Hasta La Gadget!

Between Google and Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Google has always reigned supreme as the most popular choice, and it’s a good thing too, since a recent study found that Bing returned around five times more malware in search results than Google, meaning that Bing highlighted websites that contained malicious code of some kind.

German independent testing lab AV-Test conducted an 18-month study, and gathered up 40 million website provided by seven different search engines. 10 million websites came from Google and Bing each, with 13 million coming from Russian search engine Yandex, and the rest coming from Blekko, Faroo, Teoma, and Baidu.

Surprisingly, though, out of the 40 million sites, AV-Test only found 5,000 websites that were riddled with malware. Yandex had the most percentage of malware websites in its search results, while Bing returned 1,285 malicious results out of its 10 million websites. However, Google only returned a mere 272 malicious results — a lot less than Bing.

Of course, the chances of coming across a malware-infested website in either Google or Bing is slim to none, so whether or not you use Bing or Google, it’s always important to remember to know what you’re clicking on and make sure it’s not a website that’s infested with malicious code. Web browsers will usually warn you if you come across such a website, but it’s always good to have a little common sense anyway.

[via PC Mag]

Microsoft’s Bing shows five times more malware than Google is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Swedish Language Council and Google have been going back and forth with each other since December 2012 over the word “ogooglebar”. The word means “ungoogleable” in Swedish, and Google had some concerns over the trademark issues surrounding the word. Google asked the Swedish Language Council to alter the definition of the word in order for it to represent Google’s trademark.

The original definition for “ungoogleable” was something that cannot be found within any search engine (not limited to Google only). Google wanted the Language Council to change definition to something similar to “something that can’t be found on Google” (which isn’t very much). The Swedish Language Council didn’t like Google’s proposal and decided to remove the word altogether just so it could avoid any further troubles.

Ann Cederberg, the Language Council’s president, stated, “We neither have the time nor the will to pursue the outdrawn process that Google is trying to start.” She continued on by saying how Google doesn’t own the language, and that its the users who are in control. She also says that it’s how the word is used that determines its definition, “not a multinational company with its means of pressure.”

This isn’t the first issue Google has had with its name being used in a generic sense. It’s very common to hear people say “Can you Google this for me?” or something in the same sense. Google sent out cease and desist letters, and pulled out various other methods to stop people from using its name to refer to searching something on the web. It stated in 2006, “You should please only use ‘Google’ when you’re actually referring to Google Inc. and our services.”

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Sweden removes “Ungoogleable” due to Google’s demands is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s not rare for Google to snatch up promising startups, and today’s acquisition deal is no different. The search giant has acquired neural network startup DNNresearch in order to bolster their search engine even more with improved voice recognition, text search, and even image search. The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The startup was incorporated just last year, and was founded by professor Geoffrey Hinton and two of his grad students, Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever, at the University of Toronto. Hinton is actually world-renowned for his work with neural networks, and the research done by the startup has “profound implications for areas such as speech recognition, computer vision and language understanding.”

Google’s search engine is already an impressive specimen, but it seems the company still wants to improve it in some areas, and that’s where the research conducted by the folks at DNNresearch comes into play. Google hopes that the acquisition will push them in the right direction as far as voice recognition and improved search functionality.

The University of Toronto said that both Krizhevsky and Sutskever will be transfered to Google, and professor Hinton will split his time between working at Google and conducting research at the university. Hinton will work out of Google’s Toronto offices, as well as at Google headquarters in Mountain View sometimes.

[via Engadget]

Google acquires neural network startup DNNresearch to boost voice search is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like if you’re one of those people who unfortunately have names associated with negative products, events, or descriptions, you’re out of luck. A woman in Wisconsin has found that out again and again as she tries to make several search companies liable for negative search results related to her name. Beverly Stayart, CFO and Director of Business Development at Stayart Law Offices, has tried to sue various search engines like Alta Vista, Yahoo, and Google because of these results.

Stayart’s name comes up next to various results like Cialis, Levitra, AdultFriendFinder, and more. That’s because when you type in “Bev Stayart”, search engines direct you to “Bev Stayart Levitra” which is related to male erectile disfunction. Typing in her name also brings up search results for malware packed websites and other harmful websites. She says that these search results are ruining her “wholesome image”.

Stayart had sued both Yahoo and Google back in 2011, but she lost both cases. She has been battling search companies for over 2 1/2 years. She had appealed her case against Google, but the end-results didn’t change. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the same decision made by the district court back in August 2011. Reuters stated that appeals court panel believed, “Google’s alleged improper use of Stayrat’s name fell within the ‘public interest’ and ‘incidental use’ exceptions to Wisconsin’s misappropriation laws, either of which would doom the lawsuit.” The court also believed the evidence was more incidental rather than substantial.

While it’s unfortunate that Beverly Stayart’s name appears next to embarrassing drugs or AdultFriendFinder’s search engine, her continuous effort to battle Google, Yahoo, and all of the other search engines isn’t doing anything to help her case either. Doing a search of her name or her abbreviated name will not only bring up AdultFriendFinder (as the top result), but it will also bring up her various lawsuits (and losses) against these companies. Not something potential clients would want to see when they’re searching for her law offices.

[via Reuters]

Woman fails to prove Google’s liable for unfortunate search results is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google currently allows copyright holders to request a takedown from the search giant’s search results, but they only allow 10,000 URL requests per day, which just isn’t enough for some copyright holders nowadays, and they’re fighting with Google to raise the limit to 40,000 requests per day, which is supposedly enough for companies to request without reaching a cap.

Specifically, the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy organization BREIN and the RIAA, which both represent a handful of media companies, wants to increase the daily DMCA cap to 40,000, but wants to eventually remove the cap altogether at some point. Google has seen a huge spike in takedown requests recently, and it’s large enough amount that Google is worried that it violates freedom of speech, but copyright holders say they are just looking out for their businesses.

However, it doesn’t look like Google will budge on its set daily limit. The company says it can’t increase the limit because it may cause technical problems due to unexpected peaks in server performance. However, the RIAA isn’t having none of that, and has said that Google has the resources to increase the limit. They also say that Google’s number of allowed requests per day is “minuscule.”

Copyright holders are afraid that if Google doesn’t lift the limit of daily takedown requests, they fear that they will be unable to keep up with the numerous links (in the hundreds of thousands) that are added to Google search results every day. However, Google notes that BREIN is currently only sending under 5,000 takedown requests per day, far below the current 10,000 request limit. Then again, this certainly won’t be the last that we hear from the RIAA and BREIN, so get out the popcorn and stay tuned.

[via TorrentFreak]

Google under attack by anti-piracy groups over DMCA takedown limits is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.