Exciting news for Google users who have upgraded to the Microsoft Surface device & Windows RT operating system. You can now download the Google Search App, which is specifically optimized for the Windows Surface and Windows RT. Google announced this on their Google+ page saying: If you just got a new Windows RT tablet and want to use Google Search, you’re in luck—you can now download the Google Search app optimized for Windows RT. It’s got all the good stuff: voice search, instant results and doodles. Just go to our “Get Your Google Back” site at http://www.google.com/hom [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Microsoft: Mobile | Microsoft: Windows

Got a shiny new Microsoft Surface with Windows RT and want to search with Google? No can do. The Google Search app is only for Windows 8, and it seems like -- amazingly enough -- that's because Google hasn't gotten around to making one. Postscript (Nov. 13): This is now finally available. See our story, Google Releases Search App For Microsoft Surface & Windows RT Anyone searching the Windows Store for the Google Search app and using Windows 8 will find it easily, as shown below: Google's new "Get Your Google Back" site is even promoting a faster way to find the app, pointing pe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Microsoft: Windows | Top News

If you ever wanted proof that Microsoft has learned that for Bing to succeed, it needs to spread its wings beyond Microsoft, look no further than today's news that Bing is offering "Firefox With Bing." That's right, Microsoft is pushing a rival browser to its own Internet Explorer. Firefox With Bing In a blog post today, Bing invites people to download a version of "Firefox With Bing" where Bing is used as the default search engine for the Firefox search box and for searches conducted from the "AwesomeBar" address window: In most countries, Firefox uses Google as its default search engine [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Firefox | Google: Chrome | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Top News

While almost 75% of Bing visitors in North America use Internet Explorer, only about 40% of Google's search visitors use the web's most popular browser. Instead, Google deals with Firefox, Apple's Safari and Google's own Chrome browser cause those to combine and outdistance IE usage. Internet Explorer Is Big On Bing The figures come from a new report by Chitika, which analyzed a week's worth of traffic across its ad network sites from July 20 to 26, 2011, for North America. Chitika says almost 75% of all Bing search traffic comes from IE users: Our internal stats here at Search Engin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Google: Chrome | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Stats: Popularity | Top News

Does the web browser you use say anything about your preferred search engine? It might, according to some data just published by Chitika. After measuring activity across the 80,000 or so sites in its ad network, Chitika reports that Bing usage is tied to which version of Internet Explorer a person uses. Specifically, Bing usage increases as users upgrade to newer versions of Internet Explorer. As you can see, Bing usage jumps from 16.9% among IE8 users to 22.9% among IE9 users -- that's a 35% gain. Is this just a case of IE9 making Bing the user's default search engine? No, not r [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: Browsers | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Stats: Popularity | Yahoo: Browsers | Yahoo: Search

Microsoft's new browser IE 8 is now in general release. There are loads of features, which I won't go into at length. Danny did a preliminary overview of the search and ad-related features of IE8 already, which I'm sure he'll revisit at some point. And the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg offers a generally favorable review, but has some complaints about speed. The two things I'm going to discuss in this post are Microsoft's "Live Search Accelerators" and Yahoo's new "visual search shortcuts." Live Search Accelerators perform a range of functions, searches or lookups on, for example, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Yahoo: Shortcuts

Google's has released its own open-source browser, Chrome, in direct competition to Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Yesterday, Danny described his test-drive of Chrome in Searching With Google Chrome & Omnibox and Greg speculated on its future in How Bright Is The Outlook For Chrome?. Both compared Google's new browser to the incumbents, Firefox and Internet Explorer. But Chrome is actually very different from those two browsers, and significantly different from nearly everything else on the market. Here are the 10 major features that truly differentiate Google Chrome from the competi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Features: General | Google: Chrome | Microsoft: Internet Explorer

After finally getting the new Internet Explorer 8 beta installed (demands to upgrade Windows, verify Windows, sigh), I spent some time playing with the new search functionality and checking to see if Microsoft was going to try to stack the deck in its favor with the new browser. So far, it remains pretty even handed. Indeed, so far, Microsoft seems kind of lame given that there are some cool search features you're hard pressed to locate. Let's take a tour. After installing the software, I'm asked if I want to use "Express Settings" or to make active choices: Notice that Live Sear [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Toolbars & Add-Ons | Top News

So Firefox 3 has a new release candidate making news, suggesting that the browser is nearly done. May I suggest that the browser is nowhere near being done until the Mozilla Foundation drops its favoritism to Google and allow users to pick their own default search engine? And that Microsoft ought to be among those choices? Seriously, the entire Firefox+Google love fest is a joke. Let's revisit a little history here. Google fought and fought to pressure Microsoft so that no search provider was the default in Internet Explorer 7, arguing this was the best for consumer choice: "The m [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Firefox | Google: Marketing | Google: Partnerships | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Microsoft: Marketing | Microsoft: Partnerships

Microsoft has experimentally introduced "SearchTogether," which allows people to use a browser plug-in (IE7 only) to literally collaborate on search. You need a Windows Live ID and Messenger, but you can apparently use any search engine you like. Here's a tutorial and some screens. I haven't used it so I can't report on the experience. Conceptually, however, I could imagine that in many use cases (e.g., Travel and Local Search) this could be highly valuable as an option. Microsoft Messenger has had collaboration capabilities around local search and Live Maps for some time, but they're littl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Search 4.0

Will Success, or All That Money From Google, Spoil Firefox? from the New York Times asks if all the money Google is feeding Firefox going to hurt the browser and the community behind the browser in the future, by aligning the browser too closely with Google and its war against Microsoft. Of the $66 million in revenue reported by Mozilla, 85 percent of that came from Google. But Mozilla said they made sure Google "understood the separation between a search relationship and the rest of our activities." That may suggest that Mozilla is aware of why Google may want them to overtake Microsoft's [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Firefox | Google: Business Issues | Google: Partnerships | Microsoft: Internet Explorer

Last year, Google signed a landmark deal to become the default search engine on new Dell computers, plus to bundle Google software. Now, people are noting anew that a consequence of the deal seems to be pushing Dell users to search results dominated by Google ads, rather than editorial listings. Google's Browser Address Error Redirector from Google Operating System and Google turns the page… in a bad way from the OpenDNS Blog cover the same issue, a "feature" called "Browser Address Error Redirector" that sends those using Dell computers and trying to reach non-existe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Critics | Google: Partnerships | Legal: General | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Toolbars & Add-Ons

Today I noticed Live.com trying to get me to search with it in Firefox. Then Yahoo did the same thing. So I guess a new round of "let's change search defaults" is going on within Firefox. That seemed a good excuse for a revisit how the various search engines are trying to pull us as their default choices in both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. Back in October, I did a big fat article looking at the state of how search worked in Internet Explorer 7 and how search providers were trying to suck you into making them your default search choice. It was Firefox stuff that got me going to [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Promotions | Channel: SEO | Firefox | Google: Marketing | Google: Toolbar | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Microsoft: Marketing | Yahoo: Marketing

A new survey from McAfee finds that AOL has the "safest" search results in terms of not listing sites that might be somehow be risky or unsafe for searchers. But most interesting to me was the fact paid results across the board were found far riskier than free, organic results. Let's do the numbers, some summary plus tools that will help protect you and how to see if Google thinks you've been naughty. In terms of unsafe results, most of the major search engines are pretty clean. McAfee ran 2,500 queries, looked to five pages deep, then assessed the "safety" of the sites [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Search Features: Safety | Stats: General | Toolbars & Add-Ons

Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo!? from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny makes a pretty damning case against Google for blatantly ripping off Yahoo's Internet Explorer 7 promo copy. Yahoo offers a custom version of IE7 via a pitch page you'll see here. Google appears to have launched its own pitch page yesterday, one that was amazingly similar in look and feel to Yahoo's. Jeremy has the side-by-side photos of how the pages looked. Google's page has since changed. In many places, the copy was either identical or the word Yahoo was simply swapped for Google. At best, I thought perhaps Google was using some [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: Browsers | Google: Critics | Google: Marketing | Google: User Interface | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Search Ads: General | Yahoo: Browsers | Yahoo: Marketing | Yahoo: User Interface