Hasta La Gadget!

Analytics firm comScore has delivered its latest search engine rankings, and it probably isn’t going to surprise you at all to hear that, for the month of September, Google remained the reigning king. The big G actually enjoyed a 0.3 percentage increase from August to September, climbing from 66.4% explicit search share to 66.7%. Others enjoyed small gains too, including Ask, which was up 0.3% itself, from 3.5% share to 3.8%.

Even AOL, which is teetering on the brink when it comes to search market share, made the tiniest of gains, rising one-tenth of a percentage point to 1.8%. Microsoft’s Bing, which is Google’s largest competitor, held steady between August and September 15.9%, so while it isn’t a gain, it’s certainly better than a loss. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Yahoo, which was the only engine comScore is showing a loss for.

Between August and September, Yahoo’s market share actually fell 0.6 points, dipping from 12.8% to 12.2%. It isn’t the biggest loss – not by a longshot – but the struggling Yahoo needs all the help it can get in the search department. comScore says that right around 16.53 billion searches were made in September, which is down about 4% from August’s 17.04 billion. Almost all of the search engines that were tracked in comScore’s report suffered a decline as a result of that drop – with Yahoo in particular getting hit the hardest – but interestingly, Ask was the only one to make gains in explicit search queries, gaining 3% over August’s results.

So, even though Ask is a long way away from being able to challenge Google for search share (or Bing for that matter), September was a pretty good month for it. In any case, comScore’s report indicates that Google doesn’t have to worry about having its title taken away any time soon, though the fact that Bing is holding steady while Yahoo is losing a small amount of market share has to be encouraging for Microsoft. Be sure to have a look at our story timeline below for more reports from comScore!

Google makes small gains in latest comScore search rankings is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Pitching itself as the first trade alliance to represent the concerns of the online economy, the Internet Association lobbying group has just confirmed its member companies and policy platform. As suspected Amazon, Facebook, eBay, and Google are joined by other large tech firms, under the leadership of Capitol Hill advisor Michael Beckerman, to form the umbrella public policy organization. Citing its three main areas of focus as protecting internet freedom, fostering innovation and economic growth, and empowering users, the Internet Association will represent regulatory and political interests of its member companies, and their employees. There is no word on what the first freedom or innovation to benefit from the associations collaborative-clout will be, but while we wait to find out, you can lobby on the source link for the Mission- and Purpose-statement containing press release.

Continue reading Google, Amazon, Facebook and more confirmed as members of the Internet Association

Filed under: Internet, Alt

Google, Amazon, Facebook and more confirmed as members of the Internet Association originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last summer the AOL HD app launched on the Boxee, Roku, Yahoo Connected TV and DivX platforms, and now it’s moving to 2.0 as well as changing names, to AOL On. Rolling out now to the Samsung Smart TV, Roku, and Sony platforms, with TiVo Premiere DVR access due “in the coming weeks” after a beta test ends, it’s a free ad-supported app that pulls from a library of 380,000 or so videos, including some from Engadget (you may have noticed the logo in the corner). v2.0 brings a refreshed UI and videos from not only AOL sites like this one, Moviefone and TechCrunch, but also other sources like Reuters, AP, CNET and BBC. We gave the new channel a shot on Roku and were able to browse around easily enough although the most recent episode of The Engadget Show hadn’t popped up yet — we’ll get someone on that. There’s another screenshot and press release after the break, or you can just check the channel store of your nearest set-top box or connected HDTV to see if it’s popped up there yet.

Continue reading AOL HD connected TV app is now AOL On for Samsung, Roku and Sony; TiVo coming soon

Filed under: Home Entertainment

AOL HD connected TV app is now AOL On for Samsung, Roku and Sony; TiVo coming soon originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 04:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AOL’s music app, PLAY, has been available on Android and iOS devices for some time now, but not for folks with the Kindle Fire (unless they managed to sideload it of course) and today it has finally arrived. AOL announced a new version of PLAY for the Kindle Fire. It’s been redesigned for the tablet and meant to take full advantage of its 7″ display. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PLAY, it’s an app that lets you listen to the MP3 tracks you have stored on your device, discover new music via AOL’s weekly album selection as well as tune into over 55,000 SHOUTcast radio stations. If playing music isn’t enough, you can also keep yourself up to date on the latest music news from AOL.

AOL PLAY is available now as a free (ad-supported app) but Kindle Fire owners can pick up the ad-free version for free later today on the Amazon Appstore (regular price $0.99).

[PLAY by AOL]

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: HBO GO arrives on the Amazon Kindle Fire, Android Market can be installed onto a rooted Kindle Fire,

Online account security breaches are seemingly commonplace these days — just ask LinkedIn or Sony — and now we can add Yahoo’s name to the list of hacking victims. The company’s confirmed that it had the usernames and passwords of over 400,000 accounts stolen from its servers earlier this week and the data was briefly posted online. The credentials have since been pulled from the web, but it turns out they weren’t just for Yahoo accounts, as Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, MSN, SBC Global, Verizon, BellSouth and Live.com login info was also pilfered and placed on display. The good news? Those responsible for the breach said that the deed was done to simply show Yahoo the weaknesses in its software security. To wit:

We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat. There have been many security holes exploited in Web servers belonging to Yahoo Inc. that have caused far greater damage than our disclosure. Please do not take them lightly. The subdomain and vulnerable parameters have not been posted to avoid further damage.

In response, Yahoo’s saying that a fix for the vulnerability is in the works, but the investigation is ongoing and its system has yet to be fully secured. In the meantime, the company apologized for the breach and is advising users to change their passwords accordingly. You can read the official party line below.

At Yahoo! we take security very seriously and invest heavily in protective measures to ensure the security of our users and their data across all our products. We confirm that an older file from Yahoo! Contributor Network (previously Associated Content) containing approximately 400,000 Yahoo! and other company users names and passwords was stolen yesterday, July 11. Of these, less than 5% of the Yahoo! accounts had valid passwords. We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo! users and notifying the companies whose users accounts may have been compromised. We apologize to affected users. We encourage users to change their passwords on a regular basis and also familiarize themselves with our online safety tips at security.yahoo.com.

Filed under: Internet

Yahoo confirms server breach, over 400k accounts compromised originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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