Yearly Archives: 2005

There's an annual PR ritual of most of the engines -- the top searches of the year. Not all are out yet, but here are the lists or tracking tools: A9, AOL (here's its ongoing list), Ask Jeeves IQ, CNet's…

Yahoo! renamed Konfabulator Yahoo! Widgets, and it has greatly expanded the widget gallery (it seems). I love these widgets. They're fun. Strategic value: They give the company a presence on the desktop, beyond the browser -- blah, blah, blah. Now,…

Google is introducing a new music feature, according to Reuters and SEW. When users search for, say, Madonna (the example used at SEW), they'll see some information: a picture and links to a page about Madonna and a link to…

Following in the footsteps of The New York Times, USA Today announced that it will merge its print and online newsrooms. Both moves came out of a recognition that online news traffic is growing and that news distribution should be…

Amid a frenized and potentially boffo online shopping season (projected to reach $19.6b in the U.S.), U.K.-based GUS announced that it's buying California-based comparison shopping engine PriceGrabber. The online shopping site was No. 6 in terms of August U.S. traffic,…

Interchange's consumer destination site Local.com will be offering a del.icio.us-like tagging/bookmarking feature powered by LookSmart's Furl like The N.Y. Times). This is the latest in a series of moves (with more coming) to beef up the content and features of…

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, there were 5.1 billion total search queries in October. Here's how Nielsen recorded search engine market share (U.S.): Google -- 48 percent Yahoo! -- 22 percent MSN -- 11 percent AOL -- 7 percent Ask -- 3…

Local retailer aggregator and Google Base partner StepUp announced that it had received a $6.6 million series B round. From the press release: StepUp Commerce, Inc., the Internet€™s local shopping service, today announced it has closed a $6.6 million funding…

Far ahead of its newspaper industry owners, news portal Topix.net has launched a redesigned site and added user comments and community features, turning the entire site into a blog of sorts. Here's more from SiliconBeat.

This is very interesting -- and we could see a proliferation of vertical search engines on top of this. No time to discuss extensively. Here are the opinions of: Danny Sullivan and John Battelle. Here's Susan Mernit and Om Malik.…

In all-day meetings, so there's no time to really blog (drat!). MSN follows Yahoo! and AOL in offering VoIP PC-to-phone calling (through MSN messenger). MSN is doing this in partnership with MCI (being acquired by Verizon). Here are the details:…

Here's a picture of the MIT-developed $100 laptop. The computer, created in partnership with Google and AMD, is set to roll out soon. Reportedly, Intel Corp. Chairman Craig Barrett (and AMD competitor) said users will not want such a device.…

Thanks to my colleague Mike Boland for pointing out this post on the Search Engine Watch blog (Gary Price), which points to Dirson, about Google possibly buying Oslo-based Opera. (Opera has an approximately 1 percent market share.) There's also lots…

Many others have pointed to this. But here's Google's first mainstream marketing effort (PBS TV commercial).

Yellow Pages Group (YPG) is reportedly buying Canadian classifieds publisher Trader Media Corp. for C$436 million in cash and equity. This puts YPG on similar footing as Australia's Sensis, which owns classifieds publisher Trading Post. Classifieds and Yellow Pages content…

As recently as this spring (or summer if you consult the Pew report), there were skeptics arguing that broadband penetration will stall in the U.S. Not only is it not going to stall, it's going to eventually be free. (Consumers…

Here's a piece from CNet saying that Yahoo! and blogging software provider Six Apart are today launching a product that allows Yahoo! small business customers/users the ability to create blogs on Six Apart's Movable Type software and then have them…

In the category of too much news to cover was this older item that appeared in ClickZ (and covered also in SEW blog). Yahoo! has entered a joint venture with Seven Network in Australia and New Zealand. The largest TV…

Here's a Bob Tedeschi piece in the The N.Y. Times (reg. req'd) about some of the new initiatives (i.e., Froogle Local and CNet) to provide offline inventory information to online shoppers. The central problem is infrastructure and accuracy. StepUp was…