Feb. 9, 2006
Google recruits and hires Udi Manber from Amazon's A9 development team
Whether those investments will turn into profits over time remains
to be seen, as does what Google expects from its future performance:
Unlike most tech companies, Google refuses to provide earnings
estimates for financial analysts. That makes it harder for them
to chart the company's growth -- which led to the pummeling of
the company's stock last Thursday when it failed to meet their
admittedly high expectations. Manber's defection is the latest
coup for Google, a formidable foe for many technology industry
titans.
Feb. 9, 2006
Amazon officially confirms the beta testing of contextual text ads
The story quickly made the rounds online, and Amazon officially
confirmed the existence of the program with the ClickZ news site:
"We believe that by working with a third-party to provide Associates
with links to relevant Web sites, in addition to products on Amazon,
that we can help them make more money from their sites," Andrew
Herdener, an Amazon spokesperson, told ClickZ in an e-mail exchange.
Feb. 8, 2006
Amazon's A9 search engine isn't in real competition with Google
Along with Google powered web and image search, this roundup of
Amazon A9 services is downright amazing. Amazon however, has not
leaped the hurdle to put them in real competition with Google,
Yahoo, Ask and MSN. My view has always been that Amazon’s first
mistake is the A9 name. It’s meaningless and not a strong or
memorable brand. If Amazon did have to launch their search engine
as a separate entity than their Amazon.com homepage, then they
should have morphed Alexa.com into their search engine. Alexa is
an old school Internet name brand, easy to remember & pronounce,
and its toolbar must be installed on millions of computers.
Ironically, it seems that ever since Amazon started pooring
money into A9, Alexa has gotten even more popular (atleast among
the search community) with an Open Web Search Platform, Alexa Web
Information Service (AWIS), Alexadex and other services.
Feb. 8, 2006
A new R&D center will be launched in Italy by Ask Jeeves
With broad expertise in machine learning, social networking,
data mining, information retrieval and other theories and
technologies, the team in Italy will contribute to all aspects
of the Ask Jeeves search engine, including its unique ranking
methodology, which leverages topic clusters on the Web to determine
relevance.
Feb. 7, 2006
BMW told Google it did nothing wrong using doorway pages
On Google's own Web site, the company lists a series of quality
guidelines. First among those is a requirement to design Web sites
for users, not for search engines. "Don't deceive your users or
present different content to search engines than you display to
users, which is commonly referred to as 'cloaking,'" Google says.
BMW spokesman Marc Hassinger said the company did not consider the
use of "doorway" pages to be a manipulation.
Feb. 6, 2006
Skype and Google ink deal to provide WiFi access to users
At first, the service will only be compatible with Linksys routers,
but FON plans to offer a download compatible with other routers,
said Varsavsky. Varsavsky founded the second-largest Spanish Internet
company, Ya, and the second-largest, public telecom company in Spain,
Jazztel. People willing to open up their network for use by other
FON members will get free access to other hotspots while they
travel.
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