One of the things that people do with their smartphones in stores is take pictures of products and send them to friends and family for feedback and advice. A version of that process has been developing in parallel online through the numerous “social shopping” sites and has existed forever in good old-fashioned email. Now Bing […]
Flipping through my Los Angeles Times newspaper today, I came across an unusual ad — one placed by Google, to push its Chrome browser: The Chrome Ad Google’s “20 Things” Book In particular, the ad covers one of the 20 “things” that are part of the “20 Things I Learned About Browsers And The Web” […]
Bing has announced a series of updates to the Bing Maps interface, including a very welcome move to make its collection of Map Apps easier to find. Map Apps is a growing collection of tools that expand the capabilities of Bing Maps; some — like the Taxi Fare Calculator and Parking Finder — are extremely […]
I’ve been using the new RockMelt browser since late last night, but this is not a review. I’m merely interested in pointing out that users can search the toolbar (as with Safari or Firefox) and get Google results — but they’re ad free in this case. There’s no SERP with ads, just a list of […]
My Life With Google TV series continues. Yesterday’s test: how well could Google TV locate free (and legitimate) episodes of Caprica on the web? Answer: not very well. But once I found them the old fashioned way, Google TV did make it pretty easy to watch them on the “big” screen of my TV, versus […]
On the heels of a formal privacy complaint by former FTC employee Chris Soghoian targeting Google’s embedding of search queries in page URLs, a new class action lawsuit takes aim at the same thing. It seeks monetary damages and an injunction against Google’s alleged sharing of searches with third parties. Google Said To Share User […]
After less than a week since its release, three of America’s largest television networks have started blocking Google TV users from watching video content on their web sites. Sort of. While ABC and CBS keep Google TV viewers out, as does Hulu, NBC actually still seems to let them in. Below, a visual look at […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Q3: $7.29 Billion, Display And Mobile Showing “Momentum” Google said it earned $7.29 billion in Q3 2010, an increase of 23% compared to the same period in 2009. Quarterly growth […]
Xmarks, the popular browser bookmark synchronization service, is going to shut down on January 10, 2011. Xmarks is a free service that saves your bookmarks across different browsers and different computers, and currently boasts about two million users. I’m a longtime user and fan of the service, going back to when it was called Foxmarks; […]
Talk about eating your own dogfood! Today, Twitter CEO Evan Williams took questions for an hour on Twitter, about Twitter, replying from his own account. What was he asked? Many questions about how the new Twitter works, from people who don’t yet have it. And if he likes cats (yes). I’ve compiled a transcript, below. […]
During today’s launch of the IE9 browser beta today, the Bing search team previewed some of the new features that will be available in the browser via HTML5 — calling it a “more beautiful search experience.” In a blog post today, Bing discussed things like an animated home page that shows full motion images, smoother […]
Since the beginning of the year, many of us have predicted that mobile will be the top driving force behind local search growth in 2010. A rapidly-increasing number of smartphone users — combined with faster mobile technology, better search offerings, and higher advertiser engagement — suggests that consumers will be more likely than ever to […]
We knew that Bing was added as an option in the default search engines used on the new Apple iPhone iOS4. But if you try to searching on either Bing or Yahoo when your default search provider is Google, both will prompt you to switch to their own search engine. Not only will you be […]
Google has announced Google Earth 5.2 for the PC and 3 for iOS with native iPad support. There are many changes, detailed here, for 5.2 — the biggest of which is probably the ability to open a browser within Google Earth. You can click a button on the top nav and a full browser slides […]
Steve Jobs, still on stage at WWDC 2010, the Apple developer event, just announced that Bing will now be a search choice for the iPhone — as it should be.
Citing unnamed sources TechCrunch is reporting that Bing will take over the role of default search provider on the Safari browser in the new iPhone OS. These rumors aren’t exactly new and we’ve written and speculated about them before:
It’s very had to overstate the potential impact of Google TV (GTV) announced today. While there have been numerous efforts to put the internet on TV in the past (including Apple TV), none have really succeed with mainstream consumers. This may be the first Web-TV integration that has that potential.
It’s Google I/O, Google’s annual developers conference. The morning keynote gets underway at 9AM Pacific. Let’s see what surprises Google has in store for today. My liveblogging begins, below. For those at home, you can also watch along live — I/O sessions are being broadcast here on YouTube. Due to traffic, I arrived 15 minutes […]
Google has updated their Google Mobile App for iPhone to now support the iPad and take advantage of the iPad user interface. Truth be told, there are not that many changes from the iPhone version to the iPad version except for a overlay search suggestion tab, larger screen real estate and Google showing the standard […]
Google announced a bunch of its services iPad-ready: YouTube (sans Flash), GMail, Maps and Voice Search. And Google also says in the same blog post, “As with Mac computers and the iPhone, you’ll find Google Search in the top right corner of Safari.” So it would appear then that Google will be the “default” search […]
During an investor and financial analyst webcast yesterday Google’s Vic Gundotra said that an “increasingly large” number of advertisers were doing mobile campaigns and that there was a “dramatic amount of interest” in mobile among those not yet advertising in mobile. Much of the webcast was devoted to demonstrating Google mobile products and initiatives and […]
Opera, the leading independent mobile browser, has been putting out great data on mobile Internet usage for quite some time. Google always ranks as one of the top sites globally. However this month’s “State of the Mobile Web” report is the first time that the company has released search market share data. It shows Google […]
Google News has added the ability to allow users to “star” news stories. When a user stars a story (or technically, a cluster of stories), it: Lets Google know that you’re interested in that subject. Alerts you to significant updates by putting the headline in bold, so you can get more information. Allows you to […]
On Friday afternoon, Google announced they will be discontinuing their support for “very old browsers.” They said, they will stop supporting Internet Explorer 6, commonly referred to as IE6, on many of their applications. Starting on March 1st, Google Docs and Google Sites will no longer be officially supported on IE6. Google said: Many other […]
I expressed skepticism yesterday that Bing would become the default search engine on the iPhone. Rather, I speculated, it would be added as an option (as it should be) on the device. But CNBC has some additional information that asserts default search status on the iPhone is a real possibility for Bing. But take the […]
Europe has generally emerged as a much more forceful player in anti-trust law than regulators in the US (despite their tough rhetoric). Some people believe, in fact, that in Microsoft’s case Europe has treated the company with a very heavy hand and turned it into the equivalent of a cash machine, imposing billions in fines. […]
Google announced the new version of their Google Mobile App is available on iTunes. The new version has some new features including: More search results on a page Web pages open within the app and not in a new Safari window The Bells and Whistles feature is now easily accessible in settings A new “waveform” […]
The Google Webmaster Central blog has two excellent write ups on mobile SEO concerns and techniques. One is named Help Google index your mobile site and the other is named Running desktop and mobile versions of your site. The reason for the two different articles is that often webmasters consider smart phone enabled sites as […]
What’s Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s favorite Google product at the moment? When I asked him that this week, I expected a “I love all my children equally” answer. Instead, Schmidt surprised me answering without hesitation: Google’s Chrome browser. “The one that I am the most pleased with is Chrome. This is a personal answer. Because […]
James Carswell noticed that Google, on some browsers, has shifted the search ads on the right hand side of the search results page, closer to the free (organic) results. I personally was able to replicate this change, by comparing Firefox to Safari and posted a video illustrating the change. In the video below, you will […]
Last week Yahoo launched its new homepage, which allows users to customize the site and improves overall usability. The centerpiece of the recently launched Yahoo homepage is My Favorites, the new customizable left column that allows users to add third party content and make it more of a personal “dashboard.” The Yahoo mobile browser homepage, […]
When the new iPhone operating system came out, version 3.0, mobile Safari was able to pass your location to the browser. Google recently updated the iPhone version of Google to allow searchers to send Google their location, which should help make the search results more tailored to that searcher. When I first looked at how […]
Two pretty cool things coming out of Google Maps today: First, an official announcement that Google’s “My Location” feature is now available more widely on the desktop. Second, Google Operating System has discovered what looks like a test that lets users create “search layers” in Google Maps. More on that in a moment. If you’ve […]
Late yesterday Google announced (or finally admitted) that it had developed an operating system, called Chrome OS, not to be confused, exactly, with the related Chrome browser. Everyone and their grandmother seems to have an opinion about it. Here’s a sampling of the reaction, positive, negative and in-between: The fans, boosters and generally positive takes: […]
Ars Technica posted earlier that Google is to unveil its long rumored computer operating system, and now Google confirms this is true in a blog post: Introducing the Google Chrome OS. The company says that the OS will be released later this year (likely in the fall, I’m told) to developers, designed primarily for netbooks […]
Google had been testing AdSense on mobile apps for the iPhone and Android in a kind of private beta with roughly 10 partners, including Pandora, Shazam and Urbanspoon. Now the program is opening up to apps developers and publishers who meet some criteria (among them, a 3 month commitment, 100K+ page views). Google said that […]
It appears that Google is testing new user interfaces for Google Web Search, Google Video Search and Google Finance. On Google Web Search, Google is testing showing “Review This Site” as a link, as opposed to a graphical comments icon. On Google Video Search, Google is testing additional search filters on the left hand side. […]
Google Operating System spotted a new feature on Google Image Search. The feature allows you to click on the color of images you want to be found, and Google will filter your query based on images that match the query and the color you selected. For example, I search on [flowers] and then chose the […]
In a blog post today, Google confirms what we and others reported last week — they’re now showing local results on non-local queries. Google says they’re guessing the searcher’s location, “in most cases” by using your IP address. As I pointed out last week, this isn’t always the most accurate solution. And, as Greg Sterling […]
If you’re a Google AdWords user, you may be able to kick the tires on the new AdWords interface. Google has opened the beta it to more US advertisers, as well as to new countries (the UK and Australia) and new languages (Spanish, Japanese, French, and Brazilian Portuguese). When you login to your AdWords account, […]