Google

Google's top brass are meeting Monday to figure out a response to how Microsoft's new overtures toward Yahoo affect Google's potential ad deal with Yahoo.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, speaking to reporters at a Google Zeitgeist event in the U.K., said he's meeting with co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin on the matter, according to the Times Online. "After this press conference the three of us will meet and decide what our response is," Schmidt said.

Google and Yahoo have been discussing a partnership under which Google would supply some text ads … Read more

With the Microhoo drama back in overdrive Monday, investors may be scrambling to figure out what buying a "minority, passive stake" means.

Reuters is quoting a source saying Microsoft is considering buying Yahoo's search business and taking a "minority, passive stake" in Yahoo once Yahoo has spun off its Asian assets. That's not a direct quote from the source, that's how the Reuters reporter described it.

This is a new wrinkle in the barrage of coverage for two reasons: It's likely the first time anyone has reported Microsoft would be interested in … Read more

Start-ups and venture capitalists often dream of the multimillion-dollar buyout, if not the lucrative IPO. So technology upstarts might perk up to hear the inside scoop from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft on their acquisitions.

On Saturday at the TieCon conference in Santa Clara, Calif., corporate development officers from the three Internet giants discussed their acquisition strategies on a panel with Tod Francis, managing director of Shasta Ventures. Sandeep Aggarwal, senior Internet research analyst at Collins Stewart, recapped the panel in a research note Monday.

From Google: The start-up needs to be ahead of Google's internal curve in a given … Read more

Update 4:20 p.m.: I added some more detail and comment. Update 12:50 p.m. PDT: I added more detail.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google on Monday launched a beta test of its Google Health service to archive medical records and find medical services.

The site is a personal portal that can be used to upload, store, and view personal information, retrieve records from partners, investigate health matters, set alerts such as a reminder to take medication, and run applications that can, for example, keep track of how many miles a person has walked.

In some areas, Google's … Read more

Update 5 p.m. PDT: I added some more details about text ads not working well in image search and about quotation search at Google News.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google is beginning an "experiment" that incorporates graphical ads with image search results.

"What we're announcing today is a new suite of image-related experiments. We're pairing images with images for the first time--display ads with image search," product management director R.J. Pittman said at a Google media event at company headquarters here.

Google got rich off of text ads that appear next to textual … Read more

Google will open its ad network so certified partners can serve advertisements and track ad data--a move designed to make it easier for advertisers to run campaigns across multiple companies' networks.

"This will empower advertisers to work with approved third parties to serve and track display ads, including rich-media ads, across the Google content network through AdWords, giving them more options, flexibility and control over their campaigns," Rajas Moonka, senior business product manager, said Monday on Google's corporate blog.

The network had been closed, waiting for Google to build a mechanism to review ad compliance with Google … Read more

The latest wild rumor circulating is that after doing a search ad deal with Yahoo, Microsoft will spend its cash acquiring Facebook for $15 billion to $20 billion.

At a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked about Facebook's future as a standalone company. "You can tell, from our history and what we've done, that we really wanted to keep the company independent, by focusing on building and focusing on the long term," Reuters reported.

Zuckerberg declined to comment on a follow-up question regarding the prospect of a sale. Microsoft invested $… Read more

Carl Icahn notwithstanding, Yahoo's deal to use Google search advertisements is still a go.

The partnership, which is designed to increase Yahoo's ad revenue, is "still on track," a source familiar with the partnership said, and an announcement is expected next week. That aligns well with reports in the New York Post and Reuters.

Take this schedule with a grain of salt. I've been snooping around on this particular deal for a while now, and plans to announce it have slipped several times. Jerry Yang and Yahoo's other top executives are reckoning with Icahn, … Read more

Google Translate just got more useful for a Prague citizen visiting India.

The online translation function now can understand 10 more languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, and Swedish. That brings the total to 23 languages, Google said in a blog posting Thursday.

In addition, Google added a language-detection feature that can guess the source language a user is trying to translate. It's more effective with longer amounts of text, Google said.

Detect Language means you only have to click the language you want to translate text into.