Latest Web News
Here's a fine selection of the latest web news that either will or could affect your business on the internet in the coming weeks, months and years...enjoy.
1) Powerset wins exclusive rights to new search engine technology - 09/02/2007
A new, well financed search engine company from San Francisco has won exclusive rights to use "natural language" technology that has been over 30 years in the making at PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre, owned by Xerox). The Powerset search engine, which will be publicly available sometime this year, attempts to understand the user's query as the user intends it, not based on keywords and phrases as Google, MSN etc currently are. They've already got about 40 employees, with many high-profile search engine names leaving Yahoo for the company. Massive potential for this - Google, watch out!
http://venturebeat.com/2007/02/08/powersets-search-technology-scoop-may-scare-google/
2) Yahoo launches Panama Ad System - 05/02/2007
After months of testing (originally started in October 2006), Yahoo Search Marketing have finally changed over to their new PPC, or pay-per-click, advertising system. Intended to help close the gap on Google's AdWords, Panama offers campaign-based features, better localised targeting and new conversion tracking tools. However they have held off on introducing some 3rd-generation features as seen in Microsoft's AdCenter, launched last year. As if that's not enough, they've also introduced a new ad-ranking system, where by other factors also influence the ad position, not just "highest bidder wins" anymore, also extremely similar as to how AdWords operates.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=3907
3) European Mobile Phone Giants plot new mobile search engine - 05/02/2007
With an expected surge in people using search engines on their mobile phones by the end of 2007, all of Europe's biggest operators have commissioned secret top-level talks in Barcelona this week as part of the industry's largest annual trade show (the 3GSM World Congress 2007). Desperate to claw back some of the market from current dominators Google and Yahoo, the group, with a combined world-wide audience of 600 million, are to discuss launching their own search engine, and the possibility of striking a deal with the current market leaders for a slice in advertising revenues.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/04/cnsearch04.xml
