Wikiasearch to End Google-Yahoo Search Domination-Jimmy Wales

Google has been threatened to be taken over in searching, but by whom????

Search any prominent name, event, organization, etc on Google and the top search results yields are from Wikipedia.

Yes you've guessed it right. Google has been warned by Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales that Wikiasearch would takeover Google in the most widely used Internet search engine in near future.

Making an issue out of internet cartel like scenario because of only Two or Three Search engines he says that time has arrived for a creation of broader market for the users to get the maximum benefit.
Google and fellow titans Yahoo and Microsoft dominate the Internet search engine market which Wales said was already causing some worry among web users.

"Right now in the US in particular we have a really strong concentration of the industry," Wales said Thursday at the Global Brand Forum in Singapore.

Industry statistics showed over 90 percent of Internet searches in the United States are done through the three firms, he said.
Wales said Wikia Search will run on an open platform, similar to the principles behind Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia in which entries can be made and edited by anyone with an Internet connection.

Ex Googleers Evolve New Search Engine

Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own systemShe believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it's not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers — Russell Power and Louis Monier — searched for better ways to search.

Now, it's boasting time.

For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages.

Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages.

Cuil won't divulge the formula it has developed to cover a wider swath of the Web with far fewer computers than Google. And Google isn't ceding the point: Spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.

After getting inquiries about Cuil, Google asserted on its blog Friday that it regularly scans through 1 trillion unique Web links. But Google said it doesn't index them all because they either point to similar content or would diminish the quality of its search results in some other way. The posting didn't quantify the size of Google's index.

A search index's scope is important because information, pictures and content can't be found unless they're stored in a database. But Cuil believes it will outshine Google in several other ways, including its method for identifying and displaying pertinent results.

Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page. And Cuil's results will be presented in a more magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links. Cuil's results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.

Finally, Cuil is hoping to attract traffic by promising not to retain information about its users' search histories or surfing patterns — something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.

Cuil is just the latest in a long line of Google challengers.

The list includes swaggering startups like Teoma (whose technology became the backbone of Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. this month.

Even after investing hundreds of millions of dollars on search, both Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. have been losing ground to Google. Through May, Google held a 62 percent share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 21 percent and Microsoft at 8.5 percent, according to comScore Inc.

Google has become so synonymous with Internet search that it may no longer matter how good Cuil or any other challenger is, said Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner.

"Search has become as much about branding as anything else," Weiner said. "I doubt (Cuil) will be keeping anyone at Google awake at night."

Google welcomed Cuil to the fray with its usual mantra about its rivals. "Having great competitors is a huge benefit to us and everyone in the search space," Watson said. "It makes us all work harder, and at the end of the day our users benefit from that."

But this will be the first time that Google has battled a general-purpose search engine created by its own alumni. It probably won't be the last time, given that Google now has nearly 20,000 employees.

Patterson joined Google in 2004 after she built and sold Recall, a search index that probed old Web sites for the Internet Archive. She and Power worked on the same team at Google.

Although he also worked for Google for a short time, Monier is best known as the former chief technology officer of AltaVista, which was considered the best search engine before Google came along in 1998. Monier also helped build the search engine on eBay's online auction site.

The trio of former Googlers are teaming up with Patterson's husband, Costello, who built a once-promising search engine called Xift in the late 1990s. He later joined IBM Corp., where he worked on an "analytic engine" called WebFountain.

Costello's Irish heritage inspired Cuil's odd name. It was derived from a character named Finn McCuill in Celtic folklore.

Patterson enjoyed her time at Google, but became disenchanted with the company's approach to search. "Google has looked pretty much the same for 10 years now," she said, "and I can guarantee it will look the same a year from now."

Yahoo seeks Google's aid after Microsoft talks die

But after eluding Microsoft's grasp, Yahoo is now turning to Google to help squelch a rebellion among its shareholders who believe it should have accepted Microsoft's $47.5 billion buyout offer while it was still available last month.

Yahoo announced its decision to let Google handle some of its advertising sales late Thursday, just a few hours after revealing it unsuccessfully tried to persuade Microsoft to renew its previous offer of $33 per share. The snub caused Yahoo to conclude that there is no hope for any kind of deal with Microsoft.

Although Yahoo believes Google could help boost its annual revenue by $800 million, the advertising partnership wasn't enough to ease the disappointment of investors who had been holding out hope for a Microsoft deal.

Yahoo shares plunged $2.63, or 10.1 percent, to finish Thursday at $23.52 and shed another seven cents after the market closed.

Part of the problem for Yahoo is that antitrust concerns might prevent an alliance with Google.

Google already holds about 75 percent of the $11 billion search advertising market in the United States with Yahoo a distant second at 9 percent, according to the research firm eMarketer Inc.

Microsoft and a variety of consumer-interest groups already have signaled they will turn up the political heat in an attempt to prevent Google from working with Yahoo.

The outcry already has drawn the attention of U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights.

"The consequences for advertisers and consumers could be far-reaching and warrant careful review, and we plan to investigate the competitive and privacy implications of this deal further," said Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat.

Yahoo and Google have voluntarily agreed to wait until late September to begin working together to give the government adequate time to review the arrangement. If it isn't blocked, the partnership could last for the next decade.

The antitrust scrutiny appears to be the least of Yahoo's worries for now.

The Sunnyvale-based company also is trying to fend off a shareholder mutiny led by activist investor Carl Icahn, who has vowed to replace the company's board because of the way the directors handled the Microsoft negotiations during the past 4 1/2 months.

But Icahn has been hoping to engineer a sale to Microsoft, so his campaign could be hurt by the perception that the software maker has lost all interest in buying Yahoo. Shareholders may be reluctant to support Icahn's attempted coup unless he can demonstrate his slate of directors has a better turnaround plan than the current board.

Icahn did not return phone calls seeking comment Thursday.

The fate of Yahoo's board is scheduled to be determined at the company's Aug. 1 annual meeting.

"If you are a Yahoo shareholder, you just have to be scratching your head right now," said Standard and Poor's equity analyst Scott Kessler.

If Wall Street's backlash becomes severe enough, Kessler said he believes Yahoo might have to consider replacing co-founder Jerry Yang as its chief executive — something Icahn has already promised he will do if he wins control of the board.

After Yang took over the reins from Terry Semel a year ago, Yahoo's stock price fell from $28.12 to $19.18 at the time Microsoft launched its unsolicited takeover attempt in January.

Yang "has been slow to move, slow to act and it has cost shareholders as a result," Kessler said.

Many Yahoo shareholders blame Yang for letting his emotional attachment blur his judgment during the Microsoft negotiations.

Yahoo's board sent Yang and fellow co-founder David Filo to a pivotal May 3 meeting in Seattle to discuss Microsoft's oral offer to buy the company for $33 per share, up from its initial bid of $31 per share. After Yang demanded $37 per share, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer withdrew the offer.

In recent weeks, Ballmer has been trying to buy Yahoo's search engine instead.

Yahoo concluded that its search engine was too important to sell piecemeal.

Without explaining its logic, Microsoft said it believed a deal involving Yahoo's search engine would have been more valuable to Yahoo than if it had bought the entire company at $33 per share. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker said it remains open to buying Yahoo's search operations.

Yahoo's deal with Google includes an escape hatch should Microsoft or another suitor buy the company. If Yahoo is sold, Google would receive a termination fee of up to $250 million.

That clause could still raise hope that Icahn might be able to renew the Microsoft talks if he can win control of Yahoo's board.

The deal shapes up as a major victory for Mountain View-based Google, which didn't want Yahoo to fall into Microsoft's clutches.

"I am happy to be helping them to stay independent," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in a Thursday interview.

With a Yahoo deal off the table, Microsoft could set its sights on a smaller acquisition that still might help its unprofitable Internet operations. Analysts have cited Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Internet software service provider Salesforce Inc. and leading online social networks, News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook Inc. as possible targets.

The Google partnership expands upon a two-week trial conducted in April while Yahoo was trying to pressure Microsoft into raising its bid. The tests confirmed Google's technology would generate more revenue for Yahoo than its own system, which cost more than $2 billion to acquire and improve.

Nevertheless, Yahoo still intends to use its own search engine to distribute some ads and process all search requests. Working with Google will give Yahoo "the best of both worlds," Yahoo President Sue Decker said a Thursday conference call.

Google toू Launch YouTube products soon Will be More Close to Yahoo in Future

Google Inc expects to launch new products for its YouTube Web video service in the next few months and sees reason for closer cooperation with Yahoo Inc, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Thursday.

Schmidt has said getting the video sharing site to make money is the Web search company's top priority for the year. He did not give details of the products, however, and they are not even in initial, or beta, testing.

At the company's annual shareholder meeting, Google co- founder Sergey Brin said YouTube and DoubleClick, an online advertising company bought by Google earlier this year for $3.1 billion, are still small businesses compared with its core search and advertising business.

"They both have potential, but for it to be a sizable part of our revenue, you're going to have to wait at least a couple of years," said Brin in response to a question about when those acquisitions would make a significant contribution to the company's bottom line.

Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion in 2006.

The Web search leader played a large role in the takeover battle between Microsoft Corp and Yahoo. During a two-week test, it sold search advertisements on rival Yahoo last month as part of Yahoo's attempt to find an alternative option to Microsoft's offer.

Schmidt said the trial run provided good reason for the companies to discuss cooperation, but there was no deal yet.

"We view the test as successful," he told reporters before the Web company's annual meeting. "That's a good basis to talk to Yahoo some more."

The Google CEO, speaking later at the shareholder meeting, said the company will continue to growth faster outside of its home market. Google generated 51 percent of its revenue outside the United States in the March quarter, but Schmidt said he expects that figure to grow over time.

Without giving a specific time frame, Schmidt said he expects 65 percent of Google's revenue to come from abroad. Eventually, non-U.S. revenue could be even higher.

Google co-founders Brin and Larry Page also fielded a request from one shareholder who asked the pair not to split the company's stock, which closed at $583 on the Nasdaq.

"I think that's the first time we've had that request," Page said with a chuckle.

Brin played the straight man: "We have had no problem honoring that thus far and I don't expect that anything will change in that respect."

T-Mobile Replaces Google By Yahoo in Europe

Yahoo Inc ousted archrival Google Inc as T-Mobile's top Internet partner in Europe as it unveiled a service to squeeze social Web connections on to cell phone screens, a day after rebuffing a $41.6 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp.

The deal, announced at the Mobile World Congress wireless fair on Tuesday, puts Yahoo on a strong footing with carriers in Europe, building on deals it has closed with operators in the Americas and Asia, as it seeks to make up in mobile the ground it has lost to Google in computer-based Web search.

Yahoo now has access to 600 million potential users through its carrier partners worldwide, and Marco Boerries -- the executive leading Yahoo's mobile push -- told Reuters he aimed to reach 1 billion by the end of 2009.

"Europe is now wide open," he said in an interview at the trade fair. "For the rest of Europe, let the games begin."

Yahoo's new service, called oneConnect, creates a single contacts list for users that draws on all their Web connections -- regardless of whether those connections were made through instant messaging services, email or online social networks.

Users can then see -- to the extent that their contacts allow them to -- their friends' availability, activities and messages, without the bother of trying to navigate between Web sites and inboxes on a mobile phone.

"Today, most people have too many forms of communications," said Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo's Connected Life division. "To keep in touch with all of them you have to go to all of these different Web sites."

Once the free service becomes established, Yahoo plans to introduce discreet advertising on parts of oneConnect, sharing the revenues with phone operator partners.

RACE FOR HEADLINES

Google and Nokia briefly grabbed the headlines at the Barcelona wireless fair on Tuesday, announcing a deal to integrate Google Search into Nokia's own search engine it preinstalls on dozens of its handset models.

Nokia, which makes 40 percent of cell phones sold in the world, will add Google to the Microsoft and Yahoo search options it already includes.

The race between companies wanting to put their own stamp on consumers' experience of the mobile Internet -- and gather information critical to advertising strategies -- has made rivals of parties once happy to mind their own business.

Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Nokia have been outdoing each other with mobile Web-related news at the fair this week.

Yahoo's deal on Tuesday with Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile division trumped the excitement that broke out around Microsoft's announcement late on Monday that it had agreed to buy Danger, a company best known for the software that drives the Sidekick mobile Web browser.

Before the fair, a buzz had built up around anticipated sightings of prototypes of phones based on Google's new Android software platform -- a buzz that quickly subsided as it became apparent that the working models on display bore little resemblance to anything that might appear in shops.

But the struggle for influence over the mobile Web need not have a single or even just a few winners, said the head of Microsoft's mobile communications division, Pieter Knoock, pointing out that the market was growing fast but still tiny.

Just 123 million of the 1.1 billion phones sold last year were so-called smartphones, cell phones with computer-like capabilities like e-mail and Web browsing, and business models are still being developed for mobile advertising.

"There's a lot of opportunity," Knoock said in an interview. "Mobile advertising is a greenfield site, and PC advertising expertise doesn't necessarily help."

"The question is who's going to win in which services."

I.B.M. and Sun to Cooperate in Technologies for Servers

Two longtime rivals in computing, I.B.M. and Sun Microsystems , plan to cooperate on server technologies, a move that could put pressure on their competitor Hewlett-Packard.
Sun’s chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, said the new “comprehensive relationship” brought “a tectonic shift in the market landscape.”
The collaboration announced yesterday will enable Sun’s Solaris operating system to run on International Business Machine servers. Among other things, that means customers that run Sun servers will be able to switch to I.B.M. hardware without having to rewrite any programs.
At first this will be possible on I.B.M.’s x series of servers, which also run Microsoft Windows or the open-source Linux system. But eventually I.B.M. hopes to bring Solaris to mainframes, the big multitasking machines that have been a core profit center for the company for decades.
I.B.M. has been expanding the kinds of programs that can run on mainframes, to encourage customers to consolidate multiple servers onto these bigger machines as a cost-saving move.
These steps threaten to take Sun servers out of action in favor of I.B.M. machines. But Sun can gain from this partnership by collecting Solaris service subscriptions from customers who run that operating system on I.B.M. hardware.
The arrangement is in keeping with Sun’s strategy to rebound from a devastating slump in the first part of the decade by broadening its role as a software vendor. This week, Sun and Google expanded their partnership as Google began distributing Sun’s StarOffice suite of word processing, spreadsheets and other desktop programs.
“Our view is when you make your products available on other people’s platforms, you just meet more customers, which just gives you more opportunities,” Mr. Schwartz said.
Hewlett-Packard is locked in a battle with I.B.M. for leadership in the worldwide server market. I.B.M. and H.P. each had 29 percent share in the most recent assessment by the market tracker IDC, while Sun and Dell Inc. were tied for third, with 11 percent each.