But Microsoft’s ads won’t take on Google, Yahoo, or even Ask.com directly by name. Instead, the Bing ads will try to convince you that by using “today’s search engines” you’re missing out on all that your search experience could be. To back up this assertion, Microsoft offers some internal data indicating 42 percent of all searches need to be refined after the first query, AdAge reports. Furthermore, Microsoft has found 25 percent of all post-search clicks hit the back button instead of a Website link when looking at a search results page.

The inability to find what you want on the first try may be where Microsoft believes Bing has an edge. In March, when screenshots of Microsoft’s new search engine leaked online under the codename Kumo, the photos showed a “related categories” feature on the results page. If you were looking for a set of new stereo speakers, for example, you would see links to reviews, manuals, prices, and so on related to the specific product you were seeking. There were also examples of Kumo/Bing yielding different related categories in a search for entertainers with related categories like biographies, song lyrics, and albums. The ability to refine your search with directly relevant categories could be a very helpful search tool, as opposed to starting all over from scratch with a new query if you don’t find what you’re looking for.

If Bing’s “related categories” feature can offer results directly relevant to your query each and every time you hit the search button, then Microsoft may be able to peel off some, but definitely not all, of that Google mojo. However, Bing’s competitors may already have features comparable to related categories in their arsenals. Google rolled out its own set of tools to help you refine your search at its recent Searchology event, and Yahoo will launch search refinement tools in the coming months.

Whether Bing’s features are a huge jump forward over Google’s new tools or Yahoo’s upcoming overhaul is hard to know, since no one outside of Microsoft has had a chance to try Bing. This week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to demonstrate Bing during the D: All Things D conference, which runs from May 26 through 28. It’s not clear if Ballmer will announce a launch date for the new search engine from All Things D; however, once Bing is finally available to the public, I have no doubt many people will want to test drive the new search engine. But even if Bing can win over some early converts, the true test will be whether those users are still ‘Binging’ instead of ‘Googling’ a month or two later.

Service is not the only obstacle for a challenger to Google’s dominance, either. To keep users coming back for more, Microsoft must dislodge the idea from the public consciousness that the name Google is synonymous with Internet search. Will 100 million greenbacks be enough to convince people that ‘to Google’ is not actually a verb? Microsoft may think so, but what do you say?

Microsoft May Rename Live Search ‘Bing’: Massive Ad Campaign Planned

Google said it has put together a flu trends tracking system for Mexico based on the U.S. Google Flu tool launched last fall that is used by U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to figure out where influenza is heating up.

It is based on Google’s observation that people who are sick with flu tend to search for the same types of information on the Internet, and these searches can be used to predict where an outbreak may be occurring.

“We have seen evidence in Mexico that Google users also search flu-related topics when they are experiencing flu-related symptoms,” Jeremy Ginsberg, lead engineer for Flu Trends at Google, said in a telephone briefing.

Studies show that between 35 and 40 percent of all visits to the Internet are started by people looking for health information.

Ginsberg said the Mexican data have not been cross-checked with years of data on actual flu cases in Mexico like the U.S. flu tracker has, so the data may not be reliable.

But he said the company is optimistic that the system, which generates maps based on peaks in flu-related searches, “may reflect actual flu activity.”

“We did see a small increase in many parts of Mexico before major news coverage began last week,” he said.

Ginsberg said people search for different things when they are sick — like the word thermometer — than they do when they are looking for news about flu outbreaks.

Ginsberg said the group has also seen a spike in U.S.-related flu searches that correspond with increases in U.S. cases being reported.

He said the hope is that the tool might offer one more way to predict hot spots in an outbreak as they happen.

“If it spreads quickly, it may give public health officials the chance to respond quickly,” he said.

Google’s flu tool for Mexico can be found here

Google puts flu tracker to work on swine flu

• The Pirate Bay is probably the most well known BitTorrent website on the web today. This Swedish-based site has been in existence since 2003 and has survived an onslaught of legal threats to try and shut it down. With over 2.8 million registered users and in excess of 1 million active torrents, The Pirate Bay is the largest file sharing database on the Internet.

MiniNova

• MiniNova is another popular BitTorrent site that has seen over 5 billion downloads since it was first launched in 2005. This large P2P file sharing website was born after the first reincarnation of SuprNova which was shutdown in 2004. It has a good search engine that has advanced search options, or alternatively you can browse through the different categories; MiniNova has over 35 music genres in its database.

IsoHunt

• A BitTorrent indexing site which moved its servers from the United States to Canada after it was temporarily shutdown in January 2007. Now IsoHunt is one of the largest file sharing websites that regularly indexes over 1 million torrents. The search feature on IsoHunt is basic and doesn’t have advanced search facilities like MiniNova but it’s simple layout makes it easy to use.

BitTorrent.am

• BitTorrent.am was launched in 2007 and has quickly risen through the ranks to become one of the most popular P2P file sharing websites. There are over 600,000 torrents indexed on BitTorrent.am with the music category boasting over 45 different genres.
  Website

Torrent Portal

• Torrent Portal has an excellent user-friendly interface with good advanced search facilities. A search cloud is also provided so you can see what other users have searched for. Torrent Portal’s BitTorrent database indexes over 1.4 million torrents which makes it popular with downloaders.

BTJunkie

• BTJunkie is an advanced BitTorrent search engine. It uses a web crawler (similar to Google) to search for torrent files from other torrent sites and store it in its database. It has over 2,180,000 active torrents and about 4,200 torrents added daily (compared to runner-up Torrent Portal with 1,500), making it the largest torrent site indexer on the web. Btjunkie is the 7th most popular bittorrent site as of 2008.

Demonoid

• Demonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker created by an anonymous Serbian known only by the pseudonym “Deimos”. The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. It was the second largest and is the most popular semi-public tracker for over a year, the 499th most popularly ranked website in December 2008 according to Alexa, and had an estimated 3 million peers in September 2007. The site went offline on November 9, 2007 due to alleged legal threats from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. On April 11, 2008

myBittorrent

• myBittorrent is an automated website, using the Google API to find BitTorrent websites on the internet. These websites are then crawled by bots and information about their files saved to the myBittorrent.com database. This is an automated process and myBittorrent.com has no control over what is indexed.

Seedpeer

• Seedpeer is known as one of the most popular torrent sites. The site started out in August 2005 as Meganova and later on in 2007 it was renamed to seedpeer.

ShareReactor

• ShareReactor is an index site for files on the eDonkey network and Torrent files . ShareReactor does not host any files; instead, the links it contains are accessible through an eDonkey network and BitTorrent client. The site was taken down by Swiss Police on March 10, 2004 due to the suspicion of breach of copyright and trademark laws. After a long downtime of nearly two years and six months, the site returned online under new ownership. However nearly two months after its return it once again closed down due to lack of popularity. ShareReactor delivers links that can be used together with a P2P client program that understands eD2k links or torrent files. On December, 2008 the site was reopened once more brought back to life with help from the Pirate Bay team.

Suprnova.org

• Suprnova.org is a Swedish (formerly Slovenian) based website which distributed torrents for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Started in late 2002 by Andrej Preston (known as Slonček, Slovenian for “little elephant”) and for a while considered the most popular BitTorrent search engine, Suprnova.org closed in late 2004 after legal threats. The site operators supported the development of the eXeem BitTorrent client software, deeming a fixed website too difficult to operate in the present legal climate. On August 2, 2007, the domain name was donated to The Pirate Bay, who relaunched the site on August 21, 2007.

FlixFlux

• FlixFlux is a specialist torrent search site for films. The site was originally launched in mid 2006 with a basic search facility, and a list of new film releases. The site was relaunched in December 2006 with a complete redesign, and many new features.

Torrentz

• Torrentz is a torrent meta-search engine based in Sweden (run by an admin, who goes by the name Flippy) that indexes torrents from various major torrent sites like Mininova, Demonoid, and The Pirate Bay.

YouTorrent

• YouTorrent is a BitTorrent search engine which allows parallel searches on different torrent search engines. As of April 14, 2008, YouTorrent changed from searching all torrent sites to only sites which provide licensed, certified content.

Unlike the case of Napster, The Pirate bay doesn’t actually host the copyrighted files, it simply allows users to posts links to copyrighted files on third party servers.  That’s why the they were charged of “assisting making available copyrighted material” instead of “assisting copyright infringement”

Could this be the end of torrent file sharing? And how about other torrent search engines, could they be next, If simply posting links to copyrighted materials can be charged of “assisting making available copyrighted materials”, surely there are many sites that fits this profile. One problem is, most of the links to copyrighted materials are posted by users and not necessarily the owners of site.

How about Online file sharing sites like rapidshare, megaupload, easyshare and others, Some of it’s users upload copyrighted materials, Even though they deleted files if found to be in violation of their terms of service. Problem is how to determine if the files are copyright, as most of the uploaded files are archived and renamed. Are the owners of the site also liable?

And One Big question, since Google, Yahoo, MSN Live.com also indexes copyrighted materials, are they also liable?

Here’ a short list of ways to make money online..

Contextual advertising

• Contextual advertising is one of the most popular method of monetizing the web. You earn every time a viewer or a visitor clicks on the ads on your site. Earnings will depend on the amount the advertiser is willing to pay for every click (PPC) or impressions made {CPM). The more visitors you have the more likely you will be able to earn. Click here to learn more…

Revenue sharing

• Revenue Sharing Website allows registered members of the website to share the revenue made by the site, With this model you can almost start immediately without any overhead. All you need to do is to contribute to site. It can be Forum postings, Article submissions and many more.. click here to learn more…

Ad Space

• Not the Ad space on a billboard, but something similar, only instead of a high visibility and high traffic areas. It’s a high traffic websites or a high pagerank (PR) website. Unless you have a good traffic and high PR, you will have a hard time to attracting advertisers. But there are services that can help you sell ad space, click here to learn more…

Affiliate Marketing

• You earn by referring or selling products, earnings will vary and will depend on the action taken. With this model you don’t even need a website, you can use emails, and many other methods, click here to learn more…

Paid Blogging

• Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers. If you have good writing skills then this is for you. Click here to learn more…

Freelancing

• Freelancing or Outsourcing, If you are skilled enough you can easily make money here. There are a lot of sites where you can sign up as a freelancer and bid on projects. click here to learn more…

Sell Online

• Buy and Sell products online, with so many tools online you can even start selling immediately. Click here to learn more.

Paid to surf (Get paid to)

• You earn by clicking banners, ads, doing surveys, reading emails and many more. It may sound simple and anybody can do it, click here to learn more…

Search Trends

Google Trends

• Google Trends is a web-based tool under development by Google Labs. The tool measures the search volume for terms in Google’s search engine over a specified period of time. Google Trends will display graphical results for a specific term’s popularity and allow you to compare search volumes with other search terms. Google Trends also compiles and displays a list of the most popular terms for which people have recently searched.  Learn More.

Yahoo Buzz!

• Yahoo! Buzz is a service much like Digg offered by search engine Yahoo!. It allows users to submit links and vote for submitted links; Yahoo! Buzz then ranks the submitted links in order of votes received and search engine trends and places the highest ranked links on the front page of their site.

Live Search xRank

• xRank keeps track of notable people and puts them in order for you. We count Live Search web searches for movie stars, musicians, and other famous people. Then, we compile our findings into an insightful ranking formula that tells you who the world is searching for most. The result is a cultural snapshot of who’s hot and who’s not!

MSN A-List

• MSN A-list tracks popular searches on MSN network, topics ranges from News headlines, Health, sports to top Books and more..

AOL Hot Searches

• Find out what are the hottest topics and most searched news and keywords on AOL Network

Ask.com IQ Reporting

• Ask.com IQ (Interesting Queries) – See the most popular search terms each week based on millions of Ask.com searches.

Search.com top Searches

• Lists of popular search terms on Search.com a part of CNET Networks, Inc.

Lycos 50

• The Lycos 50 lists the people, places and things which are most on the public mind as reflected by Lycos user searches over the past week.

Website Trends

Alexa.com

• Alexa.com is both a search engine and website tracker. You may search for information on Alexa.com, as you would when using a search engine like Google, or you may enter a url into the search bar to receive traffic statistics and other information about that site.

Larry Page is the son of the late Dr. Carl Victor Page, a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State University and one of the University of Michigan’s first computer science Ph.D. graduates, and Gloria Page, a computer programming teacher at Michigan State University. Although his mother was Jewish, Page was raised similarly to his father, and did not practice any religion. He is also the brother of Carl Victor Page, Jr.. a co-founder of eGroups, which was later sold to Yahoo!.

During an interview, Page said that “their house was usually a mess, with computers and Popular Science magazines all over the place.” His love affair with computers started when he was six years old when he got “to play with the stuff lying around.” He became the “first kid in his elementary school to turn in an assignment” from a word processor.  His older brother also taught him to take things apart, and before long he was taking “everything in his house apart to see how it worked.” He said that “from a very early age, I also realized I wanted to invent things. So I became really interested in technology…and business. So probably from when I was 12 I knew I was going to start a company eventually.”

Page attended a Montessori school in Lansing, Michigan, and graduated from East Lansing High School. Page holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan with honors and a Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. While at the University of Michigan, “Page created an inkjet printer made of Lego bricks”, served as the president of the HKN,  and was a member of the solar car team.

Other Information

• Born  Lawrence Edward “Larry” Page, March 26, 1973 (1973-03-26)
• Lansing, Michigan
• Occupation  Computer scientist, technology innovator, entrepreneur
• Net worth  $15.8 billion USD (2008)
• Known for  Co-founder of Google, Inc.
• Spouse(s)  Lucinda Southworth

Links

• Larry Page – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“TradeComet was forced to file the lawsuit when Google refused to stop engaging in predatory conduct to block search traffic by imposing massive, unjustified price increases,” the company said in a statement.

SourceTool.com had previously complained that Google had given the site, essentially a directory of products and the companies that provide them, a low rating and began raising pay-per-click advertising rates to direct people doing searches to SourceTool.

SourceTool said that Google raised the rates after deciding that SourceTool was a competitor.

“Google raised my prices by 10,000 percent, which strangled our business, virtually overnight,” said Dan Savage, founder and CEO of SourceTool.com and TradeComet.com, in a statement.

“As a result of Google flexing its monopolistic muscle, SourceTool.com currently averages about 1 percent of the traffic it previously had and is no longer a competitively viable business.”

Google had no immediate comment.

Sourcetool says Google violated U.S. antitrust laws