bing

Google is the world's most valuable brand, according to a brand valuation company's list of the top 500 global brands.

Assigning a dollar amount to Google's brand, BrandFinance raised the search giant's value to $44.2 billion this year, up 23 percent from $36 billion last year.

Google often embarks on ventures that aren't necessarily commercial but have a positive impact on its brand rating (AAA+), which is the highest in the list, according to BrandFinance. One example includes Google's online services designed to help rescue efforts after the natural disasters in New Zealand … Read more

Google could find itself the target of two separate antitrust probes launched by Ohio and Wisconsin, according to a story published today by Bloomberg.

Concerned over the search giant's business practices, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is "evaluating the facts to determine if it's something we want to review," his spokesman Dan Tierney told Bloomberg.

Tierney confirmed the information to CNET, saying that the attorney general's office is "reviewing the facts regarding the matter to determine if there's any action that needs to be taken."

Asked if the attorney general is looking … Read more

Google has retooled its free iPhone app with a new name, a streamlined look and feel, and an easier way to narrow your search results, helping the mobile app work more like the Web site.

With its name changed from Google Mobile App to simply Google Search, the revised app launched yesterday for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

Right off the bat, Google users will notice that the screen resembles the one found on Google's Web page with a simple field in which you can type your query. Tapping a microphone icon lets you speak your query, while … Read more

In February, Microsoft's Bing continued its slow but steady rise, grabbing a slightly higher chunk of the U.S. search engine market, according to data released Friday by ComScore.

Among the three top search engines, Microsoft's share of the search market rose to 13.6 percent, up half a percentage point compared with January. In comparison, Google lost two-tenths of a percentage point but still dominated the market with 65.4 percent of all searches in February, while Yahoo's share stayed flat at 16.1 percent.

Though Microsoft may have picked up more share, the number of … Read more

A new set of advertisements portrays the bad guys in one of the most popular mobile video games as using Microsoft's search engine to do their dirty work.

Bing has sponsored four animated video advertisements that join the Angry Birds series' existing story. The ad spots feature the pigs, the villains of the game, who make use of Bing on a smartphone to search out bird eggs and have off with them. Two of those 15-second ad spots are up this morning, with the other two to be released later on down the line.

This is not the first … Read more

Microsoft is preparing to make searching Bing an instantaneous affair.

According to blog Winrumors, which was tipped off to a preview program Microsoft is running, the company is planning to roll out a special version of Bing for users with HTML5-compatible browsers. Those users will get a few extra flourishes like instant results as they type queries, as well as animations and transitions between pages.

This new version is said to be launching around the same time as the final release of Internet Explorer 9, which Microsoft is expected to announce at the South by Southwest conference kicking off Friday. … Read more

Today we are joined by Rafe Needleman of Reporters' Roundtable and Wilson Tang from The 404 to break down Microsoft's tablet strategy, what a $539 Xoom means for the iPad 2, and all the dirty things you can do with Opera. Oh, and we found a spot for our moon base!

Microsoft announced today that it has entered into a partnership with travel search tool Kayak to bring flight search results to Bing users in the U.S.

Now, when users do a flight search, it will be grabbing results from what Microsoft says is a larger set of flights than what was previously available. That new data will begin appearing in results in "the coming weeks," said Krista Pappas, Bing's global travel industry director , in a blog post today announcing the partnership.

"For Bing, this means we can focus our development resources on delivering even more … Read more

Microsoft and Google have teamed up to challenge a patent held by GeoTag--a geolocation technology company--that has been used to sue more than 300 other businesses.

The technology giants said the lawsuit, filed in District Court of Delaware earlier this week, is a result of the hundreds of suits GeoTag has lodged claiming those businesses infringe on the patent, which relates to geotagging technology. Many of the existing lawsuits are with customers of the Bing Maps and Google Maps services, the filing said.

"The suits have placed a cloud on Plaintiffs' web mapping services, have caused customers to … Read more