Yahoo has used Bing.com’s search results for some time, but this is about to change in at least one country. Yahoo Japan announced today that it has signed a deal to use Google instead of Bing.

Daniel Alegre, vice president of Google’s Asia Pacific and Japan operations, stated:

Yahoo Japan will use Google search results and Google’s technology for supplying the accompanying search ads. With such partnerships, revenue from the search ads is shared between the Web site and the company that supplies the ads, in this case Yahoo Japan and Google, respectively.

I guess Bing just wasn’t cutting it for Yahoo.

Continue reading: Yahoo Japan switches to Google

Columbia has been pushing .co as an alternative to the overcrowded .com TLD, and now Google has given the registry a boost by agreeing to treat the name as a generic extension in search results. This means that .co domains will not be limited to the Google Columbia search engine and will rank well in any locale.

Other domains Google treats generically include .tv and .me. A Google spokesperson stated:

We will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted. Webmasters will soon have the functionality to be able to specify this by using the geotargeting options in Google Webmaster Tools.

This news is very good for early adopters of .co as Google’s announcement will surely increase the market value of .co names .

Source | PC Pro
Photo | Wikimedia Commons

Continue reading: Google agrees to treat .co domain as generic TLDs

In preparation for new projects and to expand the capacity of current ones, Google has nearly doubled its data center spending. It went from investing $239 million last quarter in capital investments to $476 million this quarter.

Although a capital investment is any physical asset that has long-term value, most of Google’s capital investments are IT-related. Large capital investments are often a sign of recovery. However, Google’s current expenditure figures are nothing compared to the $842 million it spent in Q1 2008. The company drastically cut back data center spending after the recession set in.

Other tech giants like Microsoft are also expanding their capital investment budgets. At this point, it is unclear where Google’s data center is going.

Photo | pzado

Continue reading: Google increases spending on data centers

Blogspot.com, a Google-owned blog hosting service, is one of the most-visited websites on the Internet. According to domain blogger Elliot Silver, Yahoo is taking advantage of this by typosquatting with a very similar domain: Blogsport.com.

Right now the domain doesn’t point anywhere. In fact, Yahoo’s owning of a popular typo for a Google domain is a bit of a coincidence. Blogsport.com was owned by sports site Rivals.com. But when Yahoo bought Rivals, it also bought all of its assets, including the domain.

Yahoo will probably never monetize the domain or redirect it to a rival service because it does not want to face legal action from Google.

Continue reading: Is Yahoo typosquatting Google?

Google has long been a leader in the search industry, but did you know that the company is also a pioneer of data center technology? The video above shows a typical Google web server on display at the Google Data Center Energy Summit in 2009.

As you can see, Google doesn’t use normal servers. All of its systems are custom-built to meet its needs. It also keeps much of its technology secret, so seeing this server in-person is a big deal. The power supply has a built-in battery that acts like a UPS, for instance.

The most obvious feature is the large amount of RAM. The Mountain View company supposedly stores all server data on memory for fast retrieval.

Continue reading: Take a look at a Google server

Google announced today that the Chinese government has renewed its license to operate as an Internet content provider, meaning that the search engine will continue to operate in China.

Earlier this year, Google strongly considered leaving the country due to its strict Internet censorship, and began redirecting Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong site. Google has since stopped doing this, but still keeps a link to the other site on its homepage.

Google must renew its license annually. The search engine has had trouble attracting users in China as local competitors such as Baidu have limited its market share.

Source | The New York Times
Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Chinese government renews Google's license

According to a report by Experian Hitwise, the market share of Microsoft’s Bing search engine increased by 7% in June. Meanwhile, Google saw a drop in market share of -1%.

Bing’s May market share was 9.23%. With the 7% increase, its new market share for June was 9.85%. Google’s market share only decreased from 72.17% to 71.65%. While Bing’s growth sounds enormous, it really isn’t considering how small of a market share the search engine had to begin with.

Most of Bing’s growth is the result of a large number of visitors performing automotive, health, shopping and travel searches. The market shares of Yahoo Search and Ask.com stayed about the same.

Photo | guitargoa

Continue reading: Bing market share up by 7%

Big Blue is not known for making revolution internal changes to its business. After all, the way they do business has worked for over a century. When it comes to technology, however, IBM has lately been very keen to accepting new software, particularly software that is free and open source (such as Linux).

In what will undoubtedly send ripples through the Web, IBM has announced that Mozilla Firefox will be its new official browser. All 400,000 IBM employees are expected to make the switch on their desktops and laptops. IBM believes Firefox is “enterprise ready”, and as more of their products are sold as web applications and cloud services, one can safely assume that IBM will recommend Firefox to their customers.

Since its creation, Firefox has gradually chipped away at the large browser market share held by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Over the past year, however, Google’s Chrome browser has stolen some of the spotlight. This move by IBM will certainly give Firefox a boost. For web hosting providers that use IBM’s services, it will make sense to use Firefox, if IBM optimizes their applications with the open source browser in mind.

Source: CNET
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Continue reading: IBM Declares Firefox Its New Official Browser

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a site I visit on a regular basis. Although designed for AdWords customers to estimate the search volume of keywords, it’s a great tool for domain owners.

When registering domains, I use the search volume data to get an idea of what keywords to pick and what kind of market a name has. It might tell me, for instance, that LouisianaLawyer.com is worth more than WyomingLawyer.com because “Louisiana lawyer” has a greater search volume.

The AdWords Keyword Tool is also great for SEO. Use it to find the most popular keywords to optimize for.

Continue reading: The Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Although I am sure plenty of Google employees dope up on gallons of coffee per day, this is not about that kind of caffeine. Google announced on their blog that they are changing the way their servers index sites. As with anything related to Google searching, this is particularly relevant to webmasters who want their websites in the top of Google search results.

Without delving too deeply into the new technology, it is sufficient to note that Google’s indexing just got faster…a lot faster. They are currently refreshing their indexes 50 percent faster than their previous search index technology. The new tech is called Caffeine, and it has a more organic approach to indexing. While the old technology re-indexed the entire web in layers, Caffeine will index small portions more frequently.

I put the new system to the test, just to see how fast it actually was. Yesterday, I posted a new blog entry on one of my other sites. By the time I had saved it and headed over to Google, the new pages were already indexed. When you get things right on your website, this will be a good thing. When you get things wrong, be mindful that Google may index and even cache that page within minutes. Overall, however, it is a good thing, and website owners trying to get information out fast will appreciate it.

Source: Google
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: Google Boosts Its Servers with Caffeine

When it was officially announced that the iPhone would never have Flash player installed, Apple users moaned. When Steve Jobs denounced Flash and swore that the iPad would also be Flash-free, people began to become concerned. For animation and video, Flash currently reigns supreme on the Web, but it has not been and is still not the only option.

A company called Smokescreen has introduced a new technology (or rather a merging of old and new technology) to produce Flash-like animated ads using software that all platforms support (Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile operating systems). The ads use a combination of Javascript and HTML5 to create ads that are nearly identical to their Flash counterparts.

The Smokescreen website lists multiple demos of their product in action, although some of them still need to work out the kinks. Technology powerhouses like Apple, Google, and Mozilla are pushing for the adoption of HTML5 video, while Adobe hopes to hold onto its claim on web animation and video. One obstacle that HTML5 proponents must overcome is the inability for current HTML5 video to display dynamic ads. Several marketing firms are working quickly to develop solutions. Current YouTube videos using HTML5 do not display ads, and those videos that do use Flash only.

Continue reading: Smokescreen to Create Flash-free Ads

Figures recently released indicate that Facebook is the number one social networking site in the world, outstripping competitors and flying in the face of privacy concerns surrounding the social networking phenomenon. According to Google figures, Facebook now enjoys visits from more than 35 percent of the internet population, amounting to about 540 million people each month.

Incredibly, 570 billion pages a month are viewed on Facebook.com, which is more than eight times the page views of Yahoo.com, in second place on the social networking ladder. The figures are contrary to concern from many quarters about privacy on Facebook and even more overt attempts to get the site to implement tighter privacy controls.

Facebook maintains it’s revamping many of its privacy settings to limit third party access and the information that can be viewed by everyone, it continues to come under pressure to adopt opt-in models of information sharing which it claims are contrary to the social networking philosophy.

Whatever developments Facebook undertakes in the future, it continues to be the world’s biggest social networking site and doesn’t look like declining. We can only imagine that the Quit Facebook Day protest of May 31st won’t even dent the usage statistics of that month.

Source | SFGate and MacWorld

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Facebook social networking king according to Google