A News.com report on the Web's search king.

How to upgrade your wireless router

Call us cynical, but we doubt that cities will be blanketing the country with high-bandwidth Wi-Fi networks anytime soon. In the meantime, we'll be left to our own devices--literally, as well as figuratively. So we're thankful that the ever-useful Lifehacker has posted this article, which gives instructions on how to "turn your $60 router into a $600 router."

Main Google search site back up in China

Google's main search site at www.google.com is back online in China, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said on Friday. The company has been criticized for launching a censored version of its site for China at www.google.cn.

"Google's unblocking tends to confirm the theory that online censorship was stepped up for the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre" on June 4, the group said in statement. To circumvent censorship, Reporters Without Borders said it recommends users download DynaPass.

Google gets nearly 60 percent of U.S. searches- report

Google accounted for 59 percent of Web searches conducted in the United States in May, more than double the searches on Yahoo, data analysis provider Hitwise said on Thursday. Google had 59.3 percent of the searches last month, up from 58.6 percent in April, the statistics show. Meanwhile, Yahoo and MSN had 22 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively. Google's share of U.S. searches has risen slightly for the last three months, while Yahoo's and MSN's have inched down, according to Hitwise.

Google Browser Sync for Firefox

Google has maintained that it has no plans for a Google Web browser. Apparently, that doesn't exclude trying to help others improve their browsers.

Brian Rakowski, a Google product manager, has announced the release of a syncing tool for use with Firefox, Mozilla's Web browser.

Google Browser Sync, free for download in beta from Google Labs, is designed to let people synchronize Firefox settings over multiple computers. Bookmarks, passwords, histories and even persistent cookie preferences for specific sites are transferred, so that users don't have to spend time tediously adding them to each computer on which they use Firefox. (Alas, too late for some of us. I know.) Google Browser Sync can also "remember" which tabs and windows were open at last use and "reopen" them when you open Firefox on another computer.

Previously, Google supported Mozilla Firefox users by offering its toolbar for Firefox in beta. Google Toolbar for Firefox has now been updated and upgraded sans beta status. There are a few new features in this latest edition: new ways of subscribing to RSS feeds, safe-browsing alerts and a spell-check search box option. Even though it's no longer in beta, Google Toolbar for Firefox still remains free for download.

Google: Burned in Beijing?

Google co-founder Sergey Brin was in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, lobbying on behalf of Net neutrality. But he found himself being pressed by reporters on another topic--the search engine's business practices in China.

The company earlier this year launched a search engine that censors search results for Chinese users--a move Brin acknowledged "compromise(d) our principles," the Associated Press reported.

Brin told the AP that the search engine agreed to the rules after Chinese authorities blocked its service.

"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," Brin said.

Blog community response:

"Whether or not you support Google's reasoning, what was surprising was that they didn't seem to have a reasonable explanation ready for how this fit with their overall corporate philosophy -- which they had used over the years to build up a tremendous amount of goodwill. Saying sorry does help to mend strained relationships, so it will be interesting to see if such public self-reflection helps re-establish some amount of trust in Google."
--Techdirt

"Interesting to see that they are debating 'reversing course' - I'd like to hear more about that. Maybe it has to do with the fact that for all the compromises, google.com and gmail are still often blocked in most parts of China."
--Peking Duck

"Did Google just admit to being evil?"
--The Zero Point

Google ducks lawsuit over search rankings

Google has dodged a lawsuit filed by a California man who claimed his Web site rankings precipitously and unfairly dropped.

Mark Roberts, who ran two protein drink sites (including MrProtein.com), sued the search engine for breach of contract (click for PDF). He represented himself in court and did not hire an attorney.

But Roberts backed down after Google's attorneys threatened to file a "SLAPP" motion against him. California has a strong SLAPP law, which is designed to discourage frivolous lawsuits and permits successful defendants to seek attorneys' fees.

Roberts had claimed that Google was negligent and breached its contract--making the unusual claim that the company's Web site-submission service constituted a binding contract.

Law professor Eric Goldman wrote that even though this lawsuit came to a premature end, the question of legal liability over search rankings remains an open one and more lawsuits could follow.

Google will stay course on Chinese search--for now

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says the company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands, but is trying to make its censored Chinese search engine work before deciding whether to reverse direction, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

"We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference," Brin told reporters near Capitol Hill.

"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," the article quoted him as saying.

"It's perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, 'Look, we're going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won't actually operate there.' That's an alternate path," Brin said. "It's not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing."

Brin was in Washington, D.C., to ask U.S. Senators to prevent telephone and cable companies from collecting premium fees from companies like Google for faster delivery of their services.

Also on Tuesday, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders alleged that China had cut off access to Google's main Web site, The Wall Street Journal reported. Nearly all Google customers in China use the noncensored site, Brin said.

Google has been criticized since it launched its censored search site in China in January.

Earlier in the week, a group of U.K. journalists called for a boycott of Yahoo, which is accused of providing information to China that led to the arrest of several journalists.

Report: French book publisher to sue Google

A French publishing group is suing Google for "counterfeiting and breach of intellectual property rights" over its controversial book scanning and digitization project, the Agence France-Presse news agency reported Tuesday.

The suit, to be filed in a Paris court, is being brought by La Martiniere, which owns publishers Le Seuil in France, Delachaux and Niestle in Switzerland, and Harry N. Abrams in the United States, the AFP said.

In a statement, Google said the lawsuit was without merit and that it would contest it in court.

"Google Book Search helps users find and buy books - not read or download them for free. It is directly beneficial to authors and their publishers because it enables them to reach a wider global audience, while protecting their copyrights," Google said. "If publishers do not wish their books to be part of our project all they have to do is tell us and we exclude them and exclude their works. There is no need for any court case."

The move follows threatened legal action from France's National Publishers' Union (SNE), which represents 400 publishers. United Kingdom publishers also were blasting Google over its plans this week.

The Google Print Library Project faces two copyright-related lawsuits in the United States from author and publisher groups, who claim that scanning copyright protected books and making them searchable online violates their copyright. Google argues that copyright is protected because it is only showing snippets of the work, unless the book is in the public domain.

MySpace: It's, like, so 2006

Is MySpace already becoming yesterday's news? The New York Times this weekend became the latest to weigh in with that assessment.

If it's true, no one should be surprised. Even Blogma pointed out that such communities have always had limited shelf lives, going back to the early days of AOL, Geocities and, more recently, Friendster.

This is not to say, of course, that News Corp. necessarily wasted the entire $580 million it paid for MySpace. It just underscores the inherent risk of investing in anything that relies on the enduring loyalty of teenagers. If anything, it can be (and has been) argued that the Fox empire only hastened its decline by conferring mainstream status to MySpace.

Blog community response:

"Media Guardian reports that Bebo has overtaken MySpace at the most popular Teen site in the UK. While the lead is slender at the moment, and MySpace is souping up its UK offering, the popularity window that brands enjoy is shrinking all the time. Gone are the days when brands used to survive unchallenged for years and years."
--oneangrycustomer

"If changes aren't made at MySpace, someone will happily come in and gobble up that market. Think of it, they at 14-25 year olds who will be spending money for a very long time. Creating brand loyalty now will pay off for 100 years."
--SoKy Local Business

"Teenagers, ever the fickle crowd, have moved on to different (but not necessarily better) things, and pressure from parents have really put a lot of negative publicity on the site in recent months."
--Damox's Technology Blog

Who knows what in HTML

It appears to be a year of reflection for many in the blogosphere, as indicated by such posts as Damien Katz on identifying lousy programmers and Emil Stenstrom on CSS knowledge. Roger Johansson has followed with a post of his own in this vein, addressing the widely varying "levels of HTML knowledge" throughout the Web industry.

June 2006 archive

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« May
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4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

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