Search Engines

Yahoo Inc., owner of the second-most popular U.S. search engine, gained a greater share of Web searches in the country last month, according to researcher ComScore Inc. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo's share expanded to 20.5%, up from 20.2% in September, ComScore said. Google Inc. held the lead in October with 63.1%.

Ratcheting up the pressure on Yahoo Inc., a major investor on Wednesday urged the Internet company to sell its Web search business to Microsoft Corp. and proposed a price: $15 billion. Ivory Investment Management, a Los Angeles firm that owns 1.5% of Yahoo's shares, said the Internet company and Microsoft needed each other to stand any chance of competing with Google Inc. in Web search.

With U.S. and European regulators and watchdogs worried that Internet companies are compromising users' privacy by keeping data about online behavior for long periods, Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday that it would shorten that time from 13 months to 90 days. The retention policy is the shortest among major U.S. search engines and could pressure rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to reduce the time they keep information about their users.

Does surfing the Web exhaust -- and even exasperate -- older people? The backers of Cranky.com are betting on it. Cranky is a specialty search engine designed to please aging baby boomers by processing every request from the perspective of someone who is at least 50 years old. This steadily growing demographic often feels overwhelmed using high-powered search engines from the likes of Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

Google Inc.'s memory is getting a little shorter. Just not short enough for some. The company adjusted its policies Wednesday to answer complaints that it never forgets what users have looked for. Google said it would continue to collect and maintain a vast internal database of search-engine queries -- as diverse as "digital camera" and "bomb making instructions" -- tied to the unique addresses of the computers on which they were entered.

Sam Zell, who agreed to a takeover this week of Tribune Co., came to the heart of Silicon Valley on Thursday evening and said there needed to be "a new deal and new formulas" between newspapers and Internet companies. Journalists produce the news that search engines such as Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. seamlessly and freely make available to anyone with a computer, Zell said during a presentation on corporate governance at Stanford University.

Search king Google Inc. found another billion dollars in quarterly profit Thursday. Advertisers continued to flock to the leading search engine, boosting Google's first-quarter earnings 69% to $1 billion -- the second time it has hit the 10-figure mark. The company blew past Wall Street's already enthusiastic expectations, defying analyst predictions that slowing growth in the search advertising market would crimp Google's expansion. Its revenue jumped 63% to $3.7 billion.

Facing worries about its tracking Web surfers' every move, Google Inc. is now offering a feature to track Web surfers' every move. Its free Web History service is strictly voluntary -- Google users can sign up to have the Internet giant keep detailed records of every website they visit so they can easily find them again later.

Trying to chip away at Google Inc.'s Web search empire, a new Santa Monica company is pitting human against machine. While Google has thousands of computers crunching complex algorithms to sift through the Web, Mahalo Inc. employs about 40 people to handcraft search results. The idea is to add a human touch to the highly automated process of helping people find what they're looking for online. "Google indexes the world's information," Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis said.

Google Inc. extended its lead over Yahoo Inc. in the global Internet-search market, according to ComScore Inc. Google accounted for 67% of queries worldwide in April, up from 66.3% the previous month, while Yahoo slipped to 18.8% from 19.2%, the research firm said. Microsoft Corp. remained at 7.7%.