Last week New Corporation declared that they may start charging for news online and stop allowing Google to index their stories. Yet, Google has declared their commitment to the news industry. So, what does the future hold for the news industry online?

Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corporation, told Sky News Australia (which belongs to News Corporation) last week that he thinks they will start charging for their newspaper content online. He also said that they are considering disallowing Google to index the pages, so that the news stories will only be found by subscribers and won’t come up in organic searches. Free online newspapers indexed by Google have been attributed to the ‘death of the traditional newspaper’ and it seems that Murdoch is declaring war on Google News’ dominance of the industry. He also told Sky News that he doesn’t believe offline newspapers will disappear in the next twenty years but it is possible that they will eventually die out.

If you accidentally posted a letter to the wrong address, would you sue the post office? We live in a litigious society, so perhaps the more pertinent question is: could you successfully sue the post office? I’m going to stick my neck out and say that no, you couldn’t successfully sue them for a mistake that you made. One of the problems with society today, and this is when I put on my granny pants, is that no one wants to take responsibility for anything, from politicians to banks accountability has become the stuff of legend. Take, for example, the bank in Wyoming, USA that is suing Google because they sent a sensitive email to the wrong address.

I love visiting the library. Some may not know this, but libraries are is still open. Libraries remind me of my childhood when I sat on the mat and listened to stories read by an elderly lady whose name escapes me but whose face I’ll always remember. The eBook phenomenon is a fairly recent development and millions of people are opting to download their favourite eBook instead of buying the paperback novel from their local bookstore or checking them out of the library. Have the masses replaced their books for screens because of money constraints, time limitations or because the availability of books online is instant and never-ending?

As reported by Matt McGee, Nielsen has just released search market share stats for August 2009 and at 10.7%, the figures for Bing look promising. In June 2009, Bing nabbed 8.8% of the search market share. Google rather obviously had the lion’s share of the market – 66.1%. But since then, Bing has been creeping up on the search giant. July saw Bing gain 9% of the search market while Google’s lead slipped to 64.8%. Bing’s leap to 10.7% in August is pretty significant considering that it’s still a young search engine.

Search Market Share August 2009

Search Market Share July 2009

Search Market Share June 2009

Google’s share of the search market dipped again in August, although at 64.6% the drop is almost negligible. It’s worthwhile noting that Bing isn’t falling away as many previously touted ‘Google killers’ have been prone to do. And while Google’s lead may seem unassailable, Bing showed a 22% growth in searches over July.

The world

Good news for all of us who live and die by Wikipedia – the ultra-convenient source of dodgy information is finally giving users the means to separate iffy content from that which by common consensus is accepted as correct. What that means is that you’ll be able to tell what the masses think is genuine, but it won’t necessarily tell you the truth. And validity is skewed towards regular Wikipedia contributors as opposed to first time writers who really know their stuff.

According to the website in question (i.e. Wikipedia), “WikiTrust is a MediaWiki extension that implements an author reputation system, and a text trust system, for wikis. WikiTrust adds to a wiki a check text tab that enables any visitor to check the author, origin, and reliability of wiki text. Thus, visitors can easily spot spam, surreptitious changes, and information tampering.” (Emphasis author’s own)

Google Earth launched its new update on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which allows users to explore the moon like they are able to explore the ocean floors virtually, thanks to Google Earth version 5.0.

We’ve all seen pictures of the moon landing, and while it looks like it may be fun for a half-day excursion on a school trip, quite frankly, I think exploring the moon extensively would be rather dull. The low gravity factor will hold you enthralled for all of fifteen minutes, but after that there are only so many rock formations and craters you can point out before you’ll need to bump into the man on the moon and discover something made of cheese to alleviate the boredom. And exploring the moon virtually can’t be much better, can it?

Microsoft’s Bing is actually doing really well at the moment, despite predictions of a fate similar to that of Microsoft Live. The search engine is being described as a decision engine. Statistics from Hitwise in the UK, as well as the USA/Canada region, have indicated that Bing is making waves. It is catching up to Yahoo! and reactions from techies and average users alike are mostly positive.

Having said that, will Bing be a passing fad or will it actually make inroads in Microsoft’s titanic battle with Google, and what, if anything, will this mean for SEO or DEO – “Decision Engine Optimisation” for Bing?
All of Bing’s features are only available in the US at the moment, which is a pity for the rest of us who will have to wait a bit longer to see what all the fuss is about.

What are some of the positives?

The wait is finally over: Microsoft’s long anticipated new search engine is to be unveiled this week by Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer. Bing is the renamed and revamped search engine to replace Microsoft’s current search engine -Live.

The project, previously named Kumo, has seen Microsoft pour a lot of its resources into it. According to advertising trade magazine, Advertising Age, Microsoft is set to spend up to $100 million to promote the site. And for a deep global economic recession or any period for that matter, that is one heck of an investment. It is an especially large figure when you look at it against the industry leader Google, which only spent around $25 million last year on advertising.

The look of the search engine is quite similar to that of Google, but it promises to be a better search engine. Better? I didn’t know there was something wrong with the old one
The following is a quote taken from an article written by computerworlduk.com from a former Google executive, Shashi Seth, who discusses the effectiveness of current search engines-a la Google, Yahoo and Live:

I first found out about the Wolfram|Alpha search engine on Monday, courtesy of Wired. I loved it. I thought it was exciting, full of loads of potential and in no way a Google Killer, as so many new search engines are expected to be. As I grew up with a father with an insatiable desire to know everything there is to know about everything, I sympathized with Stephen Wolfram’s unrealistic but admirable ambition to delve into all the knowledge of the world.

And I liked the way article author, Steven Levy, described Wolfram|Alpha as a “powerful computational engine”. Although I had serious doubts about the part where he said that it “can effortlessly answer queries that no one has asked of a search engine before”, primarily because nothing in life is effortless (not even sleep) and I’m fairly certain that between all of the internet users in the world, many of whom are downright nutjobs, we’ve asked search engines some pretty interesting questions. Wolfram qualifies his search engine’s abilities by saying that it provides quantitative answers to questions. Quantitative – as in quantities – as in amounts – as in absolutely no semantics whatsoever.

Everybody in the computer/internet industry has different preferences regarding what sites to visit, which search engine to use and what social network is the best for advertising business. Search engines and social media sites have been competing with each other for years now, and 2009 is sure to be exciting with millions more people getting in on the internet action, especially with sites like Twitter hitting the scene. I would like to cover which sites are the real big boys and which ones have still got a long way to go.