2008

New York-- Just a short time back, Google made several changes to its image search, and has now unveiled a new search bar for Google Image! And last week, Google released yet another update to their image search engine

, adding new photo content and has enhanced its Image search to include supplemental content such as clip art and line drawings.

Much like with email, now the rivalry between Google and Yahoo seems to be heated on the image search front as well.

Yahoo has recently rolled out some improvements, and now Google is offering up a nice feature of its own in allowing you to choose more types of results you are looking for when you use Google Image Search. Sean O’Malley, Software Engineer, Google Image Search writes on the Official Google Blog:

Redmond, Wash., -- The Redmond Vole is very thoughtfully becoming merciful towards its Windows XP. Microsoft Corp

., since the release of Vista, was keen to put XP out to pasture, thus creating a void for its Vista operating system to fill, is now showing some flexibility, has once again extended an impending deadline for Windows XP’s demise until May, the company confirmed today.

Traditionally, Microsoft has always tries to withdraw old operating systems off the market six months after the release of a new one, but consumer reaction bordering on hostile made a monkey out of Vista and a hero out of XP.

Redmond had originally assigned January 21, 2009, as the cutoff for shipping the OS. Now, these manufacturers can take delivery up to May 30.

San Francisco-- Search engine goliath Google Inc. has recently made a lot of advancement with Google Apps in 2008. Meanwhile, in an attempt to further improve its services, on Friday released a new feature that enables users to find and access their Google documents straight from the desktop -- that makes us wonder if Google Desktop is a hidden gem we have overlooked.

Dubbed Google Docs Gadget for the Desktop, as a bonus, the new tool enables users to drag and drop spreadsheets, presentation, and word processing files right into the gadget for immediate uploading it to your account.

According to Google Desktop programmers Ronald Ho and James Yum explain why this is useful:

Helsinki-- World’s leading mobile phone maker Nokia on Sunday cleared one of the key obstacles for adopting its new Internet offering, and is gearing toward completing its Ovi service suite -- making it easier for their customers to log into their online service network Ovi.com.

The company intends to provide a single login mechanism on this service which combines various features some of which require separate details.

Recently Nokia has acquired a dozen companies -- including an $8.1 billion (5.4 billion pound) purchase of mapping company Navteq -- to jump-start its Internet business as growth in the mobile phone market stalls.

New York -- Discussions between Warner Music Group ordered YouTube last weekend to pull down all music videos by its artists from the popular online video-sharing site after renegotiations over royalties licensing agreement for the record label’s music videos broke down Saturday.

The stalemate comes at a time when all four major labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and EMI, are renegotiating their licensing deals with YouTube.

The order could affect hundreds of thousands of videos from artists including Madonna and Metallica, as well as the rights for songs published by its Warner/Chappell unit, which includes many artists not signed to Warner Music record labels.

Tokyo-- Ever since it was launched in May, 2007, Google Street View has been constantly drawing criticism for intruding over people’s privacy. A group of Japanese journalists, lawyers and professors last week demanded that the US search giant Google Inc. to close down its “Street View” feature of Google Maps in the country, saying it violates people’s privacy, according to a Reuters report.

“We strongly suspect that what Google has been doing severely violates a basic right that humans have,” said Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of constitutional law at Sophia University in Tokyo and head of the Campaign Against Surveillance Society, in a telephonic interview with Reuters.

Washington-- comScore, Inc., a leader in analyzing the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. As expected, search engine titan Google snapped up a chunk of market share from rival search engines in the United States in November, new figures from comScore show.

November 2008 U.S. Core Search Rankings

Google Sites managed to pose a 0.4% increase with a total 63.5% while Yahoo’s sites recorded a drop by 0.1%, Microsoft 0.2%, Ask.com 0.2% and AOL LLC increased by 0.1%.

Redmond, Wash., -- Microsoft is exerting considerable effort to fuel new investments in search marketing, by offering free assistance as an incentive. A

conducted by Microsoft adCenter team, released the results of its study examining the search marketing behaviors of more or less 400 small-business owners in the United States -- confirms that the search advertising market still has most of the way to grow among small businesses, results from a Microsoft-sponsored online survey suggest.

Surprisingly, it seems that a significant proportion of small business owners are still stuck in the “build it and they will come” mentality. The findings suggest that the small businesses surveyed, tend to invest in developing Web sites, rather than take even the simplest steps to enhance their online business presence.

San Francisco -- The Inside Facebook blog posted some astonishing growth figures this week for the popular social networking site. For sure, Facebook is growing faster than the population in China! Just before two weeks Facebook has reached the 130 million user landmark. According to their statistics Facebook alone is showing growth of more than 500,000 members a day

According to Inside Facebook, Facebook has been growing at 3-4 hundred thousand users per day during the fourth quarter. The report highlights a recent increase of rate in the already meteoric rise in usage during this quarter.

“If Facebook maintains this rate, it could add up to 20 million new users in December and reach 200 million active users by March,” Justin Smith, editor of Inside Facebook writes.

Bangalore, India -- Internet search pioneer Yahoo Inc. has acquired a 30 percent strategic stake in Chennai-based firm specializes in tele-information search service, Info Network Management Company (INMAC), for an undisclosed amount...