With another week down the search engines have dominated the news with acquisitions, mergers and good old fashioned rumour. Google set about their daily business of trying to take over absolutely everything while Bing where happy to just take Yahoo.
It wasn’t quite a funeral for Yahoo this week but the long standing search engine has finally given up the ghost as Bing starts to take over its web, image and search results. Like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Bing took control of all Yahoo results in the US and Canada with the rest to follow soon. Yahoo is still there in the visual sense, but like an old infirm man on a Bing Iron Lung.
The upside of this merger known as the (Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance) is that combined the two might constitute more of a threat to Google dominance. No longer will they be just a couple of coiled up piles on the sidewalk, but a full blown flaming bag on Google’s front step.
Of course, you’re never going to see Google looking too worried. Like some footballer's WAG, whenever Google feels down in the dumps they just kick up their heels and go shopping. Most recently Google picked up a Like.com and a pair of social networking sites that really go with their YouTube. Like a fat girl in a kebab shop slurping down a doner, Google have been tucking into a fair array of social networking sites of late…but to what end?
Well, as it is whenever Google does something new, the internet goes into full blown rumour mode: “Google are creating a tablet computer”, “Google are starting phone calls through Gmail”, “Google have Elvis and Shergar locked in their shed”. The most recent rumour circulating is that the Google social networking ghost stories could be true even though Google Buzz still gives me nightmares. Whether this GoogleMe or GoogleYou or GoogleWhatever ever comes to fruition is up for debate, but Google’s head of user research for social team Paul Adam seems to think Facebook could certainly be 1-up’ed.
Away from the constant culling of other small businesses, Google actually got back to doing something with their search engine. The new feature in testing is ‘instant search’ which predicts what you are looking for even as you type it. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Google already has predictive search’. However, this feature actually predicts what you’re after and pulls out a full SERP before you even think about hitting return. Could be interesting, or just irritating. Like those people who try to finish your…
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