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New Cuil search engine by former Google employee

An Ex Google employee along with her husband has launched a new search engine today called Cuil, which is pronounced cool. The couple aim to topple Google, they hope to do this by indexing more web pages than Google.

Anna Patterson was Google’s former leader of the search index, her husband Tom Costello, used to research and develop search engines at Stanford University and IBM. The third co-founder of Cuil is Russell Power; he also worked at Google as part of the search indexing team, as well as spam detection and Web rankings. Power is vice president of engineering for the new search engine.

Cuil have said that they have indexed 120 billion Web pages; they have also organized their results by ideas with complete privacy for users.

Cuil say that they aim to be bigger than Google, well they have a long way to go as Google have just announced that they have discovered 1 trillion unique web pages however; it is not certain how many of those have been indexed by Google.

So Cuil said they will be bigger than Google, does not mean to say they will be better. Yahoo is bigger than Google, but we know that Google is better.

Source

Microsoft looks at Powerset after Yahoo setback

Microsoft are not a company that spends to long licking its wounds, not long after the whole Yahoo saga, the software giant is now looking towards a new deal to buy semantic search engine Powerset. Microsoft are doing all they can to try and close the gap between themselves and Google. It looks as though Microsoft will stop at nothing to become the biggest search engine.

Microsoft has said that by purchasing Powerset, they will be able to deliver a smarter way of searching the web. Powerset is a totally different search engine to one that Microsoft use, they use “semantic Web” technology which brings up results that is based on an understanding of a words meaning, as well as the context of its use. This is a totally different concept to most other search engines like Google and Yahoo; they work by primarily matching words in queries to those on a web page.

Microsoft announced the news of this new deal on July 1 and has said that they share the same vision as Powerset. Early reports say that Microsoft has offered more than $100 million in order to acquire the company; however there is no official news on how much Microsoft will end up paying for Powerset.

If the deal does go through then this could be just what Microsoft need to try and close the gap on rivals Google, in some areas search engines like Powerset outperform the likes of Google. Microsoft is in a good position as Google will find it very hard to replicate the same results as Powerset. However; Microsoft has to make sure that they do not take any shortcuts; they will have to build everything from scratch.

Google has already hired some semantic search experts, in the hope of developing this technology for themselves, looks as though Microsoft is about to get the jump on them.

Adobe’s Google and Yahoo agreement: Search engines will see Adobe Flash-created content

This is breaking news and very good news at that, Adobe has new software that will make flash-created content more noticeable by search engines like Yahoo and Google. At the moment it seems that search engines like Google and Yahoo and other Web-search tools cannot easily recognize pages that have Flash-created images.

Many times we have searched the web to buy something and we end up seeing graphics built with Adobe Systems’ Flash software, have fun finding the exact product with a search engine, though. Because it seems Google and other Web-search tools can’t. Well Adobe has announced that they are taking steps to solve those problems, Adobe are providing Google and Yahoo with software that will makes these pages inside flash-powered sites show up much higher in search results, it will infuse those results with a much better result leading you to what you are really looking for much more easier and of course with more relevant details.

Adobe’s moves include providing Flash software that is more attractive to Web site developers and of course to persuade more consumers to visit its customers’ sites, Adobe’s Google and Yahoo agreement will be very competitive and is surely a smack in the face for Microsoft, who indeed makes web software that competes with Adobe’s. Just so you know flash sites often contain ads, sell products, promotes movies and much more, so the most important thing that should happen for the creators is for sites to show up where consumers are clicking.

So with Adobe providing Google and Yahoo with this all new software code and a very special version of its flash player, one that can expose the what-used-to-be hidden flash-content now seems a thing of the past.

Read the uncloaking ‘invisible’ Flash Web content over at CNET

Microsoft gives Yahoo three week ultimatum: Accept our offer

Microsoft has given Yahoo an ultimatum, either accept our offer within three weeks or we will lower our offer and then go direct to your shareholders. This big threat comes in the wake of the ongoing fight between two of the largest search engines.

Yahoo executives have rejected Microsoft’s $42 billion bid as they feel that the offer is too low. Steve Ballmer Microsoft’s chief exec has now deiced to play hardball, which is why they gave Yahoo the ultimatum.

Microsoft do not want this critically important opportunity to pass them by, it is thought that Yahoo will respond today.

Source – PC Pro

Google: have they purchased Plaxo?

There have been reports that Google has bought the online auto-updating contact service, Plaxo. It has been for sale for some time now and they have apparently been taking on the services of an investment back to help any deals which may go through. Read more