Reuters (www.reuters.com) announced on November 23 that a California-based pornographer has sued the search engine giant Google Inc. (www.google.com), alleging that it is illegally allowing people to view hijacked versions of nude photos. Beverly Hills, California-based Perfect 10 (www.perfect10.com) said in a lawsuit filed on November 19 in a Los Angeles federal court that Google's image search engine www.google.com/imghp gives users illegal access to photos it owns and produced, violating copyrights and harming its ability to profit from the distribution of the photos via its magazine and Web site.
The leading online marketing company Empower Search LLC announced on November 22 the launch of its new powerful, quick-fire search engine service EmpowerSearch.com (http://empowersearch.com). The service, built on a platform that produces results almost four times faster than Yahoo.com, 11 times faster than Overture.com, and edges out Google.com on momentum, prides itself on both speed and variation of results.
Metamend (www.Metamend.com), which has been recognized by firms such as Microsoft as the world leader in the field of search engine optimization technology, and InQuent Technologies (www.inquent.com), a leading provider of private label web hosting, announced on November 22 that InQuent has selected Metamend as its provider for search engine submission and search engine optimization (SEO) technology and services. InQuent will be integrating Metamend's technologies into its comprehensive suite of services for their Private Label Clients' hosting customers.
Charlotte, North Carolina-based ebasedEVOLUTION (www.ebasedevolution.com), a leading search engine marketing and web development firm that practices ethical search engine optimization and email services, announced on November 19 that a Search Engine Strategies conference will be held at the Microsoft Charlotte offices on December 7, 2004 (http://briangomme.com/reservations.asp), and that a highly respected Search Engine Marketing expert with a first hand knowledge of successful Internet marketing strategies will be speaking on the topic of local Internet marketing.
W3Reports.com (www.w3reports.com) announced on November 19 that Nokodo Search Engine Technologies has opened a public beta for the Nokodo search engine (www.nokodo.com). Nokodo will officially open on January 1, 2005. This public beta, which ends on December 15, 2004, allows users to test a small subset of the Nokodo.com database for results.
The Associated Press (www.ap.org) announced on November 19 that shares of Google Inc. (www.google.com) slipped nearly 3 percent on November 18 after the search engine giant warned for the second time in a week that its fourth-quarter revenue growth rate is likely to slow from previous quarters. In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google said that its sequential growth rate would probably decline in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter because of intensifying competition and an inevitable slowdown as the business gets bigger. Its sequential revenue growth rate was 7.5 percent in the second quarter versus the first quarter and 15.1 percent in the third quarter compared with the second quarter.
Reuters (www.reuters.com) announced on November 18 that the search engine giant Google Inc. (www.google.com) has opened an office just down the road from rival Microsoft Corp.'s headquarters in Seattle's suburbs as it seeks to lure local engineering talent. Google, which competes with the world's largest software maker in Internet search as well as for employees, has leased space in Kirkland, Washington, less than 8 km from Microsoft's Redmond headquarters.
The search engine giant Yahoo Inc. (www.yahoo.com) announced on November 18 that it has agreed to provide paid search services to Microsoft Corp.'s MSN sites in the United States and overseas through June 2006, extending a contract by one year. The previous agreement between Yahoo's Overture Services Inc. and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) ran through June 2005. Under the terms of the deal, Overture will continue to provide its service to MSN sites in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. An Overture spokeswoman declined to comment on the value of the deal, though some analysts believe it could generate about $200 million in revenue a year for Overture (www.overture.com).
The search engine giant Google Inc. (www.google.com) announced on November 18 the launch of a new service, http://scholar.google.com, which draws upon newly developed algorithms to list the academic research that appears to be most relevant to a search request, thus making better sense of all the scholarly work stored on the Web. Google doesn't plan to charge for the service nor use the feature to deliver text-based ads — the primary source of its profits.
Heise.de (www.heise.de) announced on November 17 that the Google Deutschland spokesman Stefan Keuchel has confirmed that the search engine giant Google intends to launch a German counterpart to its product search engine Froogle (http://froogle.google.com) in the foreseeable future. Froogle has been in operation as a comprehensive full-text product search engine in the US for two years now. A short while ago Froogle UK (http://froogle.google.co.uk) also took off.
