Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine’
Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo! - again?
Talks re-emerged yesterday about a potential buy-out of Yahoo!’s Search business by Microsoft.
The London Sunday times reported that Microsoft was once again in talks to buy out the division of Yahoo! for $ US20 Billion, a much lower bid than previous bids of $47.5 Billion, which were withdrawn after Jerry Yang (then-CEO of Yahoo Inc) rejected the offer.
Representatives of both Microsoft and Yahoo! declined to comment, however a recent blog quoting high-ranking Yahoo executives suggest that the bid is just a rumour, and there are no discussions.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed there was no current discussions on the buy-out, but was still open to talks about buying the business out, and a large investor of Yahoo!, Carl Ichan who owns over 5% share of the company is pushing for the merger since Jerry Yang was removed from the Yahoo! executive team.
These are interesting times for Yahoo! and Microsoft, and there still remains a very real possibility that the two companies could merge in effort to build strength against the world’s leading search engine, Google.
What do you think? Leave feedback below.
Google Suggest Tool
Google Suggest is a new feature by google that will use a predictive text to automatically complete your input search data as you type.
Google Suggest - Key Word Suggestion
Say for example I begin typing audi, Google uses ajax browser technology to look up it’s key word database while you type, and makes suggestions for search phrases it thinks you’re looking for.
It is a web 2.0 experience which essentially auto-completes the search phrase which might save you time typing, or recommend a search term that might help you find the information you’re looking for.
This is a feature some SMS-crazed mobile phone users are used to whereby the keystrokes they enter begin to form a word it predicts you’re trying to type in (which search king personally finds annoying). Anyone with auto-complete or Google Toolbar turned on in their browser will also see their saved input data from previous searches.
Whilst it may be new to Google, they’re not ahead of their competition with this feature, as most search engines have already added this feature, such as Cuil and Yahoo (see screens below), the major advantage that google has over the others is that it also shows you how many search results there are for a given term, which can be very handy.
Key Word Suggestion from CUIL
Predictive Key Word Search from Yahoo!
It is definitely a feature that may be considered overdue from the world’s most popular search engine, but we feel it may remove Google from it’s minimalistic, fast browsing experience to a slower, bulkier experience that will be noticeable by those with slow internet connections or lower spec computers.
This feature is not currently default, and it might only be used if you turn it on, so it remains to be seen if it will be a default or optional feature. Either way, it adds to the user experience, which despite our criticism has to be a good thing.