Tryangled Dev

New Delhi, 29 October 2007, Yahoo is all set to launch its own and indigenous search engine. The new search engine will feature a newly developed index and ranking mechanism and would be bit different from the conventional Google search algorithm and index, which Yahoo had been using over the years.

The news of the launch has come amidst high speculation about what type of algorithm Yahoo would be finally adopting? While some experts eyed Yahoo adopting Inktomi search, remember Yahoo acquired Inktomi about a year ago! some had been eyeing towards a rejuvenated Google algorithm for Yahoo. The truth is, however, much more interesting than anticipated. In fact Yahoo is neither adopting Inktomi search nor enhancing its Google search. It is launching an indigenous search engine.

Yahoo had been eyeing on an indigenous search engine for a long time. For this, search engine experts at Yahoo had been busy figuring popular search engines and what would it take to make a next generation search engine that would be completely user oriented.

While what Yahoo will finally deliver is still a mystery, some of the features that Yahoo would probably feature in its indigenous search engine can be anticipated.

Search Assist definitely tops the list. This facility provides real time suggestions on is designed to help users by providing real-time query suggestions as they type their queries in the yahoo search box. Search Assist automatically senses the query and provides a drop down with the predicted searches.

The advantage of Yahoo search over it peers is that it has been designed to predict complete answers and not only links. Using search assist, Yahoo aims at ensuring that users get the best answers, bet it a link to a website, photo, video, or music.

The biggest boon for Yahoo users would be the volume of indexes Yahoo wishes to pertain. For example, Yahoo Search index has been programmed to capture the entire text of web pages up to an impressible 500K limit, a sharp rise over Google’s 101K limit. Additionally, Yahoo indexes HTML, PDF, and Microsoft office documents to give everyone a fair share of search engine exposure.

Pro Googlers are, however, not impressed with Yahoo’s offering. According to some pro Google skeptics, Yahoo simply cannot topple Google no matter what. Google has been The truth is, however, quite contrary to what the skeptics have been saying.

A survey conducted by compete.com reveals that Yahoo gets consistently higher CTR (click through rate) on its search results over Google and other popular search engines. This means that by advertising in Yahoo, your chances of being clicked by your target visitor is higher than what you can expect after advertising in Google.

While this simply shows Yahoo’s predominance in the search advertising market, Yahoo has also been monetizing its searches with the rejuvenated Panama program, Yahoo’s answer to Google Adwords which contributed much to Google’s rise to monarchy.

April 3rd, 2008,
A few days ago, Jupiter research had predicted that mobile search ad revenues would touch $5 billion over the next 5 years. Microsoft and AOL are both taking this statement very seriously. They are working very hard to improve their mobile offerings in an effort to make up for the loss of market share in desktop search.

Microsoft are adding new features to their Windows Mobile and BlackBerry services, such as improved mapping and a voice interface for the Blackberry. InformationWeek reports that these new services will allow clients to speak into their Blackberry handsets, instead of having to enter queries through the number pads, which can be quite a tedious process.

Users will now be able to find directions to restaurants, theatres, offices and other places of interest by simply speaking the name of the place they want into their mobile devices. It is also expected that customers will shortly be able to map a contacts address, and view custom maps on Virtual Earth on their mobiles.

Bill Gates has long been in favor of technologies such as voice, touch and pen-based computing, but there were several obstacles to this in the past. Voice recognition technology has made a lot of progress in the last year and has been available on Microsoft Live Search Mobile for Windows Mobile devices since October of last year. The support for additional devices will make this service especially useful in cars as the driver will no longer have to look away from the road.

AOL has also launched a new mobile service. The Market Intelligence Service reports that the beta version of AOL MyMobile will allow BlackBerry users to access personalised AOL services through mobile phones. They have also started an AIM TXT short-code service for all major carriers in the U.S.

AOL MyMobile

Windows mobile users will now be able to receive personalised services by downloading AOL MyMobile. This platform will provide integrated relevant Web and mobile search results. AOL MyMobile has drop-down lists and menus, which are easy to access. It will also remember user favorites and recent requests.

Users will be able to save directions to various places and even access them off-line or outside their network range. News of these innovations has raised the share price of AOL’s parent company Time Warner Inc, which has been rumoured to be on the lookout for a buyer for the former Internet giant.

An online business software package designed to make it easier for people in the same organisation to share documents and information.

The free ‘Team Edition’ software, scheduled to debut Thursday, represents Google’s latest attempt to attract more users to free applications, which poses a potential threat to rival Microsoft’s highly profitable Office programmes.

Microsoft is taking the first steps toward extending its support for other scripting languages with a new project to ry to run PHP on .NET.

Known as Phalanger, the project reached Version 2.0 Beta 2 on July 30.

The primary goal of the project, released under Microsoft Shared Source Permissive License, is to enable full functionality of existing PHP scripts on .Net without any modification, Microsoft said. Unlike the original PHP interpreter, Phalanger compiles scripts into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language).