Matthew Hicks

America Online Inc.s audio and video search division is getting ready for prime time as it focuses on becoming a destination site. Singingfish Inc., which AOL acquired a year ago, will announce on Wednesday a set of new search features on its Singingfish.com site that let users save and share queries, refine searches and discover […]

MSN began rolling out its Weblog service late on Wednesday in a move likely to rattle the still-emerging market for blog-creation tools. With the new service, called MSN Spaces, Microsoft Corps Internet division is closely tying blogging into its MSN Messenger instant-messaging service and Hotmail e-mail service while targeting a mass audience. MSN Spaces also […]

Overture Services Inc. has settled a trademark infringement lawsuit brought against it and search-based advertising rival Google Inc. Overture, of Pasadena, Calif., reached the settlement on Friday with GEICO, one of the nations largest insurers. Overture is the paid search division of Yahoo Inc. The Government Employees Insurance Co. had filed the federal lawsuit in […]

Not to be left out of desktop search, two search vendors on Monday leaped into the growing space for managing e-mail, documents and other hard-drive data. Autonomy Corp. plc introduced a desktop-search application for its IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer) enterprise-search platform, while consumer player Mamma.com Inc. announced plans to acquire desktop-search vendor Copernic Technologies […]

For the leading companies in the search-engine market, 2004 was a year to fortify their services for the fight ahead. As the year ends, the battle line lies among three top competitors: Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. Waiting in the wings are Ask Jeeves Inc, which doubled its search share during the year, […]

Opera Software ASA wants to make horizontal scrolling a thing of the past in the Web browser. The Oslo, Norway, company announced Tuesday that its new browser release will include a feature for rendering a Web page to fit a screen regardless of the screen size. Called ERA (Extensible Rendering Architecture), the feature is available […]

Another Web browser usage survey is showing a familiar trend: Mozillas share is rising at the expense of Internet Explorer. Global usage share numbers released Monday by OneStat.com showed Mozilla Foundation browsers increasing to a 7.4 percent share from 2.1 percent in May. Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp.s Internet Explorer dropped 5 percentage points to 88.9 percent […]

Google Inc. is taking the fight against click fraud to court, suing a Houston-based company for allegedly clicking on sponsored links to fraudulently boost advertising revenues. Google filed a lawsuit last week in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California against Auctions Expert International LLC. The search giant is accusing Auctions Expert of abusing the […]

Yahoo Inc. has gone live with its upgrade of its personalized home page service that focuses on aggregating news feeds. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company made its revamped My Yahoo generally available on Friday after a two-month beta test. New My Yahoo users will automatically receive the updated service, while existing users will be asked to […]

LAS VEGAS—A casual observer might not give the rankings of search-engine results a second glance, but the thousands of Webmasters who gathered here this week watch their every move. Figuring out how to legitimately influence those rankings by tweaking site content and technology was the major theme during discussions and sessions at the WebmasterWorld.com World […]