i-level Search News - October 2007
Search engines buy into Facebook
Microsoft beat interests from Google and Yahoo! to land a $240 million dollar (1.6%) equity stake that puts the value of the social platform at $15 billion.
'GPhone': Is it a bird, is it a plane???
Rumours about the elusive 'GPhone' being developed by Google have been going around for a while. It was spotted at a number of conferences and between the various patents that Google had registered and mobile software companies they had bought, this all tied together to add to the hype surrounding Google's entrance into the handheld market. However, as it stands the latest rumour is that 'GPhone' actually refers to the operating system that Google is developing for mobile phones, which promises a richer mobile internet experience.
Live.com ups the ante
Microsoft has released a wide range of search enhancements and improvements to its Live search capabilities. The two main areas these upgrades are focused on are increasing the size of its index and consequently its web coverage as well as an expansion of the support services associated with its search offering such as: Microsoft Answers, the user interface, query refinement tools and filters. (http://searchengineland.com/070927-034138.php)
Search engine of the month - Dogpile
With so much attention being focused on the major search engines, we have decided to feature some smaller engines in our newsletter to give some feedback and point those wishing to experiment in a different direction. This month we review Dogpile, which has been around for a long time as far as search engines go (1996). Dogpile employs meta-crawler technology to produce results based on the top search engine results. This has the effect of aggregating the top results which saves having to jump between the different search engines.
Spoofs and Goofs
We like to share things that have happened in the industry that have made us laugh (the fact that we find this kind of stuff funny is sad in itself... what can we say, we love what we do!)