eBrandz Blogs

Search Engine News Updates: March 01-06-2010

eBrandz Editor — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:29:15 +0000

Welcome to another weekly edition of Search and Social updates amidst numerous legal issues — though the activity in Search Engine Markets were nimble but, search engine Goliath Google, Bing, Yahoo made the headlines. Google acquired photo-editing application “Picnik,” while extending its click-to-call capabilities to smartphones. While Microsoft introduced the most innovative application called “Skinput” also acquired geo-mapping company Navizon, and Bing has now announced its search with better AutoSuggest feature and Yahoo extended collaboration with Facebook Connect and YouTube rolled out Auto-Captioning feature for all, and many more interesting Search Engine Optimization news from across the web…
	AOL Disposes Of Affiliate Network Buy.at The U.S. Department of Justice and European Union last week bestowed their blessings on Microsoft’s search alliance with Yahoo… Read More

	Google Adds Online Photo-Editing Service Picnik To Its Arsenal Keeping up on its promise to pursue small acquisitions — Search engine giant Google on Monday announced that it has just added Picnik.com, a Web-based application that empower users to import, edit and store photos online to its arsenal… Read More

	Bing Integrates Autosuggest Feature To Search History Microsoft has announced today that its flourishing Bing search engine is now supporting query history in its Autosuggest feature. Indicating that Bing does not only analyze your usual search behavior based on earlier searches if you have your search history enabled… Read More

	Google Expands Click-To-Call Ads With Phone Extensions On Smartphones Just a little over a month ago, Google unveiled click-to-call phone options in local ads on smartphones. Now, in an attempt to further its mobile-ad facilities, Google is now improving on its mobile ad arsenal by expanding its new click-to-call ad options to national advertisers… Read More

	Microsoft Obtains Navizon To Power Mobile Geolocation Software major Microsoft Corp., today announced that it has inked a licensing deal with geo-positioning startup Navizon to offer geolocation for mobile users… Read More

	Google’s Chrome Browser Beta Delivers Instant Translation, Improves Privacy Google’s making sure that Chrome’s dominance is a global phenomenon, using a uniquely Google trick: The Mountain View company on Tuesday said that automatic translation is the most latest feature it added to Google’s Chrome browser, for instant machine translation of webpages… Read More

	Google Ditches SearchWiki, Debuts Stars To Personalize Searches In an attempt to deliver more personalized search experience, Google today unleashed yet another way to give users a more novel feature — marking search results with cutesy, yellow star icons, called Google Stars, allowing them to mark their favorite or best query results or map… Read More

	Microsoft’s Innovative Skinput Gadget Turns Human Arm Into Touch-Screen Display Ever since the immensely huge success of Apple’s touchscreen devices that has revolutionized the way we communicate with electronics, Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, along with Microsoft’s research lab have developed and innovative gadget called “Skinput,” an experimental device that turns the skin of your arm to act as an input device… Read More

	Google Introduces Disaster Proof Backup To Protect Apps Data Cloud computing remains somewhat vulnerable when it comes to security, and many of us take the disaster readiness of servers and data centers for granted. But for IT admins from both small and large companies, being prepared for disaster and emergency situations is complicated and expensive issue… Read More

	Yahoo Weaves Facebook Connect With Contacts Import Ability Last December, Yahoo announced that it would be unfurling deep integration of many of its popular products and services with Facebook Connect, essentially outsourcing all things social to the world’s most popular social network. Today marks the fulfillment of that promise of this partnership, with Yahoo Contacts now connected to Facebook… Read More

	YouTube Extends Auto-Captioning Feature To All Users Google owned popular video-sharing site YouTube, on Thursday in a remarkable development announced that it is unveiling its auto-caption feature for millions of deaf and hard of hearing Internet users, to all English-language videos on the video-sharing website… Read More

Search Engine News Updates: February 22-27-2010

eBrandz Editor — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:07:07 +0000

Welcome back to the another week bundled with many a milestone in the Search Engine Marketing world where Microsoft and Yahoo! Deal got approved by both the U.S. DoJ and the European Commission. Then there was Yahoo’s alliance with Twitter to boost its social networking features. But, the biggest of all was about the European Commission putting Google in the Dock for their potential anti-competitive practices and, besides that Italian court charged three Google executives for privacy violations and more…
	U.S., European Regulators Grants Green Signal To Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal The U.S. Department of Justice and European Union last week bestowed their blessings on Microsoft’s search alliance with Yahoo… Read More

	Google Finally Completes On2 Video Codecs Acquisition For $124.6 Million Global search leader Google, has finally finalized its acquisition of video compression technology vendor On2 Technologies in a $120m deal which will expand the web giant’s online video capabilities… Read More

	Google Expands Maps Platform For Businesses In Thirty African Countries Google has announced the launch of Google Maps in Ghana and 29 other African countries where it was not previously available… Read More

	Google Spruces Up DoubleClick’s Ad Platform For Publishers Google just yesterday released a revamped version of its ad-serving platform DoubleClick for Publishers, with a revived interface, more statistics, improved ad-delivery algorithms and a new API for developers… Read More

	Yahoo Tweedles With Twitter To Boost Social Features In an attempt to lure back Web surfers who are spending more time on social networking sites, Internet portal Yahoo Inc. has inked a deal with Twitter to integrate Twitter’s real-time content updates across both properties… Read More

	Google Hit With Antitrust Investigation By European Commission Google is once again confronting a new round of scrutiny from antitrust regulators, for possible anti-competitive behavior by the Mountain View search giant, following complaints from three European search sites filed against it, Google revealed in a blog post Tuesday… Read More

	Google Execs Convicted In Italian Abusive Video Case Global search leader Google slammed with another surprising and severe setback in Italy on Feb. 24, when a Milan court in a landmark ruling establish that the three company executives guilty of privacy offenses in association to a contentious video clip uploaded on Google’s YouTube… Read More

	Twitter Struck By Another Phishing Attack In A Week – This you???? Twitter members have been once again targeted on Wednesday with what appears to be the second phishing attack in a week, which displays a message that says “This you????” followed by a link that directs to a fake Twitter log-in page, according to a security blog post… Read More

	Google Upgrades Six New Gmail Lab Features, Five Others Flunk Out Google is best-known for introducing a plethora of nifty little features through Labs that make the email platform more attractive and easy to use. Well, yesterday, Google announced that six new features has been culled from the experimental Labs and will become standard features of Gmail… Read More

	Google Adds “Nearby” Search Options Panel Based On Location Amid growing concern about the privacy implications of location-based services, the move is latest in location-based features for the search giant. Google on Friday announced a new “Nearby” location-based search filtering capabilities to desktop computers… Read More

Search Engine News Updates: February 15-20-2010

eBrandz Editor — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:36:28 +0000

Welcome back to the another week of furious activity in the Search Engine Marketing world as we mine the web for gold and pull out a few nuggets. Barely a week has passed yet as the internet is abuzz with a lot of buzz about the new product from the Google’s stables – Buzz. Also, Microsoft unveiled its iPhone rival – the Windows 7 Phone series and Adobe released its AIR for smartphones and more…
	Google Modifies Buzz Settings To Tackle Privacy Flaws There has been quite a buzz ever since Google unveiled “Buzz” their new social networking platform on February 9. Over the weekend, Google Inc. moved quickly and issued a mea culpa, after its first attempt to quell a growing outcry of criticism over Buzz’s privacy issues… Read More

	Google Takes Street View’s Cameras To The Slopes Of Winter Olympics If you considered the Google Street View trike was weird, now get ready to take a run on the bobsleigh course, the official Street View snowmobile. Google’s new Street View micro-site for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver has taken to the slopes with the launch of Google Snow View… Read More

	Microsoft CEO Unveils Game-Changing Windows Phone 7 Series Software After three years of dodging questions over why it was so far behind Apple’s iPhone; At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft has reappeared from the backseat of the smartphone war to front and center, unveiling an impressively redesigned Windows Phone 7 for the first time… Read More

	Nokia, Intel Gets “Cozy” On Mobile Software Race Nokia and Intel at the Mobile World Congress, on Monday said they have forged an alliance in a new clash of the operating systems with the joint creation of MeeGo, to power sophisticated smartphones and netbook computers, in an attempt to catch up with Apple and Google… Read More

	Google Delivers MySpace Status Updates To Real-Time Search Results Google and MySpace have taken the real-time plunge. During a search event in December, Google introduced its Real-Time Search service, which already is a useful feature that utilizes updates from various sources like Twitter and FriendFeed. Now, MySpace, which has been trying to keep pace in the real-time, has been added to the service… Read More

	Adobe Announces Full-Featured AIR 2.0 For Smartphones — Android First Adobe Systems, hard at work is preparing a mobile version of (AIR), on Monday announced making improvements to its popular Flash video player that promise to enhance the experience of watching video on a mobile, and said it would support Google’s Android phone platform… Read More

	Microsoft Selects AT&T As Preferred Windows Phone 7 Carrier In an unusual turn of events, Microsoft Corp.’s recently unveiled Windows Phone 7 at the World Mobile Conference, announced that AT&T will be the premier carrier with all four U.S. carriers and several international ones… Read More

	Google Acquires Mobile E-mail Startup reMail For Gmail Barely a week ago Google acquired social search engine Aardvark, and today, the Mountain View-based company once again makes headlines with yet another acquisition. This time the global search leader has acquired e-mail startup “reMail,” which is responsible for developing a powerful email search application for the iPhone… Read More

	Google News Opens Up “Living Stories” To The World After delivering traffic since its launch in December, Google is bestowing new life to “Living Stories,” the news research project that it began experimenting with the New York Times and the Washington Post will now be publicly available to provide a deeper user engagement… Read More Read More

	Google Buzz Slammed With Class-Action Suit From Harvard Student Enjoy it or ency it, Google Buzz has dominated tech headlines since its launch last week. A Florida woman on Wednesday filed a class-action lawsuit against Google’s latest real-time social network tool, “Google Buzz,” accusing that the new Buzz violates the privacy rights of Gmail… Read More

Search Engine News Updates: February 08-13-2010

eBrandz Editor — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:27:49 +0000

As the week comes to a close on a hectic note, and as for those who are trolling the Internet for the most significant development in the Search Engine Marketing world, we have got one for you! — Google has brought the latest in the world of, well, it plans to build develop a super-fast networks, with speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. And, in competition with Twitter and Facebook, tears into the social networking scene with its latest addition to Gmail — Buzz. While Microsoft and Facebook amended their ad pact and Yahoo finally shuttered down its Yahoo Tech.
	Microsoft, Facebook Modify Ad Relationship–Swaps Banners For Search Deal Microsoft and Facebook have operated together since 2007, but now their relationship is beginning to develop, with both sides sacrificing a little but harvesting more in exchange. Read More

	Facebook Reaches 400 Million Users, Celebrates 6th Birthday Redesigned Home Page Facebook, the popular social-networking site, which recently surpassed the 400 million user mark and is celebrating its sixth anniversary, has once again started rolling out a revamped homepage last week, a redesign intended to make it easier to find certain features, like notifications, news photos, and chat. Read More

	Google Earth Demonstrates Historical Aerial Images Of World War II Interestingly enough, Google Earth is a great tool to explore places around the globe you may not be able to get to otherwise. But it does not ends just there, it takes you back in time. Read More

	Google Aims At Facebook, Twitter With Gmail Buzz Search engine behemoth Google is heading for a head-to-head combat with Facebook and Twitter after it unveiled a bundle of new social networking features on its email service. Google, on Tuesday announced a new social networking service called Google Buzz. Read More

	AOL Partners With Facebook, Integrates Lifestream To AIM Just a day after Google integrated its Gmail with a social networking feature, the newly-independent AOL Inc. unfurled a beta version of its AIM instant messaging client that connects with Facebook’s Chat service. Read More

	Google Preps To Build SuperFast Broadband Networks Trying to speed up Internet service across the nation, Google on Wednesday unveiled plans to develop and test an experimental fibre optic broadband network in several communities that would be 100 times faster. Read More

	Yahoo Shutters Yet Another Tech Vertical In March As Yahoo continues to take stock of its non-performing properties, the company, Yahoo Tech has failed to make the cut. According to reports, Yahoo is closing down Yahoo Tech. Read More

	Google Acquires Social Search Startup Aardvark The coolest search engine that never reached the masses got snapped up by Google Thursday for a reported $50 million. With its first acquisition of 2010, Google is making it know that it is serious about social networking. Read More

	Microsoft Adorned Bing Maps With Flickr Photos, Indoor Imagery At the TED conference this week, Microsoft outstripped Google’s Street Views application when the software giant unleashed some cool new features for its revamped Bing Maps application, taking panoramic views indoors. Read More

	Google Unveiled Maps Labs With 9 Cool New Features Hold on your breathe a nice surprise from Google’s Maps team: Google on Friday, just like Gmail Labs, unveiled a cool new set of innovative add-ons to its popular mapping service that offers a multitude of new ways to explore places near and far.. Read More

	Google Releases New Beta Chrome Extensions, Bookmark Sync For Macs The browser wars never ceases… Search engine giant Google on Thursday unveiled via a blog post that it has rolled out a new update for the beta version of its Chrome web browser for Mac. Read More

Search Engine News Updates: February 01-06-2010

eBrandz Editor — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:28:36 +0000

Welcome to another weekly edition of Search and Social updates worth for SEO geeks – Although things were a bit slow over the past week, but it is always good for an announcement or two. Google discreetly plans to open an Apps Store, with enhancements to Google News and Gmail, while Yahoo renewed its licensing deal with AP and sadly sold-out its HotJobs to Monster.com. Also, the best of the news came from Mozilla, which launched their first mobile browser, and Amazon.com acquired Touchco to battle Apple’s iPad, and many more interesting Search Engine Optimization news from across the web.
	Mozilla Unfurls First Mobile Firefox Browser For Nokia N900 Amidst the Apple iPad buzz, a major event in the mobile world that took place last week and as the mobile browsing technology is concerned – Mozilla has been steadily expanding its wings toward its goal of officially releasing the first Firefox Mobile… Read More

	Yahoo Renews Licensing Deal With AP For Displaying Content, Leaves Google In Limbo Renewing a longstanding link, Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. and the Associated Press announced that they have forged a deal to keep the AP’s articles, photos and videos to appear on the Yahoo News site, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday… Read More

	Google Planning To Open Store For Business Software Apps: Report In a move that will bring Google in closer competition to Microsoft’s Azure platform, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports, Google Inc., as early as March is intending to open a new Apps Store that will integrate its Web services for online businesses collaboration and communication hosted suite… Read More

	Verizon Mashes Up Navigator 5.0 With Facebook Social Networking Verizon, North America’s largest mobile carrier, recently announced a new version of VZ Navigator 5.0, taking the mobile GPS navigation to a whole new level and integrated the service with Facebook… Read More

	Google News Reaches For The Stars Lets User Personalize News Story Wish to constantly monitor a hot new story being reported by multiple news agency? A new Google feature now lets you bookmark stories on the front page (with a star) as well as story clusters that appear in search results. Today Google News added the ability to help you keep track of a particular news story as it progresses throughout the day… Read More

	Google Unleashed New Search Features To Gmail Labs Many of you have probably already noticed a little Google Search icon on the toolbar in the Gmail compose window. Now they have added several powerful new features. The official introduction of all these features was announced today on the Official Gmail Blog… Read More

	Monster.com Swallows Yahoo’s HotJobs For $225 Million Yahoo Inc.’s continued strategy to lighten its corporate load, and as the national unemployment rate continues to remain around 10%, considering this the Web portal has dumped another of its property deemed expendable by CEO Carol Bartz, selling HotJobs to Monster for $225 million… Read More

	Another Microsoft Windows Veteran Mike Nash Leaving The Company Microsoft Corp., established that another Windows veteran, “Mike Nash,” corporate vice president, who steered Microsoft’s security activities before committing the past several years in the product management and strategy department in the Windows unit, is leaving the company effective before the end of February… Read More

	AOL Snatches Another Googler Into Its Fold AOL has poached another high-profile Google executive “David Eun,” the executive who functioned as Google’s ambassador to Hollywood’s television and film community, to become president of AOL Media and Studios as it seeks to forge a viable content business out of the ashes of the disastrous AOL Time Warner merger… Read More

	Amazon Acquires Touch-Screen Maker Touchco To Battle Apple’s iPad Amazon appears to be making strides towards making the Kindle a little more touchy — now that Apple’s iPad is official and being hailed as a “Kindle Killer”. Amazon has reportedly acquired a small New York startup called Touchco, a leading touch-screen innovator… Read More

Search Engine News Updates: January 25 to 31 – 2010

eBrandz Editor — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:06:15 +0000

Welcome to another weekly edition of Search and Social updates – As we review over past week in the Search Engine industry, we discovered a few surprising stories from major search engines – as Google rolled out many services like Rich Snippets, a very useful service, while adding to its street view arsenal the best of National Trusts images and it has ultimately decided to phase out Microsoft’s aging IE6 browser. Also, the best of the news came from Yahoo, which presented their first quarterly profit in over a year, and Microsoft’s Bing debuted comprehensive stocks and funds management service, and many more interesting Search Engine Optimization news from across the web…
	Google Reveals Answers To Factual Search And Rich Snippets For Events In a bid to let users find the information they are looking for as fast and make search results more relevant, global search leader Google last week introduced two new features in its search technology that is based on two of its experimental products – Google Squared and Rich Snippets… Read More

	Google Adds Prominent National Trust Landmarks To Google Street View Google and the National Trust have teamed up to add a collection of the UK’s as many as twenty 360-degree picturesque landscapes, country houses and fascinating castles from the nation’s most prominent and historic sites have now been added to Google Street View… Read More

	AOL Snaffles Online Video Firm “StudioNow” For $36.5 Million To Boost Seed.com AOL, which became a publicly traded, autonomous company in December after getting spun off by former parent Time Warner, on Monday said that it has acquired Nashville, Tenn.-based video firm StudioNow… Read More

	Google Voice Comes To iPhone, Palm Pre Via Web The quarrel that broke out last summer among Google, Apple and AT&T over Google Voice remains unresolved, But global search leader Google is not waiting for a thaw in the frosty standoff. On Tuesday, the company unveiled a spruced-up mobile Web version of Google Voice tailored for the iPhone… Read More

	Google Spreads Out Social Search To The Masses Late last year, Google introduced its social search experiment with the aim of making search more social, but the search giant has kept it pretty much under wraps from the general public, choosing to make it an opt-in Google Labs feature. Though it still have beta tag on it, it is now mainstream. Google’s Social Search service… Read More

	Yahoo Signs Deal To Become Default Search Provider On Ubuntu For the longest time, the default search provider in Ubuntu Linux has been Google, but this is going to change in the next release – Rick Spencer of Canonical, the group behind the most-popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, disclosed today that it has forged a revenue sharing alliance with Yahoo… Read More

	Google Maps Unveiled Personalized Suggestions Search engine titan Google just announced that it is now bringing personalized search suggestions, a lovely feature fomented on Google.com’s core search, to Google Maps… Read More

	Google Integrates “Click-To-Call” Phone Numbers For Mobile Search Ads Search engine behemoth Google as of late, has been moving forward in full swing, unveiling location-sensitive mobile features week after week. Today it added another to its arsenal: The Mountain View, Calif., company has just announced the integration of “Click-To-Call” feature in AdWords… Read More

	Yahoo Posts Best Of Bartz Era Profit Swings As Sales Sags Yahoo Inc.’s advertising business exhibited further signs of transformation as the Internet company reversed losses of a year ago and posted its best quarterly net profit on Tuesday since Carol Bartz took over as chief executive of the Internet company… Read More

	Google Docs, Sites Phasing Out Support For Internet Explorer 6 Google has finally had enough with Internet Explorer 6. Web developers have long been advising Internet users to discard IE6 for years. But now, the search titan at long last decided to join the cause. Beginning March 1, Google has decided to phase out support for “Internet Explorer 6” on its Google Docs and Google Sites services… Read More

	Bing Introduces In-Depth Stocks And Funds Feature From administering your daily household affairs to portfolio management, Microsoft’s Bing said that it has recently introduced a new “Stocks and Funds pages” features to make it easier for users to find an in-depth financial information for users following or doing research related to stocks and finances… Read More

	Google Books Gets Bookshelves, A New Homepage With My Library Feature Integrated Google Books, one the most popular and controversial platforms to browse through books, read them online and even download them. With millions of titles available and keeps growing, the search giant realized the need for a good interface to find what you need and has just rolled out a revamped Google Books homepage… Read More

Search Engine News Updates: January 18 to 22 – 2010

eBrandz Editor — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:51:27 +0000

Welcome to another weekly edition of Search and Social updates — Sifting through last week’s rift between China and Google, we bring to you some of the highlights and features in Search Engine Marketing as Google attempting to sell billboards ads in its popular Street View and Microsoft’s Bing records modest gain in search as YouTube, yet another Google service preps movie rentals with movies from the Sundance Film Festival. Here are some of this week’s interesting and exciting SEO news from across the web…
	Microsoft’s Bing Delivers Modest US Search Market Gain In December Microsoft’s new Internet search engine Bing continues to post modest gains in the US search market share in December, and is now growing faster than ever before any of its rivals… Read More

	Google Ready To Sell Real-Time Billboard Ads In Street Views And Maps Global search engine leader Google is all groomed up to transform the digital landscape of its Maps and Street View services by selling ads mapped onto real world posters, billboards and storefront to the highest… Read More

	Google, Verizon Cooperate On Net Neutrality Last week, Google and Verizon Communications Inc — (which supports the search giant’s new phone on its network) once again joined forces to submit a joint letter to the Federal Communications Commission… Read More

	Mozilla Releases Nearly Finished Firefox 3.6 RC2 Release Candidate Mozilla on Sunday, suddenly posted a second Release Candidate of its forthcoming browser Firefox 3.6, just five days after the non-profit organization put forth the first release candidate… Read More

	Microsoft Bows To EU Pressure, Pledges To Cut Bing’s IP Storage To Six Months Succumbing to pressure from European privacy regulators, Microsoft said Tuesday that it has agreed to cooperate with the European Commission by reducing the amount of time it retains Bing search data to… Read More

	Google Plans Live Telecasting Of Indian Premier League Cricket On YouTube Sorry, American sports fans — there are no indications that YouTube is working with the NBA, NHL, or MLB. But according to reports, Cricket enthusiasts should rejoice as it will soon be possible to watch live Indian Premier League cricket matches on YouTube after… Read More

	Microsoft Files Patent Suit Against DVR Maker TiVo Redmond software maker Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in a California District Court, against the DVR maker TiVo Inc., accusing it for violating on two Microsoft patents connected with video programming as a way of defending its partner, AT&T… Read More

	Google Unveiled New Device And Carrier-Specific Targeting Options For Mobile Ads When it comes to advertising, it is absolutely self-evident that Google has pretty much mastered it. Although you can target Google mobile ads by location, but now Google AdWords has just announced a new… Read More

	Opera Jumps Onto Mobile Ad Bandwagon With AdMarvel Acquisition For $8 Million Cash In an effort to improve its mobile ad network, the Norwegian browser maker Opera Software announced that it has jumped onto the mobile advertising bandwagon with the acquisition of AdMarvel… Read More

	YouTube Join Forces With Sundance For Online Movie Rentals Google may have defined advertising with its search engine, but its online video site YouTube just jumped out in the opposite direction with the announcement that it will make movies from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance film festivals available for online rental… Read More

Search Engine News Updates: January 11 to 16 – 2010

eBrandz Editor — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:58:07 +0000

Have you been too busy lately to take a look the latest happenings in the search engine marketing circles? This past week there were a number of interesting stories about global search leader Google from making compromise with Chinese authors to challenging the ruling authorities with its “Do No Evil” credo and finally Google is also enabling encryption by default for all Gmail users. Here is a rundown of the biggest stories from the last week…
	Google’s “Fast Flip” Becomes Operational On Google News Homepage Back in September last year, Google brought out a new service called Fast Flip to its Labs section. Despite some of its blemishes, Google is giving its experimental news reading application — which offers a way for people to easily skim through news content online… Read More

	Google Apologizes To Chinese Writers Over Book Scanning Dispute Search engine giant Google Inc., at the weekend said its communication with Chinese Writers Association (CWA) was “not good enough” after it published sections of their work in its online library Google Books…… Read More

	Aol Starts Layoffs; 1,200 To 1,400 Staffers To Go Since its recently announced voluntary layoff program that fell short of its goal late last year, US Internet company Aol Inc., on Monday said that it will begin the process of giving out pink slips to around 1,200 to 1,400 employees… Read More

	Yahoo Integrates Shopping Service With PriceGrabber Beginning soon around mid-March, Yahoo Shopping will no more be a solo entity. Yahoo announced today that it is incorporating Yahoo Shopping with comparison shopping search engine PriceGrabber… Read More

	Google Threatens To Exit China Over Hacking Activist Accounts In a head-to-head confrontation with the Chinese government, internet search powerhouse Google Inc. late Tuesday said it might exit China after an investigation revealed that the company had adversely been hit with major cyber attacks on email accounts of human rights activists using Google’s Gmail service… Read More

	Google Docs Assigns “Any File” Storage Options As Cloud Wars Heat Up Have you missed that important file on your office computer again? Forgot an Excel spreadsheet you prepared for a promo presentation on your home laptop? You can now rejoice as Google is now floating a small virtual hard drive in the cloud that will let you upload any type of file… Read More

	Google Shifts Gmail To More Secure HTTPS Service To Protect Wi-Fi Users In an attempt to safeguard Chinese human-rights activists and other Gmail users around the world from hackers looking into their mail accounts, Google on Wednesday announced that it has shifted its Gmail to a more secure protocol by default for all times… Read More

	Microsoft, HP Forge Alliance To Work Together On Cloud Computing Building on a lengthy partnership, Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co., two of the world’s biggest tech vendors, announced a new partnership on Wednesday said they will collectively spend $250 million to develop and more tightly integrate their software and hardware offerings… Read More

	Yahoo Sponsored Search Introduces New Features – Adds Import AdWords Campaigns To help things run smoothly for new advertisers, next week Yahoo is ready to release two Sponsored Search product with two new features, which the company says will provide advertisers with more transparency into and control over their accounts… Read More

	Google Delivers Location Based Search Suggestions To Mobile Search Typing with tiny pad on a mobile phone is an herculean task no matter what device you are using, but Google brings smile tn iPhone and Android users. On Thursday, the search heavyweight has launched search suggestions based on geographical location for iPhone and Android devices… Read More

Search Engine News Updates: January 2 to 8 – 2010

eBrandz Editor — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:58:39 +0000

When we wrote our year end posts over the weekend we had the opportunity to highlight this year’s Las Vegas-based Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which is rumored to be bigger and glitzier than last year. It has been a surprisingly busy week with several pre-show products pitched in and to top the show, Google finally introduced its own Android phone, the Nexus One — Here are the top stories of the week…
	Google’s New Year 2010 Doodles Flares-Up With Happy New Year Messages Traditionally, there are many New Years customs enjoyed throughout the ages, but for a passionate Internet nerds, there is nothing more exciting and entertaining than celebrating the first day of the year with a special Google doodle… Read More

	Google Commemorated Sir Isaac Newton’s Birthday With Animated Apple The physicist whose most significant breakthrough was portrayed in the original Apple logo, is the latest event being celebrated today by a “Google Doodle” that depicts an apple falling from a tree: an event that inspired him to formulate his theory of gravity, and established him as one of the world’s greatest scientists… Read More

	RealNetworks Purchases Varia, Combines With Cloud Push RealNetworks has scooped up Seattle startup Varia Mobile, hinting at top-secret cloud computing project that the Varia engineering team will be working on at Real, according to TechFlash… Read More

	Google Unveils Its Own “Smartphone” The Nexus One — Targets Apple Directly targeting at Apple’s iPhone, Google on Tuesday unveiled its HTC-built “Nexus One” smartphone, displaying many of its features during a press event, saying the name connotes convergence with its partners, as well as opened an online store to sell the device unlocked to consumers… Read More

	Apple Confirms Acquisition Of Google Ad Competitor Quattro Wireless Apple, Inc. moved on Google’s turf on Tuesday with its acquisition of Quattro Wireless, a mobile-ad competitor to AdMob, which Google just acquired. The deal is the latest sign that the mobile phone is the next battlefield… Read More

	Skype To Offer High-Definition TV And PC Video Calls High-tech video-conferencing is not just for only large-scale enterprise users anymore. Skype Technologies SA, the Web-based telephone company sold last year by eBay Inc… Read More

	Google Unveils “Click-To-Call” Option On Mobile Ads For Smartphones Google generates a lot of money from advertising, and now it is waging an all out war with Apple to be the most innovative in the mobile space, especially in the advertising arena. Read More

	Microsoft Jumps On W3C’s Scalable Vector Graphics Bandwagon While it is striving arduously at creating the next iteration of Internet Explorer, the Redmond software maker, Microsoft has jumped on to join a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Scalable Vector Graphics bandwagon, IE senior program manager Patrick Dengler has blogged… Read More

	Yahoo Expands Connected TV, Processor Partners Today, Yahoo has announced several new partnerships involved with its Connected TV, a wide release of the Widget Developer Kit, and other device manufacturers and content providers as the web company attempts to deliver Internet services to the coming generation… Read More

	Samsung Unveiled Kindle Alternatives, Partnering With Google South Korean electronics giant Samsung is going head-to-head with Amazon and Sony in the burgeoning e-reader market took the wraps off two wireless e-readers at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the “E6” with a six-inch (15.2-centimeter) screen and the “E101” with a 10-inch (25.4-centimeter) display… Read More

Search Engine News Updates: December 25 to 31– 2009

eBrandz Editor — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:38:06 +0000

As the year ended on a quiet note with moods of holiday and merry making, we have covered some Search Engine Marketing News coming down the pipe that will affect your search results in 2010. Finally it now appears that the economy is slowly but surely recuperating and we wish all of our clients the best of luck with the success of their businesses…
	French Court Imposed €300,000 In Fines Against Google’s Book Scanning Project A French court last week imposed an astounding amount of fine €300,000 ($430,000), against Google Inc., owner of the most popular Internet-search engine, for copyright infringement and ordered the search giant to pull all the scanned books off its site, a Paris court ruled today… Read More

	Design Firm Bing Sues Microsoft Over Trademark Bing, the much-touted search engine from Microsoft, is feeling the heat of a trademark conflict, as a small Missouri company called Bing! Information Designs, having the word “Bing” in its name has sued Microsoft for branding its search engine with the same word… Read More

	Facebook Faces Privacy Backlash With FTC Complaint Privacy advocates are grousing about Facebook’s recent privacy changes effected since the second week of December has had scores of users of the world’s biggest online social network up in arms now calling on the US Federal Trade Commission to make Facebook undo the changes in an official complaint… Read More

	Microsoft Loses Word Patent Lawsuit, But Modifies Code To Comply With Court Software behemoth Microsoft Corp., lost its appeal of a lawsuit involving a Canadian company called i4i in May, after a jury ruled that the Redmond, Wash., software maker infringed one of i4i’s patents with a custom XML feature found in Word… Read More

	YouTube Hops On Twitter Bandwagon With URL Shortener Search engine giant Google Inc.’s popular video sharing site YouTube has joined Google and Facebook in the latest bid to improve the way they spread across the web by launching its own URL shortener — Youtu.be… Read More

	Google Fetching DocVerse — Targets Microsoft Office Google, which is reportedly busy tracking valuable start-ups, it seems that the Mountain View, company may be on the brink of acquiring yet again another company called DocVerse… Read More

	Yahoo Pulling Down MyBlogLog Next Month It seems like Yahoo has not done eliminating “non-core” services quite yet. “10 Million Dollars Down the Drain!” The company says it is going to shutter another popular blogging widget MyBlogLog next month, leaving more than a few people scratching their heads… Read More

	Google Assists Businesses Locate AdWords Professionals In Beta Companies that are looking for some assistance with their AdWords campaign may now rejoice to receive some thanks to Google. Google has launched a beta search platform that allows people to search for AdWords Professionals… Read More

	Twitter Fetches Location Tracking Start-Up “Mixer Labs” To Its Arsenal Popular micro-blogging website Twitter is acquiring the location tracking start-up “Mixer Labs,” in an attempt to enable users to map their Twitter posts to specific locations on maps and other tools… Read More

	Google Confirms January 5 Android Media Event It may be the much-anticipated moment the tech industry has been waiting for as Google apparently seems well prepared to give outsiders a glimpse at its latest vision of the world-changing possibilities of smartphones… Read More

	Consumer Groups Urge FTC To Block Google’s AdMob Acquisition Two consumer groups requested the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday to bar the global online search and advertising giant Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob… Read More

	Facebook Ranked The Most Visited Website In The US On Christmas Day Hitwise, a market analytics firm that tracks online stats, has some good news for the team at Facebook. The popular social-networking entity Facebook hit an audience milestone recently when it was crowned as the most visited site in the U.S…. Read More

	Google Analytics Adds New Annotation Feature Google Analytics is one of the most robust offerings by the search giant and with its recent release of Google Analytics new features, it has almost become ubiquitous for a large number of companies reaping benefits from it… Read More

	Google City Tours Simplifies Trip Planning – Adds Walking Directions, Custom Maps The team at Google Labs last summer introduced a new service dubbed as Google City Tours, one of the ongoing projects by Google Labs team that has tweaked the interface that generated a tour of various attractions near a location including real walking directions and My Maps integration… Read More