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December 20, 2005 4:56 PM PST

Google knows, we like Janet Jackson best

Google has peered deep inside us, and found that at the heart of our secret hearts is Janet Jackson.

The search giant has released its version of a 2005 "Best of" list, compiling the most popular requests of the year from its main search engine, and on its Froogle bargain-hunting site.

As in previous years, it shows us to be an entertainment-focused bunch. Last year Britney Spears topped the list. This year we get Jackson, with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Michael Jackson, and American Idol also in the top 10.

It seems natural disasters can give stars a run for their money, however. "Hurricane Katrina" and "tsunami" finished at No. 2 and No. 3, respectively.

On the shopping side, Apple's iPod accounted for a full four of the top 10 slots, with most of the others taken up by various other high-tech gadgets. The top overall gainer for the year was MySpace, the social networking site that has become a mainstay of the teen set.

Posted by John Borland
November 28, 2005 7:31 AM PST

OpenSolaris leader leaves Sun for Amazon

Claire Giordano, the Sun executive who led the introduction of the Sun's OpenSolaris operating system project and its accompanying open-source Community Development and Distribution License, is leaving the company for a to work for Amazon's A9 search engine project.

Giordano announced the move on her blog Sunday. OpenSolaris is an ambitious project to restore the relevance of Sun's Solaris version of Unix by making it open-source software. One of Solaris' chief rivals, Linux, was open-source from the start, but competitors, including IBM's AIX, Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX and Microsoft's Windows, remain proprietary.

"OpenSolaris is now well on its way and I feel comfortable leaving it at this point - there is a lot of community support and leadership to move the project forward," Giordano said. "My decision has little to do with Sun, and everything to do with the exciting opportunity ahead of me at A9."

At A9, Giordano will be director of product management starting in mid-December. "I'm particularly jazzed about the A9 OpenSearch technology which makes it easy for content providers to publish their search results."

Posted by Stephen Shankland
September 22, 2005 11:17 AM PDT

Ask Jeeves' butler to get the boot

Ask Jeeves plans to give its notable mascot--Jeeves the butler---the heave-ho, according to press reports that cite comments from Barry Diller, chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which acquired the search engine company last July.

Poor Jeeves. The portly butler only recently underwent a major makeover that could rival any candidate on the reality show "Extreme Makeover" in order to save his job.

Losing the double chin and pasty complexion for a leaner look and George Hamilton tan apparently didn't help his prospects.

Although IAC plans to rid itself of the dapper mascot, it has yet to give a timetable for when his bags will be packed and he'll be out the door. IAC also plans to rename the search engine site Ask or Ask.com, according to Diller.

Posted by Dawn Kawamoto
August 31, 2005 11:52 AM PDT

Google's book plan drawing ire

Yet another publishing industry group is marshalling support to put a crimp into Google's plans to make the contents of many books available via its search engine.

The latest group to join the protest against Google's Library Print Project is the Text and Academic Authors Association, which maintains that the company's plan to scan the collections of five major libraries and make those materials accessible through its search engine is "backwards" and "in conflict with both the spirit and the law of copyright."

The TAA joins at least two other publishing groups that have criticized Google's plan, the Association of American Publishers and the American Association of University Presses. All three of the groups contend that Google is essentially ignoring copyright law by making the published works available freely over the Internet.

Google, which is currently refusing all forms of comment to News.com, said this week that it has expanded the Library Print Project to offer people in American Samoa, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Mauritius, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda and the United Kingdom access to the service.

However, Google has agreed to temporarily halt the scanning of copyright-protected books into its database. The company is working on the project with libraries at Stanford University, Harvard University and other schools.

According to Richard Hull, TAA's executive director, Google's claim that the tool only allows people to view select passages in books where specific search terms appear provides unacceptable levels of copyright protection. Hull said that the system makes it easy for users to unearth major pieces of certain texts and the entirety of other publications, including his own copyrighted works.

"Google says it offers clips, but with the system they use the whole book is essentially available, simply by searching on a title or keyword," said Hull. "What Google has done is circumvent permission; the common ground here is the pre-existing (copyright law). If you want to have a copy of the book, you ask whoever holds the copyright."

Google has maintained that it is giving authors and publishers the ability to opt-out of the library scanning program, but Hull believes that putting the burden on copyright holders to get in touch with the company is an "onerous requirement."

"We don't like the opt-in approach," he said. "For each book that is under copyright, Google should be forced to seek permission, I'm not sure why existing laws don't apply here.

Hull said that the TAA is seeking a meeting with the presidents of the universities involved in the Google project to convince those leaders that it is in their interest to help better protect copyrights. He said that the project could also have a detrimental effect on institutions of higher learning by cutting into the money universities generate by publishing text books and selling the volumes to students.

Posted by Matt Hines
August 15, 2005 12:58 PM PDT

News Corp to buy Blinkx

Media giant News Corp. is apparently talking to video search company Blinkx about an acquisition, according to a news report. With $2 billion allotted for Internet acquisitions, News Corp. plans to challenge Yahoo, MSN and others with a digital network of its own, the company's CEO Rupert Murdoch indicated last week during an earnings announcement.

To that end, News Corp., which owns Fox News and Fox Sports, recently bought the parent company of social networking site MySpace.com and sports Web site Scout Media Inc. for a combined $700 million.

Blinkx, a pioneering video search engine that arguably outdoes offerings from Google and Yahoo, could be the glue that ties together News Corp.'s online network of the future, which will likely be tailored to a broadband, video-rich Internet. Yahoo's already headed that direction, with a content-production team in Hollywood and video search tools in the making.

If the Blinkx acquisition happens, it will raise an interesting question. How unbiased will a corporate-owned search tool be in delivering the video content of third parties over its own?

News Corp. and Blinkx didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Posted by Stefanie Olsen
August 9, 2005 10:24 AM PDT

Google hit with Stern legal action

Google is facing yet another legal tussle, according to the blogosphere. This time, it's a class action lawsuit from attorneys representing a Howard Stern from New Jersey and others that claim Google allegedly over-billed for advertisements, according to the Web site Marketingvox.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Santa Clara Superior Court in California, centers on Google's AdWords, its automated auction system for search-related ads, and the company's pledge to cap daily budgets if advertisers so choose. In the lawsuit, Stern and CLRB Hanson Industries, a Minnesota industrial printing firm, charge that Google broke this promise, according to the report.

No, it doesn't appear that the plaintiff is radio shock jock Stern. CORRECTION: Alas, an earlier version of this blog item mistakenly said that it was that Stern, as one online ad watcher pointed out.

The suit asks for all charges in excess of the daily budget to be disgorged. Google did not respond to a request for comment. (Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.)

Posted by Stefanie Olsen
August 8, 2005 4:59 PM PDT

Yahoo passes Google in search index capacity

When most people think of Web search, they think of Google. But Yahoo said Monday that it has completed a vast expansion of its search engine index and now encompasses almost double that of its main competitor.

Yahoo's Tim Mayer said Monday on the company's Search Blog that it now indexes more than 20 billion documents and images. That's almost twice the 11.3 billion Google publicly says it currently spans.

Of the 20 billion elements in Yahoo's database, 19 billion are documents, 1.5 billion images and more than 50 million audio and video files, the company said.

Until now, Yahoo didn't normally talk publicly about the size of its search index, but according to the Associated Press, company observers had pegged the number at no higher than 8 billion documents.

"This is a great reason for more people to check us out," Yahoo Vice President of Products Eckhart Walther told the AP. "We are more comprehensive than anyone else out there."

To be sure, Yahoo's supplanting Google as king of the search indexes--in size at least--is a surprise, and gives it a lot of grist for touting its search feature as a solid alternative to Google's. That has been a public relations challenge for Yahoo since it unveiled its own search feature last year after years of licensing Google's.

"The Google brand stands for search and (Yahoo's) strategy has been to undercut that brand," Forrester Researcher analyst Charlene Li said to the AP.

Posted by Daniel Terdiman
August 4, 2005 5:01 PM PDT

Google, MSN legal battle spins search results

Raising a question of bias, Google and MSN search results for keywords related to the legal battle between the companies appear to be weighted differently, according to a news report.

Microsoft has sued Google and a former search and China market executive, Kai-Fu Lee, alleging that his hiring to lead a planned Google R&D center in China violated his noncompete agreement with Microsoft. Google has countersued, asking a court to declare that agreement invalid.

The story seems to be playing out in the search engines, WebProNews found. For instance, using metasearch site Dogpile, which offers results from the top four search engines side-by-side, the search phrase "Dr. Lee court documents Google Microsoft" returns several top results on Google focusing on Google's contention, publicized last week, that the Microsoft lawsuit is a "charade."

MSN's top results highlight Microsoft's court win on Friday in which a judge temporarily barred Lee from performing duties at Google similar to those he performed at Microsoft. Yahoo's top results seem to be more neutral, featuring the more fresh court ruling links.

"Could this be a coincidence? Or is this brilliant PR algorithmic manipulation?" asks Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews.com. In response to a reporter's request for comment, MSN Product Manager Justin Osmer said: "MSN search results are determined independently and objectively by an algorithmic search engine. We believe our algorithms are competitively designed and more intuitive in order to return the most precise results for consumers." A Google spokesperson did not return a call seeking comment.

(Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.)

Posted by Elinor Mills
July 28, 2005 3:13 PM PDT

Armchair activism: Web searching for charity

A new search engine Web site called Rectify gives money to charity every time someone uses it to search, bid on eBay or compare product prices. About 90 percent of the profit generated from sponsored links, which companies buy to be placed next to search listings, goes to a charity. More than 400 shops have signed up, including Apple, Sony and eBay, the BBC reports.

The current charity is Tourism Concern, which works with tourist destination communities to reduce social and environmental problems. The group has also raised money for Greenpeace, Action Against Hunger and World Development Movement, among others. "We live in a world where 30,000 people die unnecessarily from abject poverty each and every day, and over 50 percent of the world's (inhabitants) survive on less than $2 a day. There is a desperate need for change, and we hope to begin to rectify the situation through fundraising for development charities and campaigning for trade justice, an end to third world debt and more official aid for developing countries," the site says.

The search is limited compared to other major search and shopping sites, but its cause is noble. I'm sure there will be naysayers who will complain that there are better ways to try to solve those problems, but any movement that makes any progress at all with such minimal effort on the part of participants should be lauded.

Posted by Elinor Mills
May 26, 2005 9:29 AM PDT

A9 fishing for media

Amazon.com's search unit A9.com has another rung for its search engine. GoFish Technologies has developed a plugin for A9.com that lets people search multimedia files--downloads of music, movies, ring tones, games.
Posted by Stefanie Olsen
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