Steve Bryant

The New York Times has a great article about Yahoo’s consistency versus Google’s “wow” factor. Saul Hansell reports that Google impresses with new products that go beyond baseline features, but it doesn’t explicitly connect those products together. Meanwhile, Yahoo releases predictable products that may not be as cool, but which are all banded together to […]

So few updates, so much time. Wait, switch that, reverse it. Good. Google Base — Google engineers are making the Borg cube a little prettier. You can now format your Google Base item descriptions using formatting buttons or HTML. But you’re still not allowed to use scripts, frames or data input controls. Google Co-Op — […]

Google wants advertisers to clean up their landing pages, even though the company is cluttering parked domains with ads. What gives? Earlier this month, Google made changes to the way AdWords values landing pages. Google made the changes to combat MFA (made for AdSense) sites that attempted to garner clicks by gaming Google’s search. Some […]

Everybody loves a good fight. Right now, one of the biggest brouhahas in the tech world is between Google and Microsoft. The two companies have different strategies — Google corralling the Web with advertising and online services, Microsoft protecting its software cash cows but hustling to catch up online — but their efforts are leading […]

Google reported a 110 percent rise in quarterly profits today, demonstrating that the company evaded the slow growth trend that has stymied Yahoo and eBay. Second-quarter net income rose to $721 million compared with 2Q05’s $343 million. Revenue rose 77 percent to $2.46 billion, above expectations. Google executives said they were very pleased with their […]

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are subverting freedom of expression by abetting censorship in China, Amnesty International says in a report. “The actions of these Internet companies are contrasted with their proclaimed values,” says the report (here in PDF). “The conclusion drawn is that they have, through their actions, directly and admittedly contradicted their values and […]

Google made a few things easier for searchers this week. First, Google Labs has cooked up a new tool called Google Accessible Search. Accessible Search is designed to make searching easier for visually imparied people by prioritizing relevant results by Web accessibility. According to the FAQ, Google Accessible Search favors pages that degrade gracefully. That […]

Update: Jon Udell at InfoWorld was thinking about Google News yesterday too. I found his post via — wait for it: Techmeme. Google News is a fabulous creation. Its utility derives from quick indexing of thousands of news sources, which helps infovores like you (you probably came here via Google News) track developments in ongoing […]

Update: Yahoo cool-down. Terry Semel says the commercial launch of Yahoo’s new ad platform is being delayed from Q3 to Q4, and marketers should plan to start deploying on it in Q1 2007. Yahoo’s stock is down to $28.62, two cents off its year low. (slides and data) This isn’t good news for Yahoo, since […]

The G Poppa increased its search lead for the 11th consecutive month in June, says ComScore, staying on top of the dog pile with 44.7 percent of all searches. Yahoo was second and increased its share to 28.5 percent (from 28 percent), and MSN was third with 12.8 percent (down from 13.1 percent). Americans made […]