Articles about Search

The US Federal Trade Commission decision to close the Google "search bias" investigation is absolutely in the best interest of consumers. On that point, I agree with agency Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who announced the findings during a January 3 press conference. The result isn't what many Google critics or competitors hoped for, or even what some in the news media expected. Journalists repeatedly probed on the investigation's closing during yesterday's Q&A. Many people view Google to be a monopoly, perhaps dangerous one, while others regard the search giant increasingly as gatekeeper to the Internet.

In response to journalist questions, Leibowitz said that anyone in his position wants to take on the career-making case, which inference is clear: Google isn't it. "The Commission exhaustively investigated allegations that Google unfairly manipulated its search engine results to harm its competitors, a practice known as search bias", he said yesterday. "The Commission has closed this investigation by a 5-0 vote", which is unanimous, by the way. The decision fits long-standing US legal principles about competition and protecting consumers. Perhaps the government learned lessons from its monopoly case against Microsoft, which, as I previously asserted, failed to achieve its goals.

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Are you tired of the standard Windows search tool? You’re not alone. Its indexing component is difficult to control, and uses too many resources; we’ve found the index can become corrupted for no apparent reason; and filtering the results just isn’t as easy as it needs to be.

Fortunately there are plenty of interesting alternatives around, and AstroGrep is one of the best: compact, powerful yet also simple to use, it’s a search tool which should appeal to just about everyone.

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Earlier today, the US Federal Trade Commission announced closing its search bias antitrust investigation into Google. Chairman Jon Leibowitz says the nearly 20-month investigation "does not support a claim" and that commissioners reached a unanimous decision. However, they did find that Google caused consumer harm by pursuing patent litigation started by its Motorola Mobility subsidiary, and the search giant voluntarily made business practice changes affecting its core business.

Many competitors will find the FTC's decision to close the core antitrust investigation as little more than a slap on the wrist. However, Leibowitz contends that the agreement protects consumers and that commissioners found no overt search bias. In fact, the agency found the the most disturbing alleged practices are commonplace among other search providers, mitigating any potential consumer harm.

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During a press conference early this afternoon, the Federal Trade Commission announced a sweeping settlement with Google that ends an ongoing antitrust investigation. But Google's legal woes aren't over. The European Union has set an imminent deadline for settlement there that otherwise will lead to sanctions. Still, on these shores, the search and information giant got a big pass today that is sure to send competitors howling (as some, Microsoft among them, did before today's agreement).

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz announced the settlement from the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters. He describes the nearly 20-month investigation as "exhaustive", collecting "nine million pages of documents". The big claim against Google: That the company favors its own services over others -- so called "search bias". Leibowitz says the investigation "does not support a claim" and commissioners voted unanimously to close it. That said, Google agreed to stop scraping content from partners, such as Yelp, and to end contractual obligations that impede small businesses.

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Last month we took a look at SD Software’s HeyDoc!, a very capable tool which can track just about every aspect of your entire family’s medical history: appointments, medicines, diet, symptoms, weight, blood pressure, it’s all included.

As we also reported, though, HeyDoc! had one notable issue, in an error message that appeared on some systems whenever you selected a user profile. And so we were pleased to see that the developers had released HeyDoc! 1.8.5, in an effort to address the problem.

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If you're a heavy Google user, every day is like Christmas -- well, in 2012. Not a day goes by that the company doesn't release something new. Updates are relentless, with products in continual states of improvement. Today's touted 18 24 Google+ enhancements are examples. Editor's note: Hours after we posted, Google changed the number from 18 to 24. The approach is philosophical and corporate cultural and defies traditional software development cycles Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others adopted long ago. The relentless releases is for stuff Google mostly gives away for free. Now why is that?

Years ago, I wrote several seething stories about perpetual Google betas (Gmail was 5 years, right?) and Microsoft somewhat mimicking the approach. (I can't find the stories this morning. If you can, please link in comments.) The search giant's work was never done, while competitors rolled major enhancements together made available all at once on long lead cycles (Hey, three years separate Windows 7 and 8 launches). Microsoft chooses the big blockbuster movie approach, which predicates a work largely done -- a story completely told. Google is the serialist, telling an ongoing story in a quick succession of releases. Which works better? You tell me.

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We have seen top-10 lists now from Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook. Sure, all of them provided the raw data pertaining to the most-searched for and most-talked about products, events, people and more from the past year. Google, with it's popular Zeitgeist release, did the same. But the search leader took it one step further and, in so doing, was the real winner in this 2012 popularity contest.

Google provides perspective and emotion to raw, boring statistics and creates something that is appealing to basic human instincts. The company put together a video that will jog your memory, make you smile and bring a tear to your eye.

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Microsoft's search engine Bing launched an aggressive information campaign against Google on Wednesday, accusing the leading search engine of dishonesty in its shopping search functionality.

Earlier this year, Google Product Search was renamed Google Shopping. This name change was no superficial affair because Google was completely changing the business model of the service. Under Google Shopping, only retailers who paid for product listing would turn up in search results.

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Windows Search has improved a lot in recent years: it’s faster, uses less resources, has more query options. If the technology still doesn’t deliver the searching power you need, though, it might be worth considering the open source, Java-based DocFetcher as an alternative.

The program’s advantages start with its indexing controls. Rather than crawling an entire drive without asking, DocFetcher allows you to choose what you’d like to search: a folder, an archive, even an Outlook PST file. And limiting scope this way helps to cut indexing time and improve the relevance of search results.

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Third in a series. Each week we are looking at the best apps released for Microsoft's new operating system Windows 8. Today, we introduce new information to the format that informs you about potential compatibility issues with Windows RT. As you may know, apps released in Windows Store are always compatible with Windows 8 and Pro, but not necessarily with Windows RT, the version running on ARM hardware, such as Surface.

Not compatible with Windows RT indicates this if so. We also take a look at application updates and if they introduce exciting new features, include updated apps in the list. This week that's for instance the case with the Google Search app, which not only becomes compatible with ARM systems but also introduces YouTube video playback with an update.

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Late last month, eBay, the dominant auction site, took away from users the ability to search auction listings with wildcard keywords, which can be very useful to buyers looking for very specific part numbers or product series. It is (or rather was) easy to store wildcard searches on eBay as a powerful way of drilling down through millions of items as they are listed. No more. And eBay’s reason for eliminating wildcard searches? “Our research showed that using specific terms to expand one’s search was a more effective method than wildcard searches, which oftentimes included unexpected variations that cluttered search results. By removing the wildcard (*) advanced search functionality, we’re able to deliver search results more efficiently and faster".

Yeah, right. Yes, it probably is more accurate to list individually all possible permutations of a search term, but if they can be replaced nearly as well with a single asterisk, why make users do it the hard way?

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Google has updated its cross-platform 3D world exploration tool.Google Earth 7.0 gains functionality previously added to Google Earth for Mobile in the form of city tour guides and 3D imagery of cities. Google Earth 7’s tour guide provides pointers for local items of interest as users explore the world using the program. The launch of version 7 on desktop also comes with new sites added to the existing 3D imagery database.

Prior to the launch of Google Earth 7.0 on the desktop platform, 3D imagery was available for selected US cities only, with the likes of Boston, Denver, LA, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa and the San Francisco Bay Area among those featured. To view these cities in 3D, users need to manually switch on the feature by ticking the 3D Buildings option under Layers.

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AMBER alerts are the emergency bulletins that announce when a child has been abducted, they sometimes interrupt radio and television broadcasts or flash across variable message signs (aka matrix signs) on the highway. Today, Google announced it has teamed up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to bring location-based AMBER alerts to Google Search and Maps, both mobile and desktop.

These AMBER Alerts provide information about the abducted child, and any other details about the case and the alleged abductor, including name, identifying traits, and make and model of car. The feature was actually suggested to Google by a user in the Google search forum in early 2011, but it is unclear if the user's suggestion was the origin of this development.

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Google News is one of the search giant’s more contentious services (Brazil's National Association of Newspapers recently blocked it from using its members' content because the service allegedly drives traffic away from their websites), but there’s no question it’s an incredibly useful resource, pulling content from a wide variety of sources.

Last year Google made it easier to scan for stories, and this year it’s implementing some useful changes to the News search results pages.

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Search engine DuckDuckGo released a video a few days ago that shows how Google personalizes results for all signed in and signed out users. It asked 131 people to search for the same Election related topics ("abortion", "gun control", and "Obama") on Google at the same time, and most of them received slightly different results.

That Google personalizes results in this way is hardly new information. The company has been doing it since 2009 and Eli Pariser covered the topic in depth in his 2011 book, The Filter Bubble (a great read). He also gave an enlightening Ted Talk on the subject in which he observes that "the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see."

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