Search Engines

As an opening gambit, Microsoft's campaign for its new Bing search engine accuses Google of causing global economic ruin. That's cheeky. The 60-second commercial titled "Manifesto" (JWT Worldwide), which began airing last week, opens with scenes of random YouTube nuttiness (videos of Perez Hilton, the keyboard-playing cat, OK Go's treadmill shtick, etc.). Then the mood darkens. The narrator says: "While everyone was searching, there was bailing. . . .

Google Inc. made two changes to its search results pages Tuesday that it said would help more effectively direct users to the information they were seeking. The search engine giant said it was launching a technology to better understand what people were looking for online. It also will give longer lines of text, or snippets, after the search title, with relevant words in bold.

Wikia Inc., the Internet company started by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, opened its search engine to the public on Monday in a bid to challenge Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Wikia Search, which lets users edit and fine-tune its results, is now seeking contributors to help expand the service, according to a statement from the San Mateo, Calif.-based company. The system is open-source, meaning its underlying programming code can be shared freely.

Whether a Microsoft Corp.-Yahoo Inc. combination would put a real obstacle in Google Inc.'s path or just a pothole would depend on whether the merged company got the kind of dynamic leadership that neither side has exhibited in recent years, analysts said Friday. The two companies have complementary strengths that ought to make them a tougher competitor as a team, such people said.

Acknowledging it can't beat Internet juggernaut Google Inc. on its own, Microsoft Corp. on Friday lashed its online fortunes to another Web also-ran with an unsolicited $44.6-billion bid for Yahoo Inc. Microsoft and Yahoo, two of the world's most powerful technology companies, have each spent billions of dollars over the last half-decade trying to catch up to Google in the lucrative search-engine advertising business but still find themselves as far behind as ever.

Yahoo Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang chose the name of his company in part because it referred to someone who is rude, unsophisticated and uncouth -- not the starchy executive jockeying for splashy deals. The 39-year-old billionaire has relished the title of Chief Yahoo that he picked up after he and friend David Filo started the Internet search company in 1995 as graduate students at Stanford University.

The increased jockeying for Yahoo Inc. complicates the Web portal's takeover fight with Microsoft Corp. But it also simplifies the bigger picture: The five largest draws for the Internet audience are now virtually certain to shrink to four -- maybe even three.

In the now-suspended takeover fight between software titan Microsoft Corp. and Internet poster child Yahoo Inc., the winner was a heckler in the audience. The combined companies could have created a formidable challenger to Google Inc., but the Web search king helped scuttle the deal by complaining about the potential effect on competition and by tossing Yahoo a lifeline in the form of an advertising partnership.

Microsoft Corp. turned to Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. for help in fighting its biggest-ever competitive threat, then only made that threat stronger. Yahoo and Microsoft on Thursday said they had ended nearly five months of merger and partnership talks born of the software giant's frustration with falling far behind Google Inc. in online advertising. Yahoo shares plunged more than 10% to $23.52. But after the stock market closed, the Sunnyvale, Calif.

The search engine wars are heating up again with the public launch tonight of Cuil (pronounced "cool"). The Menlo Park start-up behind the website, at www.cuil.com, isn't trying to be a Google killer -- it's trying to reinvent search, said Anna Patterson, president and co-founder of Cuil. She's an ex-Googler, the architect of the Web giant's TeraGoogle search index that launched in 2006.