The European Commission (EC) announced that it has issued a 2.42 billion euro ($2.73 billion) fine against Google because the company abused its search market dominance to give an “illegal” advantage to its Google Shopping product comparison service. Google will have to end the practice within 90 days or the EC will continue to fine it 5% of its daily global revenue per day.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is in charge of competition policy, said:

Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That's a good thing. But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.

Google Shopping

Google Shopping was first launched in 2004 as “Froogle.” Google changed its name to “Google Product Search” in 2008 and to “Google Shopping” in 2013. The service wasn’t too successful, and the company must have thought that repeatedly changing the name would help.

According to the EC, this wasn’t the only thing Google did to make its product comparison service more successful. The Commission said that Google has used its search market dominance to promote Google Shopping ahead of competitors, even though as a search engine, its role should be a more neutral one.

The EC’s argument is that people expect to see “fair ranking” on Google search. Therefore, Google ranking its own services higher than those of competitors, even if it’s a worse service or not as popular, constitutes unfair ranking. It also goes against one of Google’s search engine mantras, which is that it’s the “algorithms” that decide which service ranks higher on the Google search page.

The EC also mentioned that Google went beyond simply ranking its own products higher--it also seems to have demoted competing product comparison websites via its generic search engine algorithms. The Commission’s evidence shows that Google Shopping’s competitors were on average ranked on page four of the search engine.

Meanwhile, the Google Shopping service is not subject to Google’s generic search algorithms, as stated by the Commission. This sort of treatment should drastically hurt competitors as page 1 of the search engine gets around 95% of the click traffic, with the first generic result obtaining 35% of that traffic. The first result on page 2 only receives 1% of the traffic.

The Commission said the following:

Since the beginning of each abuse, Google's comparison shopping service has increased its traffic 45-fold in the United Kingdom, 35-fold in Germany, 19-fold in France, 29-fold in the Netherlands, 17-fold in Spain and 14-fold in Italy.Following the demotions applied by Google, traffic to rival comparison shopping services on the other hand dropped significantly. For example, the Commission found specific evidence of sudden drops of traffic to certain rival websites of 85% in the United Kingdom, up to 92% in Germany and 80% in France. These sudden drops could also not be explained by other factors. Some competitors have adapted and managed to recover some traffic but never in full.

Breaching EU’s Antitrust Laws

The EC noted that market dominance on its own is not illegal under EU rules. What is illegal is abusing that position to restrict competition either in the market in which a company is dominant or in other markets that can benefit from the dominance in the main market.

The Commission observed that Google’s search engine dominance benefits from network effects, because the more users a search engine has, the more advertisers will use it. This means more money go to Google, which can be used to improve the search engine.

The EC likely mentioned this to imply that it’s not as easy as some might believe to switch to another search engine if the users feel mistreated by Google.

For instance, to create a reasonable alternative to Google, Microsoft had to lose billions of dollars every year investing in its Bing search engine, and it still has nowhere near Google’s market share globally. This is with Microsoft having its own dominant position in the desktop operating systems market and being the developer of major web browsers, Internet Explorer and Edge.

Google Responds

Google disagreed with the EC's decision to fine the company, making an argument for why Google Shopping works the way it does:

When you shop online, you want to find the products you’re looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products. That's why Google shows shopping ads, connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both.We believe the European Commission’s online shopping decision underestimates the value of those kinds of fast and easy connections. While some comparison shopping sites naturally want Google to show them more prominently, our data shows that people usually prefer links that take them directly to the products they want, not to websites where they have to repeat their searches.

What Google doesn’t say here, though, is that the owners of shopping websites wouldn’t necessarily have to advertise their products on Google Shopping, if there was, for instance, a way for them to show their products directly on the search page. In other words, Google could improve its search engine in ways that could benefit both users and online shop owners, without the shop owners having to pay extra.

FTC Competition Unit Agreed With EC

Back in 2012, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s competition unit conducted its own investigation into Google Shopping, and it also concluded that Google was abusing its market position. However, the FTC leadership at the time declined to pursue charges against Google.

The Google Shopping investigation was just one of EC’s three antitrust investigations against Google. The Commission is also investigating whether or not Google has been abusing its dominance in the mobile market, and whether or not Google uses AdSense policies to ban third-party websites from using competitors’ ad networks. The EC also said that it will continue to look at Google’s treatment of its own services in other specialized markets.

Back in July 2013, Yahoo-owned Tumblr tried to make its pages of porn inaccessible to the general public by making searches for this material nearly impossible. The 12.5 million "Adult"-based blogs could only be found if visitors landed on a blog that already linked to the "not safe for work" content. Performing a search for porn within and outside Tumblr produced no results.

However, owners of the blogs in question lashed out in protest, pushing Tumblr into restoring the pages' listings in the search engine. Previously, these sites could be found using "Adult" and "NSFW" tags, but now all porn-based sites are crammed under the "NSFW" search tag umbrella. Tumblr users in Safe Mode will not see the sexually explicit content.

On Monday night, Google updated its own adult content policy for Blogger, revealing that as of March 23, 2015, porn will be banned from the site. More specifically, the terms state that "you won't be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity." The only nudity that Google will allow must fall within the scientific, documentary, artistic and educational categories.

"If your existing blog does have sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video, your blog will be made private after March 23, 2015," Google stated. "No content will be deleted, but private content can only be seen by the owner or admins of the blog and the people who the owner has shared the blog with."

Bloggers who have created their porn-based pages before March 23, 2015 have two choices: they must either remove all explicit nude pictures and videos, or they must mark their blog as private. Bloggers can also simply close down their blog, which can be done by exporting the site as an .xml file or by using Google Takeout to archive everything.

For blogs that are created after March 23, 2015 and show sexually explicit material, Google will take down these sites and/or will "take other action."

Google began to crack down on owners of porn-based blogs back in 2013 by changing its Content Policy. In a nutshell, the company doesn't want bloggers to make money off their adult-oriented blogs. Those with questionable advertisements will be shut down if the offending adverts are not removed.

Is Google going too far in banning blogs with explicit adult content? Some may say that the banning is a violation of free speech. Take a look at Google's Content Policy and you'll see that the company supports "communication, self-expression and freedom of speech." However, Google has the right to choose what can and cannot be shown on Blogger. Don't like the new terms? Then pack your bags and move the site over to Tumblr.

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In the Internet age, it can be harder to leave your past behind than ever before, but that might have become just a bit easier this past week. Following a ruling by a European Commission earlier this month, Google now has a form that lets users submit a request to remove links to personal data to be removed from searches.

The ruling declared that there is an intrinsic "right to be forgotten" online and that Google should respond to inquiries to stop linking to anything that's "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed."

The decision came as a response to a privacy decision by the European Union Court of Justice regarding a number of cases brought by the Spanish data protection authority in 2011. One such case involved an individual who felt an auction listing for his repossessed house violated his privacy.

Google responded by issuing a form that users can fill out and submit links that they want to be removed. At that point, Google will "assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public's right to know and distribute information."

The submissions will be overseen by a committee of experts including independent experts from outside of Google. To prevent the unscrupulous from scrubbing their digital track, Google has promised to weigh "whether there's a public interest in the information – for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions or public conduct of government officials."

Unfortunately, removal of links requires quite a bit of information to be provided. In addition to the URL and an explanation of why the link should be removed, a name, email address and a photo ID must also be provided. If Google approves the request, the results will be removed from all of Google's EU sites, though the removal will not apply to search results outside of the EU.

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Next to Facebook and Twitter, very few people use Google+. Nevertheless, it isn't without its advantages. Many Internet content producers use the social network to maximize their search engine returns, and increasingly it seems that photographers have taken to the platform.

Google also introduced video support for its features previously introduced that were just for photos.

Large uploads in super-high resolutions are generally a fair bit easier on G+ than any of its real competitors, and when combined with the excellent search features Google naturally brings to the table, that turns into a good place for amateur and professional photographers alike. Recognizing the potential, Google seems to have shifted their focus and have a nice batch of new features for shutterbugs.

In a private press conference, Google announced that they would be beefing up its picture editing, upload and management features. Some of the additions include better search, HDR filters, and a quick, light-weight video editor. Vic Fundotra, Senior VP of engineering,-- said that G+ has topped 300 million users and are seeing over 1.5 billion photo uploads each week. "We are not building a service for lightweight sharing… [We] are revolutionizing the field of photography."

Earlier this year at Google I/O, the company introduced "auto awesome," which would automatically enhance your photos.

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Google is officially turning 15 on Friday, and instead of having cake and ice cream at its special party at Menlo Park, California, the search engine giant introduced to the press an update to its core search algorithm called "Hummingbird." The company hasn't made this significant of a change in its search algorithm since 2010 when it introduced "Caffeine." Unfortunately, many Googlers may not even notice a difference, wishing they had birthday party favors instead.

The new algorithm can better answer the more complex queries Google users are now asking. This update impacts all kinds of queries, but is most effective with the long complex questions. Hummingbird can essentially understand concepts versus words as well as the relationships between concepts. Hummingbird is also more focused on ranking sites better for relevance unlike Caffeine, which focused on crawling sites and better indexing.

Google Search SVP Amit Singhal reports that the Knowledge Graph is now better prepared to answer more questions even when there's no simple answer. For instance, a user can tell Google to "tell me about Impressionist artists," and users will see a "card" listing these artists to discover. To switch over to the Abstract bunch, users can simply hit the new "Filter" tool. Comparisons can be done by hitting the "Comparisons" tool.

Tamar Yehoshua, Google's VP of Search, demonstrated a deeper search during the press event. She asked Google Now to "give me pictures of the Eiffel Tower," and they appeared. She then asked how tall the structure was, and Hummingbird revealed its height. Asking for pictures of the construction brought forth images and a response, "Here are some matching pictures."

This "Conversation" mode has actually been rolling out for a while, but Google is reporting that Hummingbird really wasn't officially integrated until a month ago. Singhai admits that Google isn't at full Federation capacity in regards to the interaction between human and AI (admit it: Majel Barrett would have been awesome as the Google Now voice), but users can now do quite a lot simply using their voice. The company wants to share this love with Apple's iOS crowd, and is planning to release updated Google Search apps soon.

"In the next couple of weeks, you'll be able to download a new version of the Google Search app on iPhone and iPad. With this update, you can get notifications across your devices," he said. "So if you tell your Nexus 7, 'OK Google. Remind me to buy olive oil at Safeway,' when you walk into the store with your iPhone, you’ll get a reminder. We'll also show you Google Now notifications so you're not late to your cooking class."

Singhai also said that Google Search users may notice the new look and feel, even in the mobile ads. The interface is cleaner and simpler, he said, optimized for touch. As previously stated, the results are now clustered on "cards" so that users can focus on the answers.

Google's pre-anniversary press party took place in Google's original headquarters: Susan Wojcicki's former garage at 232 Santa Margarita Ave. "When we were here and a small, tiny company, we were thinking big. It's just that not as many people were listening," she said. "Today, we're looking at projects like Glass, or Loon for access, or driverless cars."

Wojcicki said that when there were only seven of them working as a company in that very garage, they had a whiteboard in the back room that read, "Google Worldwide Headquarters."

Google's Doodles have become more complicated over the years. Though they started out as simple drawings, they've progressed to animated works of art and sometimes full blown games. Google is treating us to the latter this morning. The company is commemorating the Roswell UFO incident with a small adventure game that sees the player take on the role of a displaced extra terrestrial.

Your job is to help the little guy collect the parts of his ship so he can reassemble it and go home. At the end, you're rewarded with a link to the Google search results for 'Roswell UFO incident.' Google hasn't yet said whether or not it will maintain the mini game once the Doodle's time expires (it kept its Pac-Man game from March 2010 alive and it's still accessible today via google.com/doodles/30th-anniversary-of-pac-man) so you better try it while it's on the homepage.

Search engine giant, Google, has agreed to a deal to acquire e-commerce company, Channel Intelligence, for $125 million.

The $125 million will be paid in cash, Channel Intelligence’s parent company, ICG, confirmed. The former's services offer technology that helps boost sale of products online. As well as a Facebook platform, it offers product search engines for firms wanting to improve their product sales.

Channel claims that it "drives $2 billion in sales annually in referred sales online in computing products, home improvement products, appliances, consumer electronics, toys and a variety of other consumer packaged goods."

"Building upon the perseverance and strong foundation laid by CI's founder Rob Wight, I am extremely proud of the work we accomplished at CI," said Doug Alexander, CEO of CI and President of ICG. "With the talent and hard work of the entire CI team, we successfully navigated a very complex marketplace, ending a record year that culminated in this very exciting acquisition."

Google has already entered the e-commerce market through its Shopping page and a Checkout tool for online merchants. It stressed that the acquisition of Channel should improve its shopping services.

"We want to help consumers save time and money by improving the online shopping experience," a spokesperson told CNET. "We think Channel Intelligence will help create a better shopping experience for users and help merchants increase sales across the web."

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British inventor Trevor Baylis has claimed that the internet is making a new generation of children 'brain-dead' predominately due to the influence of Google.

The 75-year-old, who created the wind-up radio, says the current generation of kids are failing to learn practical skills and will subsequently be unable to create anything with their hands.

Baylis added that children are becoming overly reliant on instant Google searches, as well as expressing his concern for the next generation of inventors.

"Children have got to be taught hands-on, and not to become mobile phone or computer dependent. They are dependent on Google searches. A lot of kids will become fairly brain-dead if they become so dependent on the internet, because they will not be able to do things in the old-fashioned way."

Dr David Wood, a maths professor at Warwick University and Academic Leader of the International Gateway for Gifted Youth, disagreed with Baylis' comments.

"Far from dumbing down, from my point of view it is just the opposite. The internet is a tool and one with fantastic potential for kids if it is used properly. We use the internet to enable the brightest kids to link up with each other."

It's that time of year, again, folks. The time when companies around the world start compiling top lists based on the trends of 2012. As is tradition, search giant Google has released its top search terms for the year, analyzing over one trillion queries to reveal just what its users have spent the last 12 months looking for.

This is the 12th year Google has released its Zeitgeist and the company says it's the most global to date, with a total of 838 lists covering 55 countries. Google also added some new functionality, including an interactive map that shows where and when some of the hottest terms spiked around the world, and a Google Zeitgeist Android app is already available for download.

Singer Whitney Houston topped the top 10 list for search trends worldwide, following by Gangnam Style, Hurricane Sandy, iPad 3, and Diablo 3. Kate Middleton, Olympics 2012, Amanda Todd, Michael Clarke Duncan, and BBB12 rounded out the top 10. English pop group One Direction came in at number one for images, followed by Selena Gomez, the iPhone 5, Megan Fox and Rihanna. Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Minecraft, Nicki Minaj, and Katy Perry rounded out the top 10.

Google's 2012 worldwide Zeitgeist features a total of 11 lists, including one dedicated to consumer electronics. So, what was the top trending gadget in 2012? According to Google, it was Apple's iPad 3. Samsung's Galaxy SIII came in second place, while the newly announced iPad mini came in third. The Nexus 7 and the Note 2 rounded out the top five. Also on the list were the PlayStation, iPad 4, Microsoft Surface, Kindle Fire, and Nokia Lumia 920, which occupied spots six through 10.

Check out the full Zeitgeist here to see the complete lists as well as lists from individual countries. Google also released a 2012 'Year in Review' video, so be sure to check that out, too.

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Due to a change in its measurement system, analytic firm ComScore has increased Facebook's traffic figures, but Google still remains the dominant website in terms of the number of visitors on both desktop and mobile.

ComScore, a company that tracks website visitors and other similar data, revealed its new digital audience measurement and media planning tool in the form of the "Media Metrix Multi-Platform."

The platform is currently in a beta stage in the U.S., with its technology tracking metrics including audience size and demographics on desktop browsers and mobile devices. The new system also accounts for users utilizing multiple devices to access the sites.

"With smartphones and tablets accounting for a rapidly expanding share of digital media consumption, comScore recognized the need to evolve our industry-leading audience measurement product to better represent this new paradigm," Jeff Hackett, executive vice president of ComScore, explained. "By developing proprietary methods to account for multi-platform audience overlap, we have designed a truly unique and innovative solution."

For Facebook in particular, the Media Metrix Multi-Platform makes it the third-most-visited site on the web during September via 179,411,000 visitors. When judging by desktop traffic, it would drop to fourth place.

Google remains at the top spot by using either ComScore's new measurement strategy or its old platform. It was the only site to surpass 100 million unique visitors on both desktop and mobile.

ComScore said the platform will remain in beta over the next few months as the product is put through a comprehensive data review and validation with its clients. It stressed that publicly reported data should not be interpreted as official ComScore data/rankings.

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Google might have expanded into many markets over the years but the company's core business is still search. The company's successful search engine is its bread and butter. However, it seems that the bread and butter is slipping in the UK. According to Hitwise, Google's UK search market share has dropped below 90 percent for the first time in years.

Experian Hitwise reports that in October, Google accounted for 89.33 percent of all UK internet searches. While this is definitely still the lion's share of the market, its the first time in five years that Google has dropped below 90 percent market share in the UK. The 1.41 percent drop from 90.74 in September meant growth for both Microsoft and Yahoo!, Google's biggest competitors in the search space. Bing's market share increased by 0.72 percent to 4.7 percent of all UK searches. Yahoo! enjoyed 3.33 percent of searches, a 0.50 percent increase over September.

"Clearly, Google still maintains a huge competitive edge over the other search engines in the UK market. There are 18 times more searches conducted on Google Sites than on all the other search engines combined," wrote Experian's James Murray. "However, this is encouraging news for Microsoft as Bing once again starts to gain some momentum and traction in the UK search market."

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Google yesterday joined the slew of companies releasing earnings reports this week with results for the quarter ended September 30. However, the company's results were accidentally released early with some pretty serious consequences.

According to MarketWatch, Google was planning to release its results after the market closed, but an early version of the report, found in an 8-K SEC filing, was released at around lunchtime. Stock was trading at around $755 at the time of the report's release but took a dive, dropping as low as $676 per share in the hours that followed. Google actually halted trading for more than two hours this afternoon in an effort to help things settle down.

Revenue was $14.1 billion compared to $12.21 billion last year, however, Google's GAAP net income for this quarter was $2.18 billion compared to $2.73 billion for the same period last year. GAAP earnings per share were posted as $6.53 EPS (333 million diluted shares outstanding) compared to $8.33 EPS for the same period last year (327 million diluted shares outstanding). 

For the full earnings report, click here.

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Google has taken steps to censor the Pirate Bay. The search giant this week removed the Pirate Bay from its autocomplete terms so users searching will not see the site in Autocomplete or Instant Search results. TorrentFreak reports that the Pirate Bay joined Google's list of censored search phrases which already includes other "piracy-related" terms such as Bittorrent and RapidShare.

This latest move follows Google's recent decision to start downranking piracy sites in search results. While these steps certainly won't stop people from using Google to search for pirated content, it does make it a little more difficult to use the search giant as a stepping stone to downloading copyrighted material illegally.

Naturally, the Pirate Bay isn't too fussed about the whole thing, having gone through much worse in its time. Speaking to TorrentFreak, a spokesperson said they haven't noticed a decrease in referrers. What's more, even if this new effort from Google did affect referrals, it wouldn't count for much anyway because the percentage of traffic coming from search engines like Google is very small.

Indeed the move is no where near as drastic as the situation in the United Kingdom, where several major ISPs were ordered to block access to the Pirate Bay completely. Even still, the Pirate Bay and its supporters have found workarounds to avoid the block and maintain access to the popular file-sharing site.

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Amit Singhal, Google's SVP of Engineering, said that starting this week, the company will implement an update in the search algorithms that will place sites related to piracy lower on the list -- a demoting, so to speak. The ranking will be based on the number of valid copyright removal notices Google receives for any given website, and should help Web surfers find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily, pushing Spotify, Hulu and others to the top.

For years copyright owners have demanded that Google completely block websites linked to pirated material from showing up in search results. Google typically blocks links to the actual illegal content, not the websites themselves. The new change reflects its current stance, pushing violators down the search results ladder rather than nuking the links entirely.

"Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online," Singhal said in a blog on Friday. "In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings."

Google doesn't determine whether a website has infringed on copyrights -- that's left up to copyright holders and the legal system. That said, Google won't remove any pages from search results unless the company receives a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner.

"And we’ll continue to provide 'counter-notice' tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated," he added. "We’ll also continue to be transparent about copyright removals."

Naturally Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, applauds what's believed to be Google's most significant anti-piracy measure yet.

"Today Google has announced a potentially significant change in its search rankings that can make a meaningful difference to creators," Sherman said in a news release. "This change is an important step in the right direction -- a step we've been urging Google to take for a long time -- and we commend the company for its action."

Michael O’Leary of the Motion Picture Association of America doesn't seem quite so enthusiastic, but remains positive with the efforts nonetheless.

"We are optimistic that Google’s actions will help steer consumers to the myriad legitimate ways for them to access movies and TV shows online, and away from the rogue cyberlockers, peer-to-peer sites, and other outlaw enterprises that steal the hard work of creators across the globe," he said in a brief press release (pdf) "We will be watching this development closely -- the devil is always in the details -- and look forward to Google taking further steps to ensure that its services favor legitimate businesses and creators, not thieves."

Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Julie Samuels called Google's process opaque and highlighted a number of unanswered questions such as what constitutes as a high number of removal notices, and how Google determines the ranking based on those numbers.

"Takedown requests are nothing more than accusations of copyright infringement," Samuels said. "No court or other umpire confirms that the accusations are valid (although copyright owners can be liable for bad-faith accusations). Demoting search results – effectively telling the searcher that these are not the websites you’re looking for – based on accusations alone gives copyright owners one more bit of control over what we see, hear, and read."

Google does a lot of things. It seems it to grow a new hand to stick in yet another pot every six months or so. However, the company's first product (and arguably its most important one), goes by the name of Google Search. According to Google, more than 1000 years of labor have gone into building the Google Search algorithm. The company is constantly tweaking this but we don't really get a lot of insight into that process.

This week, Google is offering us a glimpse of how search works. The company has, for the first time, posted an uncut video documenting one of its "Quality Launch Review" meetings. Google holds the meeting on Thursdays to discuss possible algorithmic improvements and make decisions about what to launch. This meeting in particular covered improving spelling suggestions for searches with more than 10 words. It impacts just 0.1 percent of Google's traffic but even for small details like this one, aspects such as relevance, spam, latency, cost, and language impact are taken into account.

Check out the video below for a taste of what it's like to be a part of Google's Search team:

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Nielsen reports that last month, Bing overtook Yahoo! for the first time, with a search market share of 13.9 percent to Yahoo!'s 13.1 percent. Though it's definitely a win for Microsoft, we don’t imagine Yahoo! will be too upset. CEO Carol Bartz has said in the past that Yahoo! is not a search company and more recently, the company signed a deal with Microsoft that involves Microsoft technology powering Yahoo! search. Reuters reports that if you combine Bing-powered search, Microsoft accounts for 26 percent of the search market.

Google continues to lead with 65 percent of the U.S. search market.

Google Instant wasn't the only thing Marissa Meyer was excited about at yesterday's event in the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco. Meyer revealed that 2010 is the best year so far for Google Search and that the company has already blown past 2009's number of 500 UI changes. However, the most mind-blowing fact was probably that Google now serves one billion people a week. That's nearly a sixth of the population of the world.

But why stop at a billion? With Google Instant, Co-founder Sergey Brin told Bloomberg that the company will reach even more people. Meyer said yesterday that the new feature will save users 11 hours per second, and Brin thinks that people will search more, because they have more time.

"Ultimately I think that if people are able to search faster, then they're going to be able to search more and they're going to be able to research more topics that are important to them," Brin told Bloomberg. "Ultimately I think that's going to draw more users, more activity and that's going to be good for us, for advertisers and most importantly for users themselves."

Have you tried Google Instant yet? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

Google has become the standard search engine of choice around the world, but it's not the only one in the game. Microsoft's Bing is a fine alternative, but getting people to switch is hard. Would you switch your search engine if Microsoft were to donate $3 to schools in need?

Microsoft has created Search With Purpose, a page that will add Bing as a search provider in Firefox and IE (though the whole donation process will work with Chrome and Safari too) and send you a $3 donation code for you to enter in yourself.

The page notes "Bing will donate up to $100,000 in $3 donation codes during the promotion. Donation codes may only be used at DonorsChoose.org and expire on August 31, 2010." Nevertheless, it's to a good cause and you don't really have to be committed to Bing if you find Google is still a better fit for your internet needs.

Google has been in the spotlight recently over its consideration to end its operations in China. All came to light when Google stated that some of its services--like Gmail--were hacked from someone within China.

The search giant then announced that it would consider closing its doors in China over censorship, sparking heated debate with the Chinese government. Since then, speculation over when Google close its China doors have run rampant. Today however, Google flipped the switch and has ceased all censoring in China. Google reps indicated that it would still keep some offices open for busines.

From Google's official blog:

On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn. So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over. Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China. In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.

During an interview yesterday morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked about his thoughts on Twitter, Yahoo! and Google. Ballmer shared a lot of interesting information (including the fact that he has a twitter account under an undisclosed username for personal use), but the most interesting part of the interview was the CEO's view on Google's number one position in the search market.

As you can imagine, Steve Ballmer gets asked about overtaking Google in the search space a lot. Ballmer yesterday said that it's a hard question to answer, stating that really, there's no such thing as a 'good' response.

"There's no good answer to this question. If you say yes you seem like you're arrogant and if you say no it looks like you have no faith. So the answer is yes, someday," Ballmer told Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land.

Ballmer also said that Google's biggest asset is just that they were first. "The truth is, the number one thing Google benefits from is they did it right first," he said. Ballmer went on to say that search will be a bigger part of business for Microsoft going forward.

"I guarantee search is going to be a growing share of Microsoft's profits. That means it's first got to break even, then get bigger, but that's a growing share the way I do my math," he said. Ballmer said that Microsoft has also learned from Buzz, claiming that following the public backlash against Google's microblogging service, Redmond has been thinking more about piracy.

Read more about the interview on PCWorld.

This week, headlines were filled with Google's bold statement that it might pull out of China altogether in response to hacker attacks.

"These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China," said Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.

"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," were the telling words from Drummond.

While the threat of the world's most important internet company pulling its operations from within a country is serious, the Chinese officials have yet to even flinch.

According to Bloomberg, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular briefing in Beijing today that Chinese law prohibits hacking and other forms of online attacks.

Jiang Yu said, "The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet."

While the Chinese spokeswoman did not directly apply that statement to Google, the message appears clear that if Google is unwilling to play by the country's censorship laws, then the internet giant has no place in China.

In a shocking announcement, Google said that it may consider shutting down its operations in China.

Google reported that several of its gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists were compromised this week, leading company officials to reconsider its business model in China. Analysts believe that the attacks were made from within China's government, but no confirmation was given. Google officials did not disclose whether or not Google believed affected Gmail accounts were attacked by the China's government.

The search giant, along with many others, have long been under scrutiny by Beijing officials. In China, there is no such thing as freedom of search. China monitors and censors topics that it deems inappropriate for its citizens. Subject matter such as those that do not follow the Chinese government's political stance, or of pornographic nature, are blocked from access.

"We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," said Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.

"These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China."

It remains to be seen whether or not Google will take such actions, but according to analysts, it could be possible.

Up until this point, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others, have all complied with China's demands. Censorship is a very hot topic for China, and while many companies and groups have spoken out against China's restrictions on its users, government officials remain firm that censoring is the best course of action for its people.

Google.cn generates roughly $1 billion for Google.

More on Reuters.

A fairly decent number of people claim to have happily switched from Google to Bing. In what we can only assume is an effort to prove to the more steadfast Googlers how easy it is to go to the dork dark side, Microsoft sponsored an "independent" study that saw fifteen Google users use only Bing for seven days straight. The result, a lot of people like Bing!

I thought Microsoft was doing pretty well up until now. The company was slowly gaining search market share and showing nice month over month growth (aside from the slight dip in September). Then the video contest happened. Microsoft ran a content to try and find the Bing jingle and while the winner was incredibly annoying, it was still kind of fun. Then this study happened. I'll admit that when someone says 'Microsoft study' I automatically think of the Mojave experiment the company did a few months back. Microsoft gave a bunch of people who, for some reason or another, had never used Vista before and shocker, they all loved it. Even the ones who had heard Vista was the root of all evil. So perhaps I'm a little jaded when it comes to over-enthusiastic results from a Microsoft-run study. This study shows that ten out of the fifteen Googlers in this study have apparently seen the error of their ways and are ready to change to Bing full time.

Microsoft has posted the results of the survey in a series of shorts. These are embedded below. Do you think the results of the survey are reliable? While fifteen is quite a small sample size, the fact that Microsoft convinced almost 70 percent (rounding up, here) of the group is quite impressive. If it's true, go Microsoft! Check out the videos and leave your thoughts on the study in the comments below.

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At one time or another you've probably wondered what kind of information Google has on you. If you're constantly connected there's a good chance you're using more than one or two Google services. So how much of your data is Google storing?

With the help of Dashboards, Google wants to show you exactly how much information it has on you. You can also change your settings if you're not happy with the information being stored.

Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, and Latitude - and Google believes the scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented.

As we're all too aware, Google search results sometimes include browser-unfriendly documents such as PDFs. Up until now, Google had made it possible for users to view these files in HTML, avoiding the need to download the PDF and open it in separate application. Nice, but still kind of annoying when the HTML screws up the formatting of the document you're looking at.

Far be it from me to tell you what's a big improvement and what's not but I'm definitely a fan of the Google's latest effort to take the little PDF-shaped thorn out my searches. Using the same technology Gmail and Google Docs users are well used to, Google has added a "Quick View" link to the PDF search results that allow you to view PDFs in your browser. The improvement on Google's HTML solution? No more skewed formatting! You'll see your PDF with all the pretty graphics and tablets you couldn't get before.

The best part of this news is that Google plans to roll out more "Quick View" links for other types of documents. Check the full post here.

New numbers from StatCounter show that rather than continuing its trend of acquiring more market share at the expense of competitors Google and Yahoo!, Bing fell by 1.1 percent (bringing the decision making engine down from 9.64 percent to 8.51 percent) while Google rose two full percentage points, moving to 80.08 percent, up from the 77.83 percent it had in August. Yahoo! also declined, moving to 9.40 percent from 10.50 percent.

This is rough news in itself, however the fact that its Bing's first decline since it launched in May.

"The trend has been downwards for Bing since mid August," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "The wheels haven't fallen off but the underlying trend must be a little worrying for Microsoft."

Read more from StatCounter.

Lately Yahoo! has been adding more and more third party tools to its website. Be it Facebook, Twitter or the ability to check your non-Yahoo! email accounts, the company is definitely opening things up. However, one thing we didn't expect was that the company would consider letting users choose an alternate search engine from the Yahoo! homepage.

Back in August Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz surprised a lot of people when she said her company "was never a search company." Despite having 20 percent of the search market, Bartz insisted, "her fortunes are tied to her pages," and it seems she's not the only Yahoo! who thinks so. This week senior director Burke Culligan said having other search engines on the Yahoo! homepage "may not be out of the question."

“Right now, we’re not doing that but long-term that may not be out of the question,” Culligan told analysts, according to PaidContent. “We want to provide the best experience for the user and, in some way, if that was the best experience for the user we might be open to that.”

Would you be more inclined to use the Yahoo! homepage as a one stop shop for your news, weather, mail, etc. if you could use an alternate search engine? Let us know in the comments below!

CNet News cites a Nielson report released Monday that puts 10 percent of the search market in the bucket marked Bing. Of course, Google is still the king of the castle with 64 percent (an increase of 2.6 percent over July) and Yahoo! comes second with 16 percent (a decrease of 4.2 percent). However, Bing searches for August clocked in with 1.1 billion for the month of August, an increase of 22.1 percent over July, giving Microsoft a 10.7 percent share of the search market.

CNet reports that similar studies from the likes of ComScore also show an increase in Bing searches. Microsoft this week launched visual search for Bing, which shows users their search results in the form of a deck of pictures as opposed to just a page of hyperlinks.

Click here to see the full results of the Nielson report.

Over the last few months, Yahoo! has made a number of improvements to both its online products and the way things are run behind the scenes. This week, the company announced that in conjunction with the recent changes made to the Yahoo! Homepage, the company is redesigning Mail, Search and Messenger.

First up is Yahoo! Mail, which is getting new multi-select, drag-and-drop functionality designed to make attaching images much easier. Yahoo! has also upped the photo and filesize limits from 10MB to 25MB. Photos aside, the company is also going to start filtering your important emails from the other junk you get on a day-to-day basis. When you log in, you get a small panel that only shows you mail from your contacts. From there, you can move along to your inbox, which will show you all of your mail. Of course, Yahoo! has also made things a bit more social. The new and improved Yahoo! Mail features a new panel called 'Updates' which shows you "what your friends are  sharing online." It basically brings all your Flickring, YouTubeing, and tweeting friends' actions to you.

Next up, Yahoo! is introducing Yahoo! Messenger 10, which features high quality video calling. You can also change the language before you sign in, which will change all your menus from English to whichever language you've selected. Lastly, enter that 'Updates' panel that made its debut in Yahoo! Mail. Again, twitter, Last.fm and Flickr updates (among others) along with the ability to IM a friend about a specific update.

Finally, Yahoo! yesterday said the company is currently testing a new search results page that "ups the ante on personal relevance." As well as providing new tools for refining results (e.g. explore related concepts or narrow down your search to only include people or videos), Bryan Lamkin SVP of Yahoo! Applications said that the company is also putting in place technology that will try to figure out what you're searching for based on your previous searches. If you search for 'cat' and then 'jaguar', Yahoo! will show you the animal and not the car. The improvements to search are currently only being tested with selected users. No word on how long it will be before we all have the chance to try it out.

You can read more about all these changes on the Yahoo! corporate blog here.

Yahoo! has seen some big changes in recent months. In fact, since the company appointed Carol Bartz there's been more "shake-ups" than you can well, shake a stick at. Most recently, the company rolled out some homepage changes allowing users to update their Facebook, and share links all without leaving the Yahoo! homepage. In other words, it added extra features aside from search. The company has been touting itself as a web portal for some time now and according to Carol Bartz, Yahoo! was never a search company at all.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Bartz says that she's more than happy with Yahoo!'s 20 percent share of the search market because according to Carol, "her fortunes are tied to her pages."

The Yahoo! CEO went on to say that the company will be investing more money in its pages to bring everything in line with what the company's sports page is like at the moment (i.e. original content as opposed to relying on content from third party sources). How is Yahoo! going to go about it? In her interview with the Times, Bartz pointed out that there are plenty of unemployed journalists at the moment.

What sort of company do you think Yahoo! is? Let us know in the comments below!

Check out the full story here.

BoomTown last week reported that top executives at Microsoft (including Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of Microsoft's Online Audience Business Group, search head Satya Nadella and top digital executive Qi Lu) have flown from Redmond to Silicon Valley to iron out the details of a search and advertising deal. Kara Swisher reports that the issues remaining to be resolved are something to do with deployment of technology.

Sources at both Yahoo! and Microsoft told BoomTown that if everything goes according to plan, the deal could be announced before this week is out.

Since the Yahoo/Google deal collapsed spectacularly last year, there's been little said about Yahoo's plans for a search or advertising deal with Microsoft. There was a brief mention of such a deal in April of this year but there were very few details available at that time. BT reports that this particular agreement would see Microsoft paying Yahoo several billion dollars to take over its search advertising business and guarantee certain payments back to Yahoo.

Whatever they decide, it looks like we're going to hear all about it this week. That said, don't forget that if the two do come to an agreement, it still has to make it past the Department of Justice's antitrust division, which was the reason Google and Yahoo's proposed deal didn't go through last year.

Check out the full story here.

Following the July 1 promise that it would start bringing full versions to users in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and the UK up to U.S. level, UK product manager at Microsoft, Ian Moulster, has provided some more details on wrote on when Microsoft will roll out the “full service” in the UK, giving them a version of Bing that is closer to what U.S. users are currently using.

“When bing.com was announced recently you may recall that while a full service was made available immediately in the US, a more limited beta service was provided in the UK while the team built out some UK-specific features so that the UK experience could be made as compelling as possible.”

Moulster went on to say that a little later in the summer we’ll see “some of the categorization introduced, paving the way for the “full blown” bing experience with beta tag removal following that by a few months.” We can only assume the same goes for Japanese, Chinese, Australian and Canadian versions of the search engine so those of you who haven't made your mind up about the search, er, decision making engine, can finally take the complete version for a test drive. The news is slightly overshadowed by the fact that Google Apps (Gmail, Gtalk, Google Calendar and Google Docs) is finally losing its own beta tag.

Read more about Gmail’s beta tag removal here and check out Ian McMoulster’s blog here.

Last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt told FOX Business Network that the arrival of Bing won’t change what Google is doing. "It's not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year," Schmidt told the Fox Business Network earlier in the week. "I don't think Bing's arrival has changed what we're doing. We are about search, we're about making things enormously successful, by virtue of innovation," said Schmidt adding that Google has a different focus. "Google is about getting all the information and organizing it. Yahoo has a different strategy. We think ultimately Bing will evolve to a different strategy as well."

However a dramatically titled piece in the New York Post (think ‘Fear Grips Google’ in all caps), we learn that Sergey Brin is worried enough to put together a team of top engineers who will begin making urgent improvements to Google, starting immediately. Not only that, but the Post cites inside sources who say the team is led by Brin himself and is an effort to determine how Bing's crucial search algorithm differs from that of Google’s.

We highly doubt Google is in a flap over Bing, at least not to the extent portrayed in the piece by the Post. That said, one of Google’s co-founders rolling up his sleeves and playing a major role in a project isn’t something to ignore. Watch this space.

In April of this year, it emerged that the Justice Department had launched an antitrust probe in relation to Google’s settlement with the Authors Guild of America. At the time, people close to the situation told the New York Times that the Justice Department would not necessarily oppose the settlement, detailing that the inquiry is a result of complaints made by concerned critics who say the settlement would give Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books.

Today the New York Times reports that the Justice Department has stepped up its antitrust investigation, and issued formal requests for information to several of the parties involved, including Google, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and individual publishers. “They are asking for a lot of information,” said Michael J. Boni, a partner at Boni & Zack, who represented the Authors Guild in negotiations with Google. “It signals that they are serious about the antitrust implications of the settlement.” The NYT also notes that Attorney Generals in several states are also reviewing the situation.

Last October, Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers announced that the three had come to an agreement with regard to pre-scanned copyright protected books, and laid out prospective plans for future revenues. Google said it would give payments totaling $125 million, with the money being used to cover legal fees as well as establish the Book Rights Registry, aimed at resolving existing claims by authors and publishers.

This isn't the first time Google has come under fire from antitrust regulators in the United States. The search giant called off a proposed advertising deal with compeitor Yahoo! following pressure from the Justice Department.

In a recent interview with Fox, Google CEO Eric Schmidt put forth the appearance that he’s not worried about Microsoft’s latest search engine Bing for a number of reasons.

"It's not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year," Schmidt told the Fox Business Network earlier in the week. "I don't think Bing's arrival has changed what we're doing. We are about search, we're about making things enormously successful, by virtue of innovation."

It’s true that, over the years, Microsoft has had a number of redesigns and brand changes for its search engine. Since the launch in 1998, we’ve seen MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Live Search and now Bing. However, Microsoft seems determined to push Bing as a “decision making engine” as opposed to a search engine similar to past endeavors, and Google’s Schmidt seems to believe that that alone will stop Bing from overtaking Google.

"Google is about getting all the information and organizing it. Yahoo has a different strategy. We think ultimately Bing will evolve to a different strategy as well."

Do you think Bing could pose a significant threat to Google or Yahoo? Let us know what you think of Microsoft’s new decision making engine in the comments below.

Google today rolled out a couple of changes designed to help improve the Google search results.

Starting today, Google is deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and in turn offer more useful related search results (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page). Google gave an example of the new technology via a blog post:

For example, if you search for "principles of physics", our algorithms understand that "angular momentum," "special relativity," "big bang" and "quantum mechanic" are related terms that could help you find what you need.

The new feature also applies in 37 languages all around the world.

The other cool feature Google has added is longer snippets for longer queries. We all know how annoying it is when you search for something, click a result only to find that the words in your search just happen to be on a page full of ads from the Yellow Pages, or a page that contains no information on what you were looking for. Google search results will now display longer snippets for searches that are more than three words long making it easier to see where exactly your click is going to take you and if there’s any point clicking at all. Google once again explains:

Suppose you were looking for information about Earth's rotation around the sun, and specifically wanted to know about its tilt and distance from the sun. So you type all of that into Google: [earth's rotation axis tilt and distance from sun]. A normal-length snippet wouldn't be able to show you the context for all of those words, but with longer snippets you can be sure that the first result covers all those topics. In addition, the extra line of snippets for the third result shows the word "sun" in context, suggesting that the page doesn't talk about Earth's distance from the sun

It’s pretty rare we hear about the search giant making changes or enhancements to its search engine these days. Usually it’s Gmail Labs this and YouTube that so this makes for a nice break.