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Google, Ask, Yahoo, MS and other Search News

Google just bought ImageAmerica, their 7th acquisition in the last 2 months alone, which includes Panoramio, Feedburner, geospatial photo-sharing service PeakStream, online presentation software Zenter, DoubleClick, communications security company Postini and VOIP phone aggregation portal Grand Central. ImageAmerica is in the high resolution aerial cameras industry — for higher-quality and better Google Maps, I suppose.

Yahoo also made its own series of acquisitions, though not as aggressively as Google — Right Media, Rivals.com, and just recently Tyroo Media.

Microsoft took the gamble by acquiring mobile advertising solution ScreenTonic SA and digital marketing and advertising solutions aQuantive. The $6 billion purchase of aQuantive is the biggest buy for the company ever. Yahoo’s $700 million buy of RightMedia and Google’s DoubleClick worth $3.1B pales in comparison.

Yahoo’s revenue report shows $1.698 billion for Q2 of this year while Google had $3.87 billion for the same quarter. Despite that, GOOG shares dropped by $41.59 (almost 8%!) right after the announcement primarily because investors and shareholders realized Google missed its revenue projections (the hype has its disadvantages). On the other hand, Microsoft declares $13.37 billion Q2 revenues with a whooping total of $51.12 billion for this year ending June 2007. No wonder Microsoft can afford that $1.15 three-year extended warranty for the recent XBox 360 recall. Bill Gates must be itching to get back the title of World’s Richest man.

In the search front, Ask.com is leading the way on search privacy by announcing AskEraser, a feature that allows complete privacy searching. Google earlier announced it’s shortening cookie privacy expiration to just 18 months, far shorter than their previous year 2038 (yes, 2038! that far in the future) settings. Interestingly, a recent survey sponsored by Hakia.com reveals that 62% don’t trust search engines with their private information. Ask.com is going in the right direction. MSN Live is said to be gaining market share, up to 13.2% from last year’s 10.1%. Shoemoney says it’s because Microsoft sold 40 million copies of Windows Vista earlier this year. Google maintains its lead at 62.7%, while Yahoo is down to 19.6% and Ask at 3.3%.

In other news, Danny Sullivan’s new social website Sphinn.com launched last week. Jason Calacanis’ human-edited search engine Mahalo is running a contest; winners get an Apple iPhone. ReadWriteWeb focuses on the quest for the semantic web and looks at Hakia and Powerset. Seth Godin’s Squidoo addresses the issue of lens spamming.

Lastly, you gotta listen to this very funny parody by Lauren Weinstein entitled I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major Googler. Just click on the play button below {full lyrics here}.

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

3 Responses

  1. Avatar for Kay Kay says:

    The search privacy isn’t anything new. The service is already available with ixquick. It has had the search privacy for over a year now. They delete the users IP addresses & cookies within 48 hours. It’s a really good site. I’ve used it for such a long time. You should definately go check it out.

  2. Avatar for http://www.animomedia.com http://www.animomedia.com says:

    You can only see this updated technews here in Yugatech!

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