the last year, YHOO has traded between $14.05 and $36.51. The stock was selling at $25.70 at close of today's trading.

Source: Internet News.com

Google sued for age discrimination

Google describes itself as a good employer that pampers its employees with free meals and generous stock options that could soon be worth millions of dollars.

But a lawsuit filed earlier this week by a recently fired Google manager contends the company has cultivated a culture that discriminates against older workers and fosters serious morale problems.

The civil complaint, filed Tuesday in Santa Clara Superior Court, alleges Mountain View-based Google fired Brian Reid, 54, as its director of operations in February 2004 because he didn't fit in a culture emphasizing ''youth and energy.''

Google denied the allegations. ''We believe Mr. Reid's complaint is without merit and will defend against it vigorously,'' spokesman Steve Langdon said. He declined to discuss why Reid lost his job.

Wrongful termination suits alleging age discrimination are common in corporate America, but Reid's complaint could prove awkward for Google, an unorthodox company that has depicted itself as a progressive employer since its founding nearly six years ago.

Google co-founders Larry Page, 31, and Sergey Brin, 30, emphasized their devotion to the company's workers in a letter attached to the company's plans to launch an initial public offering of stock later this year.

''Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything,'' the letter said. ''... We will reward them and treat them well.''

Reid said company executives initially gave him no reason for his termination until Shona Brown, vice president of business operations, told him he was incompatible with Google's youthful atmosphere.

After he left, Reid said, he learned he was replaced by someone around age 30. The firing cost Reid his annual salary of $200,000 and 119,000 Google stock options with an exercise price of 30 cents per share.

Based on estimates of Google's market value, Reid's stock options probably would have been worth about $10 million after the company's IPO. The suit seeks to recover lost compensation and punitive damages.

Source: Monterey Herald

Search tools need to be refined

Even if search engines have vastly improved access to information, search tools need to be refined to make it easier to cull information or conduct queries.

That was the word from researchers and speakers at the New Paradigms for Using Computers Conference, held at IBM's Almaden research lab here last week.

"We live in a world with lots of information but also lots of interruptions. It is a teriyaki of information. The question is, 'How do we survive in the marinade?'" joked Dan Russell, senior manager of user sciences and experience research at IBM Almaden.

Early attempts to better locate the world's information are already under way. The University of California at Berkeley, for example, showed off at the conference a prototype of a search engine called Flamenco that makes it easier to search for works of art or antiques. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Inxight, meanwhile, has created software that attempts to graphically represent latent connections between people or institutions by studying where and how they get mentioned on the Web.

On the desktop, companies such as Ingenuity Software, founded by former Apple Computer developer Bruce Horn, are creating tools designed to make it easier for people to index their photos and documents for subsequent Google-like searches on their hard drive.

These research efforts are in addition to new operating systems under development that will include better search tools.

Microsoft plans to add better search features to a future version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, due sometime around 2006 or 2007. The software giant last week demonstrated a more general Web search "service" that's also in development.

And Apple's Tiger, a new version of the company's Mac OS X operating system that's due next year, will include a new systemwide search engine called Spotlight that will allow Mac users to quickly search and find any file, Apple says.

One of the surprises that has emerged from the Internet Archive, which is intended to become a repository of everything ever published, is that the body of public works can probably be corralled, said Brewster Kahle, founder of the organization.

About 100 million different books have been published in history, Kahle said, citing estimates from professor Raj Reddy at Carnegie Mellon University. About 28 million sit in the Library of Congress. On average, a book can be condensed to a megabyte in Microsoft Word. Thus, the books in the Library of Congress could fit into a 28-terabyte storage system.

"For the cost of a house, you could have the Library of Congress," Reddy said, adding that mass book-scanning projects are currently under way in India and China.

"Universal access to all human knowledge is within our grasp. It could be one of the greatest achievements of all time." -- Brewster Kahle, founder, Internet Archive.

Only about 2 million to 3 million audio recordings--mostly music--have ever been published for public consumption. The Internet Archive has begun to store digitized recordings of concerts as well and has about 15,000 shows in its database to date. There are between 100,000 to 200,000 theatrical movies--half of them from India--in existence and about 20 terabytes of TV broadcasts a month. The Web grows by about 20 terabytes of compressed data a month as well. (One terabyte equals 1 trillion bytes.) Since 1984, about 50,000 software titles, including CD-ROMs, have emerged.

Though the legal issues around storing and viewing all this information remain thorny, storing it is doable.

"Universal access to all human knowledge is within our grasp," Kahle said. "It could be one of the greatest achievements of all time."

Still, that's a lot to grasp. Similarly, individuals will experience an explosion in their personal catalogs of data. In the MyLifeBits project under way at Microsoft Research, noted scientist Gordon Bell is attempting to digitally capture all of the books, movies, TV shows, music and other media he has experienced in his life. He's up to 44GB of data so far.

E-mails, phone messages, photographs and personal video will also add to an individual's data trove. In another experiment, doctors in Cambridge, England, have equipped patients suffering from severe memory loss with a Microsoft SenseCam, a wearable camera that takes pictures when a person moves. One man is currently using it so he can show his wife, who has memory problems, a diary of the day, said Ken Wood, who works on the project.

Microsoft has also entered a three-year alliance with the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. In a likely experiment, attendees will wander about the arts fest with SenseCams around their necks, snapping shots.

One approach to mastering data overload lies in developing search engines specialized for certain topics and data sets. That's the tack taken by Berkeley's Flamenco project.

In Flamenco, a Yahoo-like interface categorizes artworks drawn from museum collections around the world by content (animals, heaven and earth, shapes and colors, and so on), century, artist, medium (such as painting, furniture, sculpture) and other identifiers. By going up and down the tree, users can browse through all the animal pictures found in the database, or they can zero in on, say, the years 1700 to 1709 and discover that the period, at least as represented by the database, produced only four paintings of hoofed mammals.

The search engine does not search on the visual information contained in the picture, said Kevil Li, a student on the project. Instead, searches are conducted on descriptive text submitted by the museums that digitize their artwork for such databases.

Other tools, such as Inxight and GeoFusion, produce graphical representations of data obtained through searches. GeoFusion, which makes software that can extrapolate from geographic data, was able to render a map of the movements of a tagged tuna.

By contrast, Inxight's software creates a map of relationships between names and topics. A search on the White House and business showed that Haliburton is the corporation linked most often to the White House. In a similar fashion, IBM's own WebFountain project is used to test how cohesive certain blogging communities are by how quickly and in unison they react to news events.

File systems will likely begin to disappear as search gains popularity. One of the phenomena that Microsoft researchers are finding in MyLifeBits is that files are largely ad hoc categories that become outdated, said Jim Gemmell at Microsoft Research.

Instead, data should be tagged so that if people remember a name or part of a name, they can find their way back to documents or pictures involving that person, or they can find documents created on the same day that they had a phone conversation with the person, even if the discussion involved something unrelated.

"The problem is not that we keep too much with MyLifeBits. The problem is how to use it," Gemmell said.

Poorer nations will also be able to take advantage of these advances, even without an electrical grid. The Internet Archive has created mobile bookmobiles in conjunction with Hewlett-Packard and others. The bookmobiles contain a printer hooked up to a satellite feed, which can print books for kids. Two are in operation in India, while another in rural Uganda prints about 1,500 books a week. The entire bookmobile, including the cost of the used van, is $15,000, and 100-page books cost about a $1 to print and bind in the van.

"It takes about 12 to 15 minutes to make a book," he said. "It is cheaper for a library in the United States to print and give away a book than retrieve it."

Source: C-Net News

Yahoo acquires travel company FareChase

Yahoo has acquired FareChase, a small online travel company, to help broaden its Web search capabilities.

Yahoo purchased New York-based FareChase on July 2 for an undisclosed sum, company spokeswoman Nicki Dugan said late Friday. FareChase, founded in 1999, has 25 employees, the majority of which will relocate to Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The Internet giant has made it a priority to build the largest, most comprehensive Internet search service to compete with market leader Google. With FareChase, which provides tools for consumers and travel agents to find information on hotels, cars and flights, Yahoo will be able to build more robust consumer travel services without tapping third parties.

"We're attracted to their travel expertise, and we feel that they will further our goal to create the most comprehensive and relevant travel experience on the Web," Dugan said.

She added that the acquisition will not imminently affect Yahoo Travel, Yahoo's consumer travel property. The Web portal is in an exclusive deal with Travelocity, which provides the underlying tools that let Yahoo visitors search for hotels, cars and flights. Yahoo has yet to disclose how it will incorporate FareChase into its Web site.

FareChase sells business-to-business software that lets travel agents and corporate booking offices search for flight times, car reservations and hotel vacancies in real time. It also lets consumers scout for the best travel deals from roughly 150 Web sites.

The Web log site Searchblog first reported the acquisition.

Source: C-Net News

What Yahoo Search wants in its index

Search giant Yahoo just updated their search inclusion guidelines.

Like any search engine, Yahoo is concerned with quality, relevant results. Their new search inclusion guidelines also reflect that.

Important considerations for inclusion in Yahoo:

Original and unique content of genuine value
Pages designed primarily for humans, search engine considerations secondary
Hyperlinks intended mostly to help people find interesting & related content
Metadata, including title & description, that describes well the contents of a page
Good and consistent web design in general

Unfortunately, not all web pages contain information that is valuable to a user. Some pages are created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results; this is often called "spam." Yahoo does not want these pages in the index.

What Yahoo Considers Unwanted Spam

Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo does not want include:

Pages that harm accuracy or the relevance of search results
Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
The use of text that is hidden from the user (invisible text)
Pages that give the search engine different content (cloaking)
Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
Pages built primarily for the search engines
Misuse of competitor names
Multiple sites offering the same content
Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

Yahoo's Site Guidelines are designed to ensure that poor-quality pages do not degrade the user experience in any way. As with Yahoo's other guidelines, Yahoo reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to take any and all action it deems appropriate to insure the quality of its index.

Source: Yahoo!

Press freedom group lashes out at Google and Yahoo

A press freedom group with international ramifications criticizes Yahoo and Google for allegedly cooperating with the Chinese government to crackdown on web access.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it, "deplores the irresponsible policies of United States Internet firms Yahoo! and Google in bowing directly and indirectly to Chinese government demands for censorship."

It called on the United States to apply the principles of its Global Internet Freedom Act on its private sector's activities in "some of the world's most repressive regimes."

The Global Internet Freedom Act, passed by the US House of Representatives in July 2003, aims to combat online censorship imposed by governments around the world.

RSF said it appealed to Yahoo chairman and chief executive Terry Semel last December but received no reply.

The rights watchdog claimed Yahoo had been censoring its Chinese-language search-engine for several years and rival firm Google, which recently took a share in Baidu, a Chinese search-engine that filters a user's findings, seemed ready to go the same way.

In their efforts to conquer the Chinese market, the two firms are "making compromises that directly threaten freedom of expression," it said in a statement.

A keyword search in Yahoo's Chinese language site on "Tibet independence" Tuesday did not display any result, while "Taiwan independence" produced only mainland Chinese websites which condemn the move.

The same search on Google returned no listing for "Tibet independence" but "Taiwan independence" displayed a listing which included Taiwanese sites. They were blocked however when accessed.

A search of the name of one of China's most high profile dissidents, Wei Jingsheng, on Yahoo returned only mainland sites critical of him. A similar search on Google returned with a screen saying the site cannot be displayed.

Neither Google nor Yahoo were immediately available for comment Tuesday. Other US high-tech firms such as Cisco Systems have also helped the Chinese government acquire sophisticated technical means to spy on the Internet, its users and the messages they send, RSF claimed.

It said Cisco had sold several thousand routers to enable the regime to build an online spying system to spot supposedly subversive keywords in messages.

Beijing has long censored hundreds of websites of Western media outlets, political and religious dissidents and others that are viewed as a threat to the Communist regime.

RSF has also written to Lorne Craner, US assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights and Earl Wayne, assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs.

Source: Servihoo.com

Recently awarded search engine patents

If you've always wondered which companies are doing the most R&D in the field of search engines, you might find this information useful.

Search engine with natural language-based robust parsing for user query and relevance feedback learning.
Assignee: Microsoft

Method and system of ranking and clustering for document indexing and retrieval.
Assignee: SAIC

Method for promoting contextual information to display pages containing hyperlinks.
Assignee: Microsoft

Method and system for updating a search engine.
Assigneee: Micron

Hyper video: information retrieval using text from multimedia.
Assignee: Verizon

Method and apparatus for creating and displaying user specific and site specific guidance and navigation information.
Assignee: IBM

Systems and methods for structured vocabulary search and classification.
Assignee: Northrop Grumman Corporation

High volume targeting of advertisements to user of online service.
Assignee: NetZero

Extended functionality for an inverse inference engine based web search.
Assignee: Insightful Corporation

Techniques for finding related hyperlinked documents using link-based analysis.
Assignee: Google

Arrangement of information for display into a continuum ranging from closely related to distantly related to a reference piece of information.
Assignee: IBM

System and method for topic-based document analysis for information filtering.
Assignee: Satyam Computer Services Limited of Mayfair Centre

User Query Generate Search Results That Rank Set Of Servers Where Ranking Is Based On Comparing Content On Each Server With User Query, Frequency At Which Content On Each Server Is Altered Using Web Crawler In A Search Engine.
Assignee: Xerox

Method and system for creating improved search queries.
Assignee: NA

Flexible keyword searching.
Assignee: Microsoft

System and method for content retrieval.
Assignee: Microsoft

Recently Published Search-Related Patent Applications

+ Meta-search engine architecture
+ Assignee: NEC

+ Dynamically updating a search engine’s knowledge and process database by tracking and saving user interactions
+ Assignee: IBM

+ Search engine facility with automated knowledge retrieval generation and maintenance
+ Assignee: IBM

+ Method for searching media
+ Assignee: Google

+ Information storage and retrieval
+ Assignee: NA

+ Method to facilitate a search of a database utilizing multiple search criteria
+ Assignee: NA

+ Method and system for advertisement using internet browser with book-like interface
+ Assignee: E-Book Systems

+ Temporal link analysis of linked entities
+ Assignee: IBM

+ Method, apparatus, and program for refining search criteria through focusing word definition
+ Assignee: IBM

+ Method and system for combating robots and rogues
+ Assignee: NA

+ Method For Retrieving Documents
+ Assignee: NA

+ Apparatus and methods for semantic representation and retrieval of multimedia content
+ Assignee: IBM

+ Method and apparatus for ranking web page search results
+ Assignee: AltaVista

+ Method and system of ranking and clustering for document indexing and retrieval
+ Assigne: SAIC

Source: Gary Price,
The ResourceShelf

Mark Cuban backing new search engine

Mark Cuban is backing a new Internet search engine that aims to take over where Google left off.

Dallas-based upstart IceRocket is trying to throw a new twist on search results, along with some financial and advisory help from billionaire Cuban. The company is mixing its own Web search technology with "metasearch" features that tap into rival engines.

But it's hoping to set itself apart with features, such as more powerful image searching and an e-mail-based service that can be used on handhelds and other mobile devices.

"We don't need to recreate what (Google) is doing. There is a ton of room on the edges to do well things that they don't do well," IceRocket CEO Blake Rhodes said in an e-mail interview. Google users are now "facing an overwhelming volume of choices to the point where you always feel like you are missing something," he said.

IceRocket is part of a new generation of search engines, some of which hope to "out-Google Google," and some of which simply want to capture a narrowly defined portion of the Internet search market.

While none have anything but a tiny fraction of the audience of Google, the search giant's impending initial public offering--which is expected to raise as much as $3.3 billion--has been tantalizing for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists of all stripes.

The market is facing new competition from the other side of the spectrum, too. Microsoft has made it clear that it is devoting increasing resources to search, both on its MSN Web site and in future software products that will also search computers' hard drives, e-mail folders and other now-obscure corners of a person's digital world.

News.com publisher CNET Networks relaunched its own metasearch site, Search.com, on Wednesday.

Like previous generations of metasearch engines, IceRocket relies on some of its primary rivals, ranging from Yahoo and Ask Jeeves' Teoma to littler sites, including LookSmart's WiseNut.

Each search result provides a small thumbnail snapshot of the site it points to, which the company says will help users decide if they actually want to visit or not.

A feature still being tested enables cell phone or PDA users to send an e-mail with a search term to the site and get an e-mail back with the top five search results.

Rhodes said Cuban was an investor but declined to say how much money the Dallas entrepreneur provided.

On his Web log, Cuban said he was helping suggest features that would be useful.

"I've offered to help come up with some unique features that hopefully can allow them to separate from the pack," Cuban wrote. "To me, this is a unique way to 'design my own search engine.'"

Source: C-Net News

Overture adds Search Optimizer to its engine

Overture Performance Marketing launches Search Optimizer, an enhanced campaign optimization product designed to help advertisers maximize the effectiveness of their Overture sponsored search campaigns.

The launch of Search Optimizer, now available in the U.S., demonstrates Overture's ongoing commitment to generating greater value for its advertisers by providing them with simplified campaign management solutions and valuable insights to better inform their marketing decision-making process.

"Overture is always looking for ways to help our advertisers use sponsored search campaign management to enable them to focus on running their businesses," said Steven Mitgang, senior vice president and general manager of Overture Performance Marketing. "Search Optimizer fulfills this need by helping advertisers increase the performance of their sponsored search campaigns and save time, ultimately enabling them to more efficiently meet their business objectives."

Search Optimizer allows Overture advertisers to improve their campaign performance and reduce the amount of time spent managing their listings by offering them the ability to easily:

-- Optimize campaigns based on business objectives such as cost-per-acquisition (CPA), cost per click (CPC), return on ad spend (ROAS) and others;

-- Automate keyword bidding based on performance-driven bid recommendations tied to their unique business objectives;

-- Sort campaigns by performance to quickly and intuitively determine which campaigns/keywords need additional optimization;

-- Manage thousands of keywords through features that allow them to develop "watch lists" of their most important campaigns or keywords, perform advanced searches of their performance data and quickly download large amounts of information to an outside application;

-- Define active time frames for their listings.

The product builds on the core foundation of the campaign performance metrics provided in Marketing Console, which was launched in November 2003 and will remain in the Overture Performance Marketing product line.

Search Optimizer is a subscription ba