Steve Bryant

I’m not the type to get excited over a cell phone, but I know you guys dig it, so here’s the latest via Engadget via Godmode: A mobileburn forum member allegedly received an e-mail survey that included pics of a Samsung-designed Google Phone, complete with slide-out screen, QWERTY keyboard, 3G data, Wi-Fi and a 2 […]

A gang of hackers known as the Linkoptimizer Gang (aka Gromozon) upset Windows Live Search results in Italy last week by manipulating SERPs to return spurious pages, Symantec’s security blog reports. The manipulated pages apparently don’t contain malicious software as yet. Google was targeted in 2006 by the same gang, in a scheme that attempted […]

Of all the masturbatory ego-fluffers on the Web, nothing chafes me worse than Twitter. Twitter, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is the insta-blogging, micro-posting, always-on textual dashboard of the Web 2.0 set. Not content with blogging — itself a microchunked, short-form version of diary keeping — we’ve taken to journaling the minute-by-minute factlets and factoids […]

Google is rumored to be partnering with satellite cable provider Dish Network, according to a brief post on VentureBeat. Google’s profile in the television market is rising — through media speculation, if not market success — as Google tests ad serving in California and seeks a national director of TV ad sales. Dish Network, the […]

Google is quietly testing targeted television ads in Concord, Calif., according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The test is being conducted with subscribers of cable provider Astound Broadband, a unit of WaveDivision Holdings LLC. Astound serves the affluent areas of Concord and Walnut Creek, both of which are near Google’s Mountain View […]

A Canadian software firm filed suit in Texas federal court yesterday against Microsoft for allegedly infringing on a patent concerning document metadata, Google Watch has learned. The firm, i4i Limited Partnership, alleges that several Microsoft products infringe on patent 5787449, “a system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a […]

The mayor of a small town in Germany is asking Google to correct the name of a geographic feature called “Mount Hitler” in Google Earth, Reuters reports. The mountain gained its Nazi appellation during the Third Reich, but that name was changed after World War II. Google Earth users currently see both the old and […]

Corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Live Search initiative, Christopher Payne, plans to launch a Seattle-based technology firm unrelated to the search business, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Microsoft has lost search share since early 2005, when the company launched its own search technology.In the last year the search volume on Microsoft Live Search has remained […]

The 35th-largest social networking site has dropped Yahoo and partnered with Google for search and ad serving, according to Reuters. The partnership calls for text and display advertising on Friendster members’ personal profile sites, worldwide. The company will introduce Google Web search across the site in the second quarter of 2007. Financial terms of the […]

Magnolia Pictures, an independent film studio owned by entrepreneur Mark Cuban, has subpoenaed Google to reveal the identities of users who uploaded Magnolia’s copyrighted videos to both Google Video and YouTube, Google Watch has learned. The subpoena request was filed signed by Magnolia’s counsel on Feb. 6, and Google was commanded to respond by executed […]