Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• US Appeals Court Overturns Part Of Google’s Auto-Link & AdSense Patent Infringement Case
  U.S. appeals court hands Google patent case setback from Reuters reports the US appeals court has partially overturned the initial ruling between Google and Hyperphrase Technologies, LLC. The official decision can be read at this PDF file that shows the appeals court affirmed most of the ruling with the exception…
• Google Reader Share With Friends Feature Causes Privacy Concerns
  Google Reader shares private data, ruins Christmas from Felipe Hoffa has a detailed run down of the user complaints with Google Reader’s new share with friends feature. Felipe writes, “One week ago Google Reader’s team decided to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts. No need to…
• Chinese Court Dismisses Guge Vs. Google Case
  Lawsuit Over Google’s Chinese Name Dismissed from Pacific Epoch reports a Chinese court has dismissed the Guge and Google case, which began earlier this month. The Haidian People’s Court in Beijing dismissed the case today. It was dismissed because Google used “Gu Ge” on April 12, 2006, which was seven…
• Webmaster Support For Christmas
  Last year on Christmas Day, Barry reported over at Search Engine Roundtable how Adam Lasnik and I spent a bit of time answering questions on the Webmaster Central forums. This year, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller keeps up the tradition. In the spirit of the season, I thought it…
• Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas
  I just wanted to wish everyone a happy holidays and a Merry Christmas from Danny, the Search Engine Land team and myself. I have been tracking the news over the course of the day and night and as one would imagine, the news is basically not there. I figured I…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google’s Gmail Reaches 6GB on Christmas, Search Engine Roundtable
• Top Web Apps & Sites of 2007, Read/Write Web

Business Issues

• Accoona IPO: RIP, Silicon Alley Insider
• Christmas Day Or April Fools?: Prediction That Web 2.0 Will Die in 2008 Due To Lack Of Advertising, TechCrunch
• HoHoHo: Digg Might Be Acquiring Men’ame and CoRank, TechCrunch

Conferences

• TopRank Tips: Conference Live Blogging, Online Marketing Blog
• Ultimate Search Conference: Day 2, BruceClay.com
• Ultimate Search Conference: Day 3, BruceClay.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Don’t stare out the window to track Santa – use Google Maps or Earth instead!, Official Google Maps API Blog
• MS Virtual Earth Adds Textured 3D City Imagery for a Bunch of Locations and A Lot More, ResourceShelf
• Year in review: Apple and Google, telecom’s new stars, News.com
• Google-powered mobile phones to make a February debut?, APC Magazine
• mInfo and Xiaoi Team Up to Deliver Natural Language Mobile Search to Chinese Instant Messenger Users, PR Newswire
• Snowman on Google Maps, Googlified
• UK: People Search, New Semantic Search Beta from 192.com, ResourceShelf

Searching

• Beta Test Microsoft Live Health (aka HealthVault) via Link on Live.com Search Homepage, ResourceShelf
• Google News Archive’s Updated Timelines, Google Operating System
• IceRocket Relaunch?, Data Mining

SEM Industry

• Happy Holiday Threads from Search Marketing Industry, Search Engine Roundtable
• Take the 2007 Search Marketing Quiz , Small Business SEM

SEO & SEM

• Reranking Search Results Based Upon Personalization and Diversification, SEO By The Sea
• .Mac Search Engine Optimization: Google Indexes .Mac Files, Search Engine Roundtable
• 55 SEO Interview Questions, All Things SEM
• Google Thinks Your Site is in a Different Language?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Large Enterprise SEO: CMS Duplicate Content, Search Engine Watch
• Offline Marketing for Mobile Purposes, SEOmoz
• Using Yahoo Site Explorer for Site Intelligence, ClickZ

Social Media

• Facebook is so last year – welcome to the hit websites of 2008, The Guardian
• Internet Marketing Best Blog Posts of 2007, Techipedia

Web Analytics

• 2007 In Numbers: Low Traffic Is One Problem Yahoo Doesn’t Have, TechCrunch
• Search Down On Multiple Fronts In November: comScore, MediaPost

Other Items

• 2007: The Year in RSS – ReadWriteWeb, Read/Write Web
• Google Doodle 13: Parts 2-4, InsideGoogle
• Googler’s Excuse for Slacking Off, Googlified
• The year in YouTube politics, Official Google Blog

Last 20 Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Reddit Love & Digg Hate
• Google Reader Learns the Hard Way Not Everybody Wants to Share
• Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007
• Tracking Santa: The 2007 Edition
• Top 12 Most Useful Meta Search Engines
• The Hardest Blog Post of My Life – The Future of ViperChill?
• 100 Resources and Tools to Analyze Your Traffic and Improve Conversions
• Happy Holiday from Search Marketing Industry
• ProBlogger: What do YOU Do with Your Blog When You Go on Vacation?
• How my Gmail account got hacked and my domain was stolen

Related Topics: SearchCap

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About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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