Companies can do brilliant things, but there are also times where they fall flat on their faces. Sometimes CEOs can save the day, but at other times, they say and do the darndest things. There were plenty of winners and blunders this week. Let's check out some of them.
Longtime Google executive Marissa Mayer will be the next CEO of struggling dot-com pioneer Yahoo --the company's fifth leader in as many years. Turning Yahoo around would be a pretty daunting task, but there are some good reasons to believe Mayer has a shot.
Yahoo is introducing a new browser this week: Axis, a bold attempt at simplifying search for mobile devices and desktops. Its streamlined approach drops all those annoying links you don't want -- even though that's where most search engines make their money.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using travel portals, but you still can't assume that any given site is offering you the best possible deal. Let's go over a few things that Priceline, Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz would probably prefer that you don't know.
If you think 2011 was a wild year for technology, just wait until you see what 2012 has in store for you. Here are three tech trends that will undoubtedly grow in relevance -- and investor profitability -- in the year ahead.
Microsoft's next quarterly report arrives Thursday, and it's hard to get too excited. It's still the world's largest software company, and it's growing. It just happens to be as sexy as Abe Vigoda. But Microsoft could still innovate its way out of its slump. Here are four things we'd love to hear Microsoft say on Thursday.
As box makers struggled with the low-margin business of selling hardware at cutthroat prices, Microsoft was there to cash in on the high-margin software end. Eleven years ago, the company's stock closed at $27.43; it's trading just shy of that mark right now, making Microsoft the poster child for what some investors are calling "the lost decade."
Google's shares have fallen 15% in the last three months while the S&P 500 has traded flat. This share price decline seems odd when contrasted with the spectacular success Google has been experiencing with its Android mobile OS. But there are good reasons Wall Street isn't impressed.
The trouble lies in the quality of information -- a thorny problem due to the subjectivity of "quality" in general. Google keeps tweaking its algorithms, but the junk content keeps rising to the top. In the arms race against spammers, the next few years are crucial.
Microsoft has definitively denied that its Bing search engine takes its cues from its rival. Nonetheless, the Google allegations highlights the challenges Microsoft faces in addressing the "long tail" market in search, or the obscure searches that collectively account for a huge portion of search traffic.
In the latest battle between tech giants Google and Microsoft, Google has accused Microsoft of "cheating" by using Google's search results to improve Bing's. Microsoft says there's nothing wrong with that.
Move over, Michael Jackson. The BP oil spill topped the list of most popular Yahoo searches in 2010, ejecting Jackson -- the hottest search in 2009 -- from the top spot. Other top searches included Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Megan Fox, Justin Bieber and American Idol.
The EC says it's launching a formal, in-depth investigation into Google's treatment of search rivals, setting the stage for yet another potential legal entanglement over whether Google is unfairly taking advantage of its dominant market position.
Ask.com is laying off roughly 130 engineers and giving up on its own all-purpose search technology. It plans to go back to its roots of answering simple questions instead of indexing everything on the Web. Its exit leaves only two general search providers: Google and Microsoft.
Rich Skrenta thinks he has built a better search engine. This week, he's launching Blekko, whose web searches will only accept information from curated lists of trusted sites, mediated by users to filter out irrelevant results. But can Blekko compete with Google and Bing?
Celebrity books normally get a big marketing push. But the campaign for Decoded, the rap mogul's new book of lyrics, is unprecedented. Thanks to backing from Clear Channel and Microsoft's Bing, it's surely in a league of its own.
Just a few months after Google exited the Chinese search market, Microsoft and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group have partnered to launch their own Chinese search site, Etao.
Microsoft Corp. and Facebook today expanded their partnership by unveiling a feature that lets users of Microsoft's Bing search engine to find websites preferred by their Facebook friends.
Yahoo is rolling out new search features starting today, with more options and snapshots appearing in capsules ant the top of the page. The company hopes to reverse its steady decline in ad revenue from searches. But will this be enough to help distinguish it from Bing?
Online advertisers may see up to a 78% price increase in paid-search rates once Yahoo and Microsoft wrap up their search alliance. Cost-per-click will likely rise sharply as advertisers shift to the single Bing search platform.
In August, Microsoft's Bing overtook Yahoo as the No. 2 U.S. Internet search engine for the first time, according to a Nielson report. Bing has been rapidly rising in popularity since its launch in June of last year. Can it give Google a run for the top spot?
Yahoo seems to be having trouble keeping its Asian partners happy. After South Korean and Japanese partners announced plans to ditch the Internet giant last month, Alibaba now says it may reconsider its partnership as well.
In a conversation with DailyFinance, Google co-founder Sergey Brin summarizes the future of the Internet behemoth in very simple terms: More searches more potential revenue = happy investors.
Here comes a faster Google. The search giant announced today a new enhancement called Google Instant that's designed to shave two to five seconds off a typical search query.
Carol Bartz has been running Yahoo for 18 months, and some investors are getting impatient. Revenue growth has been poor as Yahoo has been outpaced by the likes of Google and Facebook. If things don't improve soon, Bartz could be forced out.
In Google's latest effort to expand into online gaming, the search company has acquired Jambool, which provides a technology platform that allows online game developers to create virtual currency, along with virtual goods and services.
On a conference call to discuss IAC's second-quarter earnings, Barry Diller, the web company's chairman, at times sounded like he was taking personal responsibility for the failure to turn Ask.com into a viable alternative to Google.
Yahoo's domestic page views were under reported by comScore to the tune of some 1 billion views and the total minutes spent on its site gained an extra 850 million, according to a statement Yahoo released Tuesday.
