Tech Quickie . Who’s buying who?

Catching you up on all the latest plans and rumors circulating about the Big Cheeses in the Bay, and how they plan to get even bigger:

Yahoo! to use Google search ads… in advanced talks
Yahoo! to merge with AOL… still in talks
Microsoft to purchase Yahoo!… over Y!’s dead body, sadly
Google to [...]

Google’s version of Yahoo’s Search Assist

You knew it was coming, you might have even seen or used the private tests, you might even argue that it was on G Labs/toolbar prior to Y! launch, but anyways, Google’s public test version of Yahoo’s Search Assist drop-down has finally launched today.
As to be expected, the big G’s autocomplete suggestion drop-down is [...]

Google News . New SRP on the rise

Not everyone will be able to see this new Google SRP (or Search Results Page aka: SERP/Search Engine Results Page), so I’ll just post it up here. It’s actually pretty fresh and I’m happy to see they’re venturing out of the “quicker is better” mentality and exploring a bit more, even though coworkers insist [...]

iGoogle is actually cute!

Imagine my surprise when I found out that Google actually had some cute looking time-of-day-sensitive backgrounds for their iGoogle feature publicly launched on Tuesday. I mean, they are well known for their stark simplicity. Although it may sound like it, iGoogle is not an Apple affiliation, and it’s like My Yahoo! where you [...]

Is it real? Google Phone

So this rumor has been leaking and dripping and spilling over for almost a year now (maybe more, I’ve so fallen off the Tech Train ohno!). The rumors escalated around Andy Rubin’s presence on the Google campus. Andy Rubin (don’t feel bad because I didn’t know who the heck he was either) is [...]

Google loves dogs and dog people

No confirmation on this just yet, but I heard that Google’s hiring criteria has just gotten even weirder. If you weren’t lucky enough to fall into the nepotism or Stanford alumni hiring line, you may have been scrutinized for all the little details including your college GPA, a practice more commonly reserved for high-end [...]

More Google.cn stuff

So google.cn now redirects to google.com if accessed in the US via a Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 browser. Perhaps this is intended to prevent less net-savvy (aka: non Firefox using) American internet users from easily comparing the radically different sets of results for human rights, democracy, and bird flu related searches after upgrading to the [...]

Google Pagerank and Backlink update underway

So there’s another pagerank and backlink update underway (looks like we’re still holding strong around a 5, but we gained a few hundred incoming links). Because of this you may be interested in seeing your pagerank, but you may not be so interested in installing the pesky Google spybar. I’ve tried a bunch of sites [...]

More on Search Engine Politics

I just got a couple links from Steve and al.
First, Steve pointed out this flash comic by Mark Fiore of SFGate.com. The cartoon addresses some of the latest news developments with American Search Engines forays into China. You can watch the cartoon here.
Secondly, aL has pointed out an article on Digg regarding a simple [...]

Google Succumbs to the Dark Side

The China myth has lured many an American business in the past, with its promise of billions of consumers with wallets waiting to be tapped, Google being the latest to take the bait. Though many have tried to make headway into the market, on the whole most have had nothing to show for it. [...]

Great Balls of Fire - Google Dance JAGGER is Underway

Yup. It’s that time of the year again. Google’s in the midst of it’s latest dance, codename “Jagger”. So far the dance has proved quite beneficial for Dreamlogic.net. Though we’ve lost a few incoming links, our pagerank has improved. Consequently a few of our reviews are popping up higher than they have for quite some [...]