Microsoft May Rename Live Search ‘Bing’: Massive Ad Campaign Planned
May 28, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Search Engines, Top Stories
Microsoft’s new search engine is reportedly dumping its codename, Kumo, in favor of the brand name Bing. To get the word out, Microsoft is planning a massive advertising campaign to launch its new search brand. Bing’s debut will feature a $80 to $100 million online, TV, print, and radio advertising campaign, according to AdvertisingAge. To put that number in perspective, Google’s entire advertising budget for all of 2008 was $25 million, AdAge says. Microsoft is hoping a major ad push will take a chunk out of Google — the number one online search brand — in favor of Bing, the same way Microsoft’s laptop hunter ads helped in its fight against Apple.
The end for GeoCities?
April 24, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Top Stories
Yahoo Inc. announced recently that it will be shutting down it’s GeoCities Free Web Hosting services this year. Yahoo acquired GeoCities for $3 billion in 1999.
GeoCities no longer accept new accounts, and recommended it’s users to Yahoo Paid hosting services. This is a meesage from GeoCities Website.
Yahoo to lay off 675 after profit slides 78%
April 22, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Search Engines, Top Stories
Yahoo Inc. confirmed Tuesday that it will cut 675 jobs, 5 percent of its workforce, as its online advertising business continued to erode in the first quarter amid economic gloom.
The Sunnyvale Web portal said it would carry out the layoffs, the third round in just over a year, in the next two weeks in hopes of saving money and freeing resources to hire elsewhere in the company. Executives said the cuts will be focused on Yahoo’s product managers and engineers.
The Pirate Bay Verdict
April 17, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Lawsuits, Top Stories
The men behind Pirate Bay were found guilty on being accessories to violating the copyright law by a Swedish Court. They were sentenced to one year in jail and a fine of $3.6 million dollars.
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”
YouTube just pass the 100 million US viewers a month
According to comScore, YouTube hit a new monthly high in January, topping 100 million as it dominated the online video arena.
The overall number of videos watched online in the US in January climbed 4 percent from the previous month to 14.8 billion, with YouTube viewing accounting for 91 percent of that growth, comScore reported Wednesday.
Google-owned websites, predominantly YouTube, ranked at the top of the US online video heap with 6.4 billion snippets watched during the month, according to comScore.
Trending Tools Analyzing Search Terms, Keywords
Ever Wonder what most people are searching on the web? or what are the most visited websites for the day?, Most Search Engines are developing tools to analyze these data and are freely available to anyone. Here’s some online tools to analyze Search terms, and websites.
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
Larry Page, (born March 26, 1973 in Lansing, Michigan, USA) is an American computer scientist and co-founder of Google, Inc., the world’s largest internet company, based on its search engine and online advertising technology. He is ranked 33rd on the 2008 Forbes list of the world’s billionaires and is the 6th richest person in America. In 2007 he and co-founder Sergey Brin were both ranked #1 of the “50 Most Important People on the Web” by PC World Magazine.
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!.
Google Inc.
Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View, California. As of December 31, 2008, the company has 20,222 full-time employees.
Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. The initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising US$1.67 billion, making it worth US$23 billion. Google has continued its growth through a series of new product developments, acquisitions, and partnerships. Environmentalism, philanthropy and positive employee relations have been important tenets during the growth of Google, the latter resulting in being identified multiple times as Fortune Magazine’s #1 Best Place to Work. The unofficial company slogan is “Don’t be evil”, although criticism of Google includes concerns regarding the privacy of personal information, copyright, censorship and discontinuation of services. According to Millward Brown, it is the most powerful brand in the world.
Yahoo offers iPhone-like Web for masses
February 17, 2009 by NetCrunch
Filed under Top Stories
Yahoo announced a new mobile service on Tuesday that will deliver an iPhone-like experience for people who cannot or will not splash out for the iconic but pricey Apple device as times get hard.
Yahoo Mobile will launch at the end of March in a form downloadable to any phone with a Web browser and from May in custom versions for hundreds of smartphones.
“There is a growing number of consumers out there who are not Apple iPhone users but want a rich starting experience,” Marco Boerries, the head of Yahoo’s mobile division, told Reuters in an interview.
