Blodget: Bing Will Bomb - Henry Blodget, a long time analyst of Internet companies, posted a story on the Silicon Valley Insider, entitled “Bing Will Bomb“. Why? First, he said there “isn’t a search war between Google and Microsoft.  Google won what little skirmish about 5 years ago” Second, he attributes any gain that Bing.com has made to curiosity in reaction to that enormous ad budget Microsoft has for the product. Third, Mr. Blodget says:  “yes, Bing has added some cool innovations, but nothing that Google ... read more ...

HitWise: Bing.com Market Share is Up But So Is Google’s - According to research firm HitWise, Bing.com and Google market share increase in June. Microsoft share went from  3.4% in the first week of the month to 6.63% by the end of June. Google accounted for 74% of all U.S. searches conducted for the four weeks ended June 27, up fractionally from May and the prior year’s 69%. Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) accounted for 16% in June, down from 20% last year June. Ask.com slid to 3.2%. Other findings from HitWise. Longer search queries have increased in popularity over ... read more ...

Google To Launch It’s Own Operating System To Compete With Windows - Google announced today on its blog that it is developing its own operating system in a direct challenge to Microsoft Windows system. Google said the Google Chrome OS, an extension of it Chrome Web browser, is an open source, lightweight operating system that initially will be targeted at netbooks. The company said later this year it will open-source its code and netbooks running the operating system will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Google said it has begun talking to partners ... read more ...

Yahoo Does It Again: Launches A New Product Without Owning The Domain: SearchPad.com Or The Trademark? - Yahoo! announced another new product today, called Search Pad. Unfortunately in true Yahoo style,  it did not secure the domain searchpad.com which is currently parked, before announcing release of the product. It certainly couldn’t be the price of the domain that scared them off as of today the domain could be purchased for as little as the whopping sum of $750 (owner is taking offers starting at that amount at Sedo. A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about Yahoo most popular service Flickr.com ... read more ...

Microsoft Knocks Google Off The Map - (This post was submitted by a frequent commentator to thedomains.com who goes by “Cartoonz” who described himself as follows: “an International Man of Mystery whose many projects include KHN.com,  providing some of the finest Nutritionals on the planet”.  I do know him well and he has been involved in the domain business for a long time) Bing has a map feature, maybe you’ve seen it, maybe not. Maybe you figured it was just a clone of Google maps, MapQuest, whatever. But Bing has features ... read more ...

Should Yahoo’s Flickr.com Buy Flicker.com? - Flickr.com is of course the huge photo sharing site owned by Yahoo. However, Yahoo does not own the .com for the proper spelling of the word, which is Flicker.com Flicker.com, in a pretty rare move, recently posted it traffic stats on its home page along with click through rates and the stats are pretty impressive. According to Flicker.com “by the numbers”, they receive: Unique Visits: 3.6M /per yr Source: Direct Navigation (95.74%) Outbound Clicks: 400K /per yr CPC Keyword Values: (Photography ... read more ...

AdSense For Mobile Apps Launches Today - According to reports Google unveil a beta version of AdSense for Mobile Applications yesterday which allows companies that develop mobile applications that run on devices like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android system. AdSense for Mobile Applications allows developers to integrate AdSense network ads into their mobile applications and to allow advertisers to bid for placement in their apps. Previously, Google AdSense ads showed up only on Web pages rendered by mobile phone browsers “We are ... read more ...

Bing.com PPC Clicks Up 13% Since The Switch From Live.com - Efficient Frontier Inc, which calls itself the world’s largest search engine marketer says that the number of clicks on ads served by Microsoft Bing.com search engine jumped 13% in the two weeks since it was switched from Live.com. “Those gains are significant in terms of revenue,” said Justin Merickel, marketing vice president at Efficient Frontier, which places about $750 million in text ads on top search engines worldwide. With the U.S. search ad market valued at $12 billion this year, each ... read more ...

The End Of PPC? Google Starts Testing “Pay For Performance” - According to a report in Media Post today, Google chas begun soliciting advertisers to participate in an “experiment” that puts information, such as size and price, about products in search results. The ads will be served to a select group of people searching the Web in the United States at first. The ads are not billed by the click, similar to the traditional pay-per-click (PPC) model, but rather when the person purchases the item or “performance based,” meaning that Google would only get ... read more ...

Microsoft Goes “All In” Playing The Cheap Card - After years of battling out Apple over issues like technology, ease of use, compatibility and quality, Microsoft seems to have acceded all  those issues to Apple and has gone “all in” on one point: We’re Cheaper. Microsoft’s new television ads, urge people to buy windows computers because they are cheaper than Apple’s. Likewise, for its Zune Mp3 player, Microsoft’s advertising strategy is to tell you how expensive it is to fill up an ipod. The new Tune commercial doesn’t talk about ... read more ...

Just Announced: Microsoft To Invest 5%-10% Of Its Income Into Search For Up To 5 Years - The CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer just announced that Microsoft is willing to invest 5% to 10% of its operating income back into its search business for up to five years. “Our shareholders, I told them we were willing to spend 5 to 10 percent of operating income for up to five years in this business, and we feel like we can get an economic return”. Ballmer went on to say ” “We should have started earlier, but we’ve got our mojo working now.” You think? Microsoft reported an operating ... read more ...

Bing.com Market Share Rises For 2nd Week - According to comScore, Microsoft’s Bing.com search engine share rose for the second straight week. Bing.com’s search share in the United States rose to 12.1% between June 8 and 12 — up from 11.3% between June 1 and 5, and up from 9.1% during the week prior to the engine’s launch. Microsoft’s average daily penetration among U.S. searchers also increased by three percentage points to 16.7% during the work week of June 8 to 12, comScore found. ComScore also released U.S. search engine rankings ... read more ...

ComScore: “Bing.com Off To A Good Start” - According to the research group ComScore, Microsoft’s revamped search engine, Bing, is off to a good start in its first week since launch. According to ComScore, Bing.com market share is up to 11.1% from 9.1% (for Microsoft Live Search). “So far it appears that the lifts in searcher penetration and engagement have held relatively steady throughout the five-day period,” said Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president, on Tuesday. “It appears it is off to a good start.” A comScore spokesman ... read more ...

Yahoo’s CEO: “We’d Be Better Off If We Never Heard The Word Microsoft” - The CEO of Yahoo, Carol Bartz,  in speaking on a possible deal with Microsoft said today at the Bank of America U.S. Technology conference: “I personally think we’d be better off if we never heard the word Microsoft” Bartz went on to day that a search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft could provide savings to Yahoo of not much more than $500M-$700M. Bartz said Bing will give Microsoft some “uplift” in the search market, but will not fundamentally change the competitive dynamics in the search ... read more ...

Time Warner To Spin Off AOL.com Later This Year - Time Warner announced today official plans to spin off AOL.com around the end of this year. Time Warner’s board is expected to meet today and approve the plan. Once completed, the deal would once again make AOL an independent, publicly traded company. AOL bought Time Warner in 2001 for $147 billion dollars which has largely been regarded as one of the worst convinced mergers of all time. After the merger Time Warner was renamed for a short period as AOL-Time Warner. Time Warner owns 95 percent ... read more ...

Yahoo: We Will Do A Deal With Microsoft For “Boat Loads of Money” - Yahoo’s CEO,  Carol Bartz said Wednesday she would be open to striking a search deal with Microsoft if they offered “boatloads of money.” “If there’s boatloads of money and the right technology involved, we’d do a deal, sure,” Ms. Bartz said at the All Things Digital conference. “It’s that simple.” Ms. Bartz also said Yahoo was interested in acquiring social-networking and video start-ups, noting that video advertising has grown sharply in recent years. She added Yahoo, which ... read more ...

Yahoo: We Are Going To Buy Companies - Yahoo’s Chief Technology Officer, Ari Balogh who is also the Vice President of products at Yahoo, told Reuters yesterday, that Yahoo is looking to buy companies that will allow it to become a bigger player in social networking and revamp its family of products, . “It’s a good time to be buying now,” pointing to valuations that have come down from levels six to nine months ago. Balogh , said Yahoo has had conversations with companies about partnerships and “more interesting” possibilities, ... read more ...

Baidu.com Profit Up 23% -

Via: thedomains.com

Search Engine Accussed of Blocking Natural Search Results Of An Advertiser Who Cut Their PPC Spending - What if a search engine blocked a company who cut back its PPC spending, from appearing in non-paid search results? That is exactly what Renren Information Services is accusing Baidu.com, China’s leading search engine, of. Renren says that Baidu.com basically blackballed the site,  after the company dramatically lowered its PPC spending with Baidu Renren is suing Baidu for the equivalent of $161,000 in damages, and the case in currently at trial in a court in Beijing. For a public company with ... read more ...

Yahoo Shutting Down GeoCities: Another $4.6 Billion Down The Drain - Yahoo announced today that it is shutting down GeoCities, a free service that hosts personal home pages for consumers. Yahoo acquired GeoCities in 1999, in a stock deal valued at roughly $4.6 billion. A posting on a Yahoo Help page for GeoCities Thursday said the service was no longer accepting new customers and that it will be closing later this year, with more details about how individuals can save their data coming this summer. In a statement Yahoo said: “We have decided to discontinue the process ... read more ...

Didit.com: Google Widens Its Lead Over Yahoo For Ad Dollars - According to Search Engine Marketing Firm Didit.com, Google share of search dollars spent by all clients of Didit.com keep rising and dollars spent on Yahoo keeps falling. Didit.com which reports 95% of its clients are US based, is reporting that over 70% of its clients ad dollars now go to Google while less than 20% now go to Yahoo. This difference has grown in the past 4+  years where Yahoo was getting about 35% of Didit.com client’s ad dollars and Google was getting  just 60%. To see the complete ... read more ...