If Barry Diller is looking for somewhere to unload IAC’s Ask.com search engine, he’d be wise to consider Microsoft–if he doesn’t have that in mind already. Analysts reflecting on Diller’s recent remarks about Ask’s “speculative future” say Microsoft is the most likely buyer if IAC is truly serious about dumping the little search engine that couldn’t.
Well, there it is. Barry Diller would rather sell off IAC’s Ask.com search engine than brave a fiercely competitive market with a property whose future he describes as “speculative.”
Microsoft may have gotten the jump on Google when its Bing search engine became the first to allow users to search Twitter in real time, but that victory is largely an empty one. Because while being first is generating quite a bit of attention for Bing–which is, for once, leading search innovation instead of following Google’s–that’s about all it’s good for now.
The broader advertising recovery may take time, but search advertising is clearly beating a hasty path back toward normalcy. Or it is in Google’s case anyway. Reporting third-quarter results after market close Thursday, the search giant posted revenue of $5.94 billion, an increase of seven percent compared to the third quarter of 2008.
In the rhetorical battle over net neutrality, Google may have regulatory capitalism with which to bludgeon and batter AT&T, but AT&T has Benedictine nuns, an entire convent of them. In a 13-page letter to the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday, the carrier took issue with Google’s claim that its Google Voice service only blocks calls to adult sex chat lines, asserting that it also blocks calls to small businesses and Benedictine nuns.
Looks like Bing’s steady upward trend of market share gains may have reversed itself. Microsoft’s new search engine saw its U.S. search share fall in September, according to figures from Hitwise. Troubling news for Microsoft. Hitwise’s latest numbers are the second set of metrics from a Web analytics firm showing Bing’s market share in decline.
No doubt about it, more consumers are Googling with Bing. According to the latest stats from research firm Nielsen, Microsoft’s new search engine is growing faster than its arch rival’s–much faster.
Hoping to further differentiate its new Bing search engine from market leader Google, Microsoft is moving away from the proverbial “10 blue links” we so often associate with the search experience. During a presentation at the TechCrunch 50 event in San Francisco, the company announced Bing Visual Search, a Silverlight-based feature that replaces those links with images.
Twitter has already had repercussions in the courtroom. Now it has had them at Microsoft’s annual company meeting as well. Employee tweets from the gathering Thursday revealed that we may see a major update to the company’s Bing search engine as early as next week.
Yahoo’s search advertising partnership with Microsoft and its embrace of Bing don’t mean the company has given up on its search business. During a presentation at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., Monday, Yahoo unveiled a number of new features in its search product that show it’s intent on competing with its new partner in the only way it can–by mimicking the features of Microsoft’s new Bing search engine, and Google’s search engine as well.
Google leads the search industry in market share. No surprise, then, that it leads the industry in customer satisfaction as well. The company has once again achieved top rank among Internet search engines and portals in the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, the seventh time it has done so in eight years.
Good thing Wall Street wasn’t expecting much from Microsoft. Because it didn’t get it.
After market close Thursday, the Redmond, Wash-based tech giant reported that fiscal fourth-quarter net income fell to $3.05 billion, or 34 cents a share, from $4.3 billion, or 46 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue for the period ended in June fell 17 percent to $13.1 billion.
Microsoft missed Wall Street revenue estimates by $1 billion. Gruesome.
Microsoft’s new Bing Internet search engine may have exceeded the growth of its rivals in June, but it didn’t do much for the company’s overall share of the search market. Bing grew faster than Yahoo and Google during the month. But sadly for Microsoft, it lost market share.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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