Google’s mission, to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, has once again run afoul of the Chinese government, which has a similar goal, but would much prefer that certain information stay inaccessible. And so, on Wednesday evening, Chinese citizens found themselves once again unable to use Google, Gmail, and YouTube as their government condemned Google as a purveyor of porn.
Read More »

For many years, Google, on its Explanation of Our Search Results page, claimed that “a site’s ranking in Google’s search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.” Then in May of 2007, that statement changed: “A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.” A slight adjustment in wording, but an important comment on the supremacy of the algorithm that Google had touted for years.
Read More »
Looks like Microsoft just lost the sole advantage its CEO Steve Ballmer claimed it had over Google in search: the ability to experiment. The search sovereign made two changes to its search results pages Tuesday that it says will produce better results for complicated searches.
Read More »
Ask, the little search engine that can’t, but someday hopes to, is committed to becoming a viable competitor in a market overwhelmingly dominated by Google and Yahoo. It has not, as CEO Jim Safka vehemently points out in an interview with Forbes today, ceded the search battle to anyone.
Read More »