Google’s working on building a new kind of mobile search tool, one which pre-guesses what you’re likely to be looking for and pings you a little update before you ask. Sort of like a clairvoyant butler arriving with a bacon sandwich when you need it most. More »
A big hole has been punctured in Google’s usual defence against libel, with an Australian court throwing out the search giant’s argument that it’s just a listing tool. All because it didn’t remove a link to an incorrect web site. More »
A couple weeks back, we heard the FTC may be close to making a decision on whether or not it wants to take Google to court over claims of anti-competitive behavior. If a new report from Bloomberg is to be believed, however, the FTC may have a problem actually hitting Google with antitrust charges due to a lack of evidence. If that’s true, then Google may just be able to get out of this whole thing without ending up in court.
The FTC investigation stems from anti-competitive claims from Google’s competitors. According to them, Google pushes its own results higher up in search rankings, while pushing those of its competitors down. The problem there is that consumers may not get the best information in regards to low prices if Google is weighing the search results in its favor. With that potentially being the case, it’s easy to see why the FTC would want to investigate such claims.
There are other complaints against Google the FTC is currently looking into, but the search complaint is definitely the big one. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Google has been told to “propose a resolution to a host of antitrust concerns in the coming days or face a lawsuit,” though without enough evidence for a solid antitrust suit, that may not go anywhere. The FTC is expected to decide on whether or not to take Google to court by the end of the month, which is coming up pretty quickly.
Considering that recent rumors were telling us that the FTC would deliver a decision by the end of the year, it may not be long before we know if Google is being taken to court. If Google is found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, then it could mean bad news for the way the big G displays search results, so don’t expect the company to just take these claims lying down. Keep it tuned to SlashGear for more information.
FTC may not have enough evidence to hit Google with antitrust charges is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Over the weekend, a rather interesting report from The Daily Telegraph surfaced. It claimed that Yahoo CEO Marissa Miller and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg were in talks for a search alliance that would benefit both. At first, it seemed like the rumor made some sense – after all, Facebook has been talking about breaking into the search scene for a while now, and teaming up with Facebook could give the struggling Yahoo a nice boost. The problem is the rumor isn’t true.
At least that’s what Facebook says, telling All Things D in a statement today that it hasn’t been in talks with Yahoo about any kind of search deal. “People expect a better search experience on Facebook,” the company said. “We are working on improvements to better meet those expectations but are not in talks to enter into a new search partnership.” So Facebook is looking to bolster its search, but it doesn’t think it needs any outside help to do so.
While a team up would certainly make some sense, it makes more sense for Facebook to go it alone this time. Facebook is a huge company with a lot of influence when it comes to the Internet, so a partnership like the one outlined in The Daily Telegraph would probably end up benefiting Yahoo much more than it benefits Facebook.
In any case, one thing is for sure: Facebook is definitely looking to make a splash in the search arena. We’ll have to wait a while longer before its exact plans are revealed, but at least this statement tells us that the company is taking the issue seriously. Check out our story timeline below for more on Facebook!
Facebook says it isn’t plotting search team up with Yahoo is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Are Facebook and Yahoo getting ready to go in on a search venture together? According to a report from The Sunday Telegraph sourced by anonymous insiders, yes. Rumor has it that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg have been chatting about working together to maybe get a search engine going. More »
Google doesn’t usually buy into the whole “lets package a bunch of new features into a major upgrade” thing. So, while the ability to search your Gmail based on the size of a message or have finer grained control over the time-related filters may not seem like a huge deal, remember this tiny new tweak is part of a laundry list of improvements made over the last year. The crew at Mountain View hasn’t forgotten about Drive either. Starting today you can now search documents according to the names of people you’ve shared them with and even open up Google Earth files (.kml and .kmz) right in your browser. A number of small usability improvements have also been made, including the ability to create a new folder right from the organize pane (finally!). You can even drag and drop entire folders from your desktop to Drive, so long as you’re running Chrome. For a few more details check out the source links.
Filed under: Google
Google adds Earth support and usability tweaks to Drive, new search options in Gmail originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Evernote power users rejoice: the folks at BitQwik have made a search program that’ll bring your abilities to seek out the notes you want more powerful than ever. With this application for Windows (or Mac, if you’ve got something like Parallels or VM Fusion), you’ll search for keywords, then enter Search Filters with essentially any language you’d like, and search. You can also build your Evernote query piece by piece, adding specifics one after another. You’ll never lose track of your notes again!
The great thing about this application is its ability to work with natural language – that meaning you can type in basically anything and it’ll know what you’re saying. You can ask it to find “notes that have geese in the title” for something simple or you could ask it to “show me notes with JPG attachments that I added last year and are not tagged with robots or Skype.” BitQwik understands it all.
The gigantic list of possibilities listed by BitQwik shows you that you’re able to work with sources, resources, notebooks, recognition types, encryption, and more. What’s interesting about all of this is the fact that it’s all already built-in to Evernote. The Evernote collection of search operators exists – this environment simply makes it easier than it otherwise would be. You no longer have to recognize the following simply to search for what comes after it:
-intitle:school -intitle:breakfast
created:20120301T000000 created:20120331T000000
sourceApplication:helloSearch for all your notes that do not have the words “school” or “breakfast” in the title, that you created in March of 2012, and were made with Evernote Hello.
All of that is made simple with BitQuik, which you can download right this instant over at BitQuik’s website. Make sure you check this out if you’re a heavy OR a light Evernote user, simply because its fun to see how intense you can get with the language recognition.
BitQwik brings Evernote a natural language front-end is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Google has certainly been stepping up their mobile game recently. They even brought Google Voice Search over to iOS not too long ago. However, it looks like Google is planning to focus more on the mobile sector than on the desktop. Several Google employees have said that the company is shifting towards a “mobile first” mentality.
According to a note to investors from Morgan Stanley, three Google executives presented at the 2012 Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco and spoke about the future of the company and where it’s headed. The group consists of Rikard Steiber, Google’s global marketing director for mobile and social advertising; Francisco Varela, YouTube’s global director of platform partnerships; and Rich Miner, general partner at Google Ventures.
During the presentation, there were some bullet points said that are worthy of a mention. First, the execs said that Google is now considering themselves a “mobile first” company. Steiber also mentioned that he thinks mobile will be the primary way people access Google in 2013. Varela believes that total mobile traffic to YouTube may soon surpass 50%.
The execs also brought up a couple of statistics to prove their points. They mentioned that mobile searches have increased by 200% in 2012 so far, and 25% of traffic on YouTube, as well as 40% of video views come from mobile devices, which is up a staggering 300% in 2012. We’re not sure how much Google will transition its work from the desktop to mobile, but hopefully the company will keep its desktop products alive and well.
[via Business Insider]
Google to focus more on mobile than desktop is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Google has launched a new service aimed at developing countries called Free Zone. It allows users who either don’t have access to data connections or can’t afford it to be able to access basic Google services on feature phones for free. However, it’s only available in the Philippines at the moment.
Google notes that Free Zone is “aimed at the next billion users of the Internet, many of whom will be in emerging markets and encounter the Internet first on a mobile phone, without ever owning a PC.” With that in mind, the Google’s Free Zone will allow users to access Google services, such as Gmail, Search and Google+, on their mobile devices at no cost whatsoever.
Users will also be allowed to surf to any websites that appear in Google search results, but trying to gain access to any site outside of the search results won’t happen — users would be presented with an invitation to subscribe to a carrier data plan. It’s an interesting idea, and it reminds us of Facebook’s own similar initiative called Facebook Zero.
Free Zone is available on just about any internet-enabled mobile phone in the Philippines right now, and according to Google, it’s optimized to work on feature phones, but can also work on smartphones as well. Getting access to Google services over a data connection for free is a pretty great deal if you ask us, but there’s no word on whether Google will be bringing the feature to the US. Since it’s meant for developing countries, you can most likely expect Google to roll out the feature to only a select number of people.
[via Reuters]
Google launches Free Zone, aims to bring Google services to feature phones is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
If you find that Siri on your iPhone isn’t as helpful as you imagined, all hope is not lost. If you’re jailbroken, it turns out you can install a quick tweak called NowNow that will replace Siri with Google‘s Voice Search. So, whenever you hold down the home button, Google Voice Search will pop up instead of Siri.
Google’s Search app has long been available on iOS, but they recently just added Voice Search, meaning that iOS users could take of advantage of Google Search in a Siri-like environment. However, users couldn’t make it their default voice search service, so holding down on the home button would still bring up Siri, while users would still have to open up the Google Search app to use that voice search option.
However, if your iOS device is jailbroken, you can install a tweak from Cydia called NowNow that completely replaces Siri with Google Voice Search. However, there are a couple of caveats. Google Voice Search doesn’t integrate with Apple’s built-in iOS app, so you won’t be able to set alarms, leave reminders, or call someone using Google’s option.
Then again, Google Voice Search has proven to be a lot faster than Siri at finding out stuff, so if speed is important to you, this little tweak may be just what you need. It’s absolutely free, so you have nothing to lose but a little bit of time. The tweak is available in the Cydia store via the BigBoss repository.
[via AppAdvice]
NowNow replaces Siri with Google Voice Search is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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