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 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

Last month Yahoo announced a unlimited storage for US users and John Kremer Vice President, Yahoo! Mail yesterday have announced the same access world wide.

Yahoo mail currently has 250 million global users which is more than any other online service comparatively Live.com and Gmail having 228 million and 51 million users respectively.The current storage limit for Yahoo mail is 1 GB per account (2 GB for $20/year premium users).

Premium users of Yahoo mail will get their refund once the request is sent.
Interesting historical information from TechCrunch:

Yahoo mail will be ten years old soon. When it launched in 1997 it included a whopping 4 MB of total storage. This was increased to 100 MB in 2004, and 1 GB in 2005.

Yahoo will be rolling the unlimited storage out over a few months to facilitate a smooth transition.

Mark

SEO Tags : Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Unlimited Mail Storage

Yahoo has launched two websites green.yahoo.com and better.yahoo.com/planet which helps to build consumer-user awareness about global warming and energy conservation, etc. So making a Eco-friendly environment is going on amidst of many companies and its a good sign too.

Yahoo has announced a contest with the title ‘Greenest City in America’ Challenge With Reward of Hybrid Taxi Fleet. Yahoo and Google are battling out for something called “green cred”which is related to global warming and the environment.

Google launched the website “Summer of Green” to help people travel in an environmentally friendly way. Google v. Yahoo: Who Cares The Most About The Environment? is the topic reported in Tech Crunch where the care taken by the two search giants is being discussed. Search Engine Land has also discussed about the green cred and how Yahoo made it right.

This contest from Yahoo might make Google and Microsoft react accordingly to project their ideas on Eco-friendly environment.

Mark

SEO Tags : Yahoo, Eco-friendly environment, Greenest Search Engine,  ‘Greenest City in America’ Challenge

Simply Google is an unofficial portal where you can access all Google apps and services in a single page. Simply Google just turned one year old and getting 1200 visitors a day. Readwriteweb reports about Simply Google from Simply Google - All You Can Eat Google, On One Page.

Charles Knight in his post on top 100 alternative search enignes on readwrite web has mentioned that

Instead of squeezing through the keyhole in order to reach Google’s 37 search options, Simply Google places all of those choices and many, many more all on the very first page; neatly arranged in columns.

Chris McEvoy who created Simply Google said that,

my attempt to expose the hidden Google information architecture

We cannot expect Google to have hundreds of options in its super-effective simple homepage. Simple Google homepage demonstrates how many apps Google has to offer these days are pretty useful.

Readwrite web also says that is no wonder in Google getting its tag line “Search, Ads & Apps”!

Mark

SEO Tags : Simply Google, Google, Google Apps and Services

WSJ and Reuters reports that IAC/InterActiveCorp. launches a new mobile application for Ask.com based on GPS. The new GPS-powered mobile application will combine features like Citysearch, Ticketmaster,Evite and Ask.com.

Wireless operator Sprint Nextel will provide GPS through a deal between carrier and WaveMarket  which provides location-based services for mobile phones.  Few screenshots of this mobile are available in Search Engine Land, Greg Sterling’s personal blog Screenwerk.

Mark

SEO Tags :  Ask, IAC, GPS based mobile application, GPS Phones

EBay Seeks to Add StumbleUpon to Portfolio from the Wall Street Journal reports about the acquisition of Stumble Upon and it reminds us the talks which went back a month ago. Back on April Tech Crunch started this discussion and stated the cost would be around $40 million - $75 million. The Wall Street Journal has also reported about the potential asking price as $75 million.

An eBay spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that they do not comment on “rumors or speculation.” Garrett Camp, one of the founders of StumbleUpon, when once interviewed by Search Engine Land said the same that these were “just rumors.”

Mark

SEO Tags : StumbleUpon, EBay

MySpace aquires Photobucket for just $300 million dollars. Photobucket is comparable with YouTube since both had very large library of videos. Photobucket also had photos which YouTube doesn’t have yet. Tech Crunch and Valleywag has discussed about the purchase. Tech Crunch also says both photobucket and MySpace has a user overlap of over 100%.

Tech Crunch has projected that Myspace should have bought Photobucket for $1.3billion when compared to Google’s purchase of YouTube for $ 1.8 billion. So techcrunch describes it as a steal. It also says YouTube was far below 40 million users at the time of purchase that Photobucket has now and people use YouTube to view the content more than updating it but its not in the case of Photobucket.

So finally to conclude with MySpace has underpaid Photobucket in this purchase.

Mark

SEO Tags : MySpace, Photobucket, YouTube, Google