Microsoft is no joke when it comes to building web infrastructure and developing techniques such as machine learning. The company thinks its heavy investment in these areas will pay off big-time in the years to come. Read more »
For at least a third of American adults, the internet — and, in particular, search engines — is a diagnostic tool. But physicians are only slowly adapting to this new reality. Read more »
According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 8 in 10 Internet users say that their last health-related search began with a search engine – a figure that has not changed since Pew last asked that question in 2000. Read more »
Like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, the New York Times is having to run faster and faster to try to fill the gap left by declining advertising revenue, but even a rapidly growing subscription base doesn’t seem to be accomplishing that. Read more »
Friday marks the official launch of former ReadWriteWeb editor Marshall Kirkpatrick’s data-based discovery startup Littlebird (formerly known as Plexus Engine). The company, which aims to automate discovery and vetting of experts and influencers on any given topic, has also raised $1 million in funding. Read more »
The company doesn’t think it’s a great idea for search engines to have to pay to reproduce headlines and story summaries in their results. But that’s nothing on the crazy earlier draft of this proposed law. Read more »
Google will tweak its search algorithm to push pirated content further down in search results — a move welcomed by the film and music industries. Read more at paidContent »
Google has opened its Knowledge Graph to the English-speaking world and has made intelligent voice search possible on mobile phones. Underneath it all, of course, are ever more-complex methods of analyzing data to make search smarter and easier than it has any business being. Read more »
For a generation of tech-savvy, smartphone-connected doctors, looking up definitions in printed paper textbooks or searching for medical journal entries by volume and issue number seems downright archaic. Entrepreneurs at Rock Health’s demo day presented high-tech solution to everyday problems facing modern doctors. Read more »
A new study has shown that highly popular Twitter accounts such as Barack Obama and Britney Spears may be inadvertently contributing to the swell of tweet spam — and that millions of users trying to increase their online influence may also play a major role. Read more »
Google-co-founder Sergey Brin recently said he believes the future of the “open Internet” is at risk. Then why is the company trying to build its own closed network? Because the open vs. closed debate is more complicated than it first appears when it comes to Google. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
PureDiscovery, a Dallas-based big data startup, thinks it has the has the answer to outdated enterprise search technology, and it’s called BrainSpace. Its goal is to let users find information that matters without having to search for it, to bring data to users. Read more »
A British parliamentary committee is asking Google, Twitter and Facebook to filter their services and protect individuals’ privacy. But as the web services start to push back, they may have already sealed their own fate. Read more »
Toronto-based Polar Mobile, which provides a digital media distribution platform powering the apps of some of the biggest media companies in the world, including Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal, announced a new $6 million funding round on Monday. Read more »
Piazza, the social network that lets college students and instructors discuss material online, has closed on $6 million in a new Series A funding round. Piazza’s service is meant to counteract study group snobbery and eliminate students’ fear of asking “dumb” questions. Read more »
For iPhone 4S users out there, you probably know that Siri can search the web for keywords of your choosing. But did you also know that you can tell it on the fly which specific search engine to use to find your results? Read more »
Adchemy, the six-year-old online ad technology company, has raised $61 million in a Series E funding round led by Microsoft. This round brings the total venture capital invested in Adchemy to $116 million, Adchemy CEO Murthy Nukala told me in an interview on Tuesday. Read more »
Ness has launched its debut iOS app, a “personal search engine” that aims to provide highly personalized restaurant recommendations. Essentially it’s like a Pandora for restaurants: From the start it’s almost creepily accurate with its recommendations, and the more you use it, the better it gets. Read more »
Exclusive: Ask.com is amping up its star power. The Q&A search engine — which provides a mix of user-generated and algorithmically sourced content — has added several heavyweight partnerships with Lonely Planet, Weather Underground, and others to make sure it answers users’ questions in the best way possible. Read more »
Since its inception, StumbleUpon has worked pretty much as the name advertised, allowing you to stumble upon cool things on the web, rather than through explicit web searches. But a new “Explore Box” expands StumbleUpon’s offering significantly, bringing the app more search engine-like specificity. Read more »
Want to help stimulate the economy? You may not need to go any further than your web browser’s search box. Each online search engine adds about 50 cents to the worldwide economy, according to a new research report from consultancy giant McKinsey & Company. Read more »
ISPs have been exposed as hijacking the search traffic that some of their customers have tried to type into Yahoo and Bing search engines, and now the backlash begins. Now companies involved in the scheme has been hit with a lawsuit and may face Congress. Read more »
Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree Voice Control 2.0 software recognizes and responds to dozens of keywords and phrases and lets people perform actions without the need for a button press. It enables a much more natural interface with a device that can be listening for an array of triggers. Read more »
Microsoft can’t give up on search. Though it’s been losing money forever, Microsoft needs search to defend its core platforms, compete with Google and solidify its ad business while opening emerging revenue ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google revenues were up 32 percent, to a record $9 billion. Android activates 550,000 devices a day. Google+ had 10 million users in less than two weeks of limited availability. But Google can’t ease up on the accelerator. Though Google dominates search, U.S. query volume is flat […] Read more »
Those who questioned whether European regulators were right to open an antitrust investigation into Google’s activities last year should take a look at the data again, as the company’s dominance across the continent reaches new heights — and new depths, too. Read more »
Media guru Clay Shirky once famously said that the problem of the modern age isn’t information overload at all, it’s “filter failure” — and many new services have been built to help with that. But Eli Pariser says the cure could be worse than the disease. Read more »
Here’s a phrase PayPal might want to keep in mind as it wages a civil battle against two former executives who defected to Google. Location, location, location. When it comes to employment breach of contract and trade-secret cases, California is a hard state to win in. Read more »
Kayak kicked off 2011 with major sales growth in the run-up to its planned IPO, according to a regulatory filing. The travel search company made $52.6 million in the first three months of 2011, representing a 43.4 percent increase over the same period in 2010 Read more »
Israeli startup Ineze thinks it can go where dozens have struggled, and create a better way of searching for products to buy online. But what can it do that they can’t? Understand what you’re actually looking for, says CEO Gil Rozenberg. Read more »
Channelography makes it possible to search across the BBC’s programming for people, places and companies to learn who was mentioned on which show. The experimental EPG makes use of closed captions for semantic analysis, and utilizes all of this data for some great visualization. Read more »
The Drudge Report drives more traffic to news sites than Facebook and Twitter combined, according to a Pew Research Center report. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge Matt Drudge not only as a powerful media presence but also as a great web entrepreneur. Read more »
Hadoop has been used by large web companies for applications such as search engines, but the reality is that the project is so much more. This report takes a closer look, examining what Hadoop is (and isn’t), who’s doing what to productize it and why we can expect to see the market pick up serious steam in 2011. We profile the growing number of companies — from startups like MapR to Cloudera, the arguable leader in the space — using Hadoop, the challenges still hindering widespread adoption and where potential users can expect the market to go as we move through 2011 and beyond. Companies mentioned in this report include Yahoo, Facebook, EMC, Teradata and Appistry. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Q&A site Quora is lately being called the savior of search and the next Facebook. But is Quora worth all the fuss? But the company is far from alone in the Q&A space, and so the question arises, is Quora really worth all its hype? Read more »
Google recently launched a new indexing system called Caffeine, which it says produces results that are up to 50 percent “fresher.” Why the pressure to improve? Because Google needs to respond faster in a world that has become increasingly real-time. Not just because it wants to ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
They say you should never mess with a good thing, yet that’s exactly what Google appears to have done by adding background images to its default search page. Reactions around the web appear inflammatory, but we’re looking for your thoughts on the change in this poll. Read more »
Bing’s outage, which came shortly after the rollout of well-reviewed new features, has given many a reason to joke: It is Microsoft, after all. Indeed, when trying to establish your brand and service against a near monopoly, you can’t afford to have even one such outage. Read more »
For any web worker with a blog, web site or online portfolio, knowing how to optimize it for search engines is a must. After all, what’s the point of having an online presence if no one can find it? By using some simple Search Engine Optimizations […] Read more »
As the web evolves, a diverse collection of players are all jockeying to be the primary access point to it, the unifying nexus of information and communication with the direct line to the end user. Social networks, web-connected desktop applications, email, blogs and browsers are among ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Bing launched just over a month ago, to great fanfare and moderately good reviews. Now, it’s time to see if Microsoft has gotten anything for its massive ad budget and R&D costs. Too bad for Redmond, Bing is a lot of splash, but not much else. […] Read more »
