As expected earlier this month, ebay buys StumbleUpon for about $75 million.

From Buisnesswire,

This acquisition will provide eBay with in-depth exposure to a fast-growing community-based service with approximately 2.3 million users.

“StumbleUpon is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust,” said Michael Buhr, senior director, eBay. “StumbleUpon’s downloadable toolbar provides an engaging and unique experience to its users, but it is the similarities in our approaches to the concept of community that make it such a compelling addition to eBay.”

Mark

SEO Tags : ebay, StumbleUpon

Search Engine Land had a post on Google Korea which went out from Google’s “classic,” minimalist home page approach. Google Korea has launched its new home page with animation icons. Animate Product buttons below the search box is a new feature added to the Korean home page. These buttons tend to the respective product home pages.

The icons represented as colored dots will change to animated icons on mouse over.

Mark

SEO Tags : Google, Google Home Page, Google Korea 

Screenshots of YouTube’s New Player from Google Operating System reports that YouTube tests a new video player to have better interaction with videos and also to create a good cinematic experience. They have added some features which were already present in Google videos.

Added Features,

1. Jump to any part of the video even if the video isn’t fully downloaded.
2. Around ten related videos with thumbnails at bottom which resembles the dock from Mac OS X.
3. The menu button which gives you easy access to embed code or the URL of the YouTube page that shows the video.

New Player can be viewed now after a upload in orkut,

Mark

SEO Tags : Google, YouTube, YouTube’s New Player

Google has made a post on the release of Google Calender Beta. Google believes that people use Phones more than computers and it is also difficult for them to plan the events and maintain the schedule as well. Yahoo Calendar is already available in mobile through OneSearch.

Visit Google Calendar from your mobile and watch your agenda of upcoming events, complete with details like date, time, location, description, and guest list. Have a tour on Google Calendar Beta.

Mark

SEO Tags : Google Calendar, Mobile Phone Applications, Google

Don Dodge, who works for the Microsoft Emerging Business Team, has made an interesting post on the worth of search market. Applying some math on the Google’s financial results, market cap and search market share, he says that “Each 1% of market share is worth at least $1 billion in market cap”. His post explains why major players like Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Ask are fighting hard for every 1% of search market share.

Aravindhan

Tags : Search, Google, SEM

Yahoo have launched a new and improved home values search that allows consumers to search 70M+ U.S. residential properties and receive instant home valuation estimates through Yahoo REAL ESTATE. It will help the home owner, Seller or Buyer, “what’s this house worth?”.

The below is screen shoot of Yahoo Real Estate.

Its provided with futures like Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Local and Home Values center

Regards

Kannan

SEO Tags : Yahoo Real Estate

Yahoo bought WebJay a music service in Jan,2006. The music playlist sharing site WebJay is said to be closed at the end of june,2007 and Yahoo has asked the customers to backup their playlists.

WebJay’s Announcement

We are sorry to announce that Webjay will be closing its doors at the end of June, 2007. Please take this time to back up any playlists you want to keep. If you are using the XSPF Musicplayer, you may be able to keep it running. See below for instructions on moving the XSPF Musicplayer from Webjay to another host.

Mark

SEO Tags : Yahoo, WebJay, Yahoo music

BBC news reports that Google is to ban advertisements from Essay Writing services. Many complaints have been received regarding the plagiarism which is a great threat for integrity of university degrees. Students use to take everything from the Internet and submit it as their own.

This ban from the search engine Google has been welcomed by university authorities and angered essay writing firms. Google banned advertisements for Guns and Booze earlier and Essay Writing is also added to the list. About 12,000 essays are being sold to students in a year, says Universities UK.

From BBC news,

Google’s forthcoming ban on adverts for “academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations” means that essay websites join a blacklist of “unacceptable content” including adverts for weapons, prostitution, drugs, tobacco, fake documents and “miracle cures”.

The ban was expected to be applied across Google’s global network

Mark

SEO Tags : Google, Google AdWords,  Essay Writing  Ads

Websecurity has reported that this June will be the month of Search Engine Bugs and they are sure to make June a hot month. They are yet to publish the vulnerabilities of most popular search engines all through the month and they are very particular about Cross-Site Scripting vulnerabilities.

The Ukrainian researcher said

Purpose of this Month of Bugs is a demonstration of real state with security in search engines, which are the most popular sites in Internet. To let users of search engines and web community as a whole to understand all risks, which search engines bring to them. And also to draw attention of search engines’ owners to security issues of their sites.

To know more see ComputerWorld.

Mark

SEO Tags : Search Engines, Search Engines Bugs

Yahoo! expanding its oneSearch Beta in more countries like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Now Yahoo! oneSearch Beta in 14 countries. News, Finance, Weather, Web, Mobile Web, Flickr, and Image search results are features available in this countries for the users.

To know more about Yahoo one search click here

Kannan

SEO Tags: Yahoo one Search