Business.com (www.business.com), the search engine designed and organized exclusively for business, announced on November 8 that Benchmark Capital (www.benchmark.com), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, has invested $10 million in Business.com. Business.com joins the impressive list of Benchmark Capital investments that includes eBay, Red Hat Software, Handspring and Juniper Networks. This new round of funding will enable Business.com to invest in technology infrastructure, product development, and sales and marketing to meet the growing market demand for its vertical business search capabilities.
SearchEngineJournal.com (www.searchenginejournal.com) announced on November 5 that the software giant Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) expanded its MSN Music Store to eight new countries on November 4. With this expansion the MSN Music Store is now accessible in 17 countries. According to Microsoft, its new download stores in Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland followed an agreement with music download distributor Loudeye (www.loudeye.com). While in Northern Europe Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway the new MSN service will partner with retailer CDON.com (www.CDON.com). Microsoft forecasts that with a larger reach in 4 more countries and growing, along with the popularity of Windows Media Player and MSN, they have a chance to overtake Apple’s music store in the number of songs sold.
SecurityFocus.com (http://securityfocus.com), the highly rated Internet security watchdog, announced on November 4 that the hackers exploiting a flaw in Google's desktop search tool (http://desktop.google.com) launched a week back could have illegally obtained critical data of users like credit card information. The flaw, which Google finally plugged on November 3, might have made vulnerable the highly trusted search engine's Google Desktop to phishing, the internet fraud of using spoofed-up emails and web pages to persuade users to part with critical information. The website www.antiphishing.org, which keeps a watch over phishing scams, says that fraudsters succeed in convincing about five percent of their targets in parting with critical data. Considering the billions of page views that Google receives daily worldwide, the exposure could have been enormous, experts believe.
Yahoo! Korea introduced an upgraded version of its Gugi search service (http://gugi.yahoo.co.kr) on November 3 giving users the option of sorting information by ratings and allowing greater use of natural language in search words. The upgrade features an Internet-based callback system for small businesses, which allows users to post their contact details for businesses that do not have a web page. Gugi's search results now include ratings and are integrated with specific information such as traffic, business hours and parking availability.
Addict3d.org (http://addict3d.org) announced on November 3 that the publisher Reed Elsevier (www.reed-elsevier.com), which owns the paid-for search engine LexisNexis (www.lexis.com), has called a truce with arch-rival Google (www.google.com). The pair are discussing joint ventures. The first provides users of Reed's Kellysearch business information website with Google's links to advertisers. Reed lost customers to Google as subscribers tried to get the same information they found on LexisNexis without paying for it. But chief executive Sir Crispin Davis says the company has won many of them back.
TMCnet.com (www.tmcnet.com) announced on November 3 that Copernic (www.copernic.com) and its international business development partner Contraco initiated a European market penetration strategy by announcing German, French and Dutch versions of the award-winning Copernic Desktop Search (www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search) product, with an Italian version soon to follow. CDS enables users to instantly search their personal files, emails and attachments as well as pictures, music and videos. Using a streamlined, intuitive user interface, CDS performs sub-second searching of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, Acrobat PDF's, all popular music, picture and video formats, contacts, browser history, and favorites. With seven separate technology patents pending, CDS represents the state of the art in desktop search design.
The search engine giant Yahoo Inc. (www.yahoo.com) announced on November 3 that it has hired the former ABC television network Chairman Lloyd Braun as head of media and entertainment. Braun will oversee Yahoo's Web pages about movies, TV, entertainment, music, games, finance, news, weather, sports, health and children.
KeralaNext.com (www.keralanext.com) announced on November 3 that a Tamil Nadu university has developed a multilingual Internet search engine, touted to be the first in an Indian regional language. Called Kazhugu, the search engine has been developed by Anna University's K.B. Chandrasekar Research Centre (www.au-kbc.org) and is capable of searching all the Tamil websites, despite the difference in the fonts they use. A 10-member team of the university's language technologies group began work on the search engine in August 2000, the university said. The team has developed a trans-lingual information accessing tool, which can search classified matrimonial advertisements in other languages, based on keywords and give the results after translating it into Tamil. The search will also be done on English language websites but the user gets the results in Tamil.
Reuters (www.reuters.com) announced on November 2 that Yahoo Inc.’s Chief Executive Terry Semel said on November 1 that the search engine giant is working on a desktop search program that would help people find information stored on their computer hard drives. Terry Semel said at an investment conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, which was broadcast over the Internet, that Yahoo is working on it, and that in short course, Yahoo will have a desktop solution as well. He did not say specifically when Yahoo's desktop search program would be released. Semel, a former Hollywood studio executive, who is seen by some as a strong potential successor to retiring Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner, also said he plans to stay put at Yahoo.
SearchEngineJournal.com (www.searchenginejournal.com) announced on November 2 that Amazon A9.com users who prefer Mozilla Firefox over Microsoft IE will now be able to download a Firefox-friendly toolbar which features A9.com’s full set of innovative search technologies such as Bookmarks, Site History, A9 Lists and the A9 Diary, which are available through the A9 Toolbar. The A9 Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox can be downloaded in two minutes by clicking on “toolbar” on the A9.com home page www.A9.com and can run on Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems.
