Google and Yahoo! continue to erode U.S. Web Search market share from the competition according to a December 2006 analysis from comScore Networks.

In December 2006, Google increased its share of Web Search by capturing 47.4 percent of the U.S. market. This marks a gain of 0.4 share points from November and continues Google’s impressive run of gaining share in 16 of the last 17 months. Yahoo! continued to maintain its second place ranking by growing 0.3 share points and capturing 28.5 percent of U.S. searches.

Some of the competitive Search entities didn’t fare so well, suffering from falling market share. Microsoft slid 0.5 percent to 10.5 percent, while Ask Network’s share dipped 0.1 percent to 5.4 percent and Time Warner Network dropped 0.2 shares to 4.9 percent.

The study also reported that Americans conducted …

This is a follow up to the previous post on the Gmail Contacts Exploit.

It appears the the problem has been partially fixed by Google. A blog on zdnet is claiming that the issue is partially fixed. They are reporting that the issue may still exist on some Google domains. Another blogger is stating that the vulnerability still exists. SlipperyBrick is researching the issue and will keep our readers informed of any developments in the case.

Update: The author has posted to the Google Group handling Gmail issues to get a response from Google. The author of this post uses Gmail as his primary email client.

The problems continue for Gmail users. A vulnerability was found in the Gmail web based email application that allowed anyone to see a Gmail user’s contacts. The vulnerability came from the fact that apparently Gmail stores the users contacts in a JavaScript file. Any clever web hacker could steal this information as long as the user was logged into their Gmail account and visited a malicious site.

Gmail has had problems in the past with this sort of issue. Jeremiah Grossman discovered the issued and reported it to Google.

Both issues revolve around using JavaScript, the scripting language used in web pages, to make requests for data. If the request is made from the HTML within a Gmail message then the cookies used to authenticate a user to Gmail may be used to get information …

According to Internet traffic-monitoring firm Hitwise, the number of visits to Google Blog Search has surpassed visits to Technorati for the week ending 12/23/06.

Google Blog Search was introduced in September 2005 and experienced some trouble finding an audience. However, October marked a significant increase in Google Blog Search traffic when Google placed a link to Blog Search on the Google News home page. This action resulted in a 168% surge in market share for Google Blog Search over a two week period and positioned the Search tool as a serious threat to Technorati. Since then, approximately 60% of Google Blog Search’s traffic has been coming directly from Google News, compared to less than 1% before the change.

Hitwise also identified another interesting fact regarding Google Blog Search visitors. The Demographic data show that 34% of visitors to …

It started as a post in the Gmail help group. Users were seeing their email and contacts being deleted before their eyes. Posts then trickled in that the users affected were using Firefox 2.0.

From the available evidence it appears that possibly a security hole in Firefox 2.0 allowed some malicious users to delete emails in a user’s account. One user claimed they received a message in their inbox stating, “This is not a mistake. All your emails and contacts have been deleted
on purpose. This was a malicious attack and not an error. Have a nice
day. =)”

It appears that Google may be moving towards a resolution with this issue. However it …

Google has once again released its Google Zeitgeist top 10 list, showing the top 10 searches for the year 2006 on Google and Google News world wide.

Topping the list for Google searches this year is ‘bebo’, a “new generation” social networking site according to the bebo site, followed directly by myspace, another obviously popular networking site. ‘World cup’ was in the top 10, along with a couple entries with ‘wiki’ in it, showing that searches have really caught on to the idea of Wikipedia type resources, which also should be no surprise based on the amount of wiki information available.

The Zeitgeist top 10 list has the top 10 items searched on Google News as well. Topping the searches on Google News was ‘Paris Hilton’ followed by ‘Orlando Bloom’.

Google Zeitgeist bases there data not only on the most number of …

A unique collaboration between Google and NASA was announced in a press release from the NASA Ames Research Center on Monday. The organizations have signed a Space Act Agreement that outlines a joint effort to work on a variety of challenging technical problems. This relationship will give NASA access to Google’s expertise in distributed computing and search to make NASA’s voluminous amounts of data searchable on the Internet.

The first issue the collaboration will focus on is making the useful items from NASA’s catalog available on the Internet including: real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, and real-time tracking of the International Space Station.

Other collaborations include incorporating agency data sets into Google Earth, user studies and cognitive modeling for human computer interaction, and searching science data by utilizing existing Google products.

Teams from both organizations have already recently met to …

According to the Observer, Google and Orange are collaborating on making a Google Phone with built in Google applications for surfing the web, and getting email. This would be another big step forward for both of these two very powerful companies in the technology world, and could be a large benefit to consumers in mobile internet access and potentially costs as well.

Google has been working on different technologies to make information more accessible from mobile devices, such getting email on your handset, and having another medium to be able to provide search services along with advertising may be right inline with Google’s vision.

The Observer stated: “A source close to the talks told The Observer: ‘Google are software experts and are doing some amazing work compressing data so that the mobile user gets a much better experience. They …

Google has recently added another service to the Google Apps For Your Domain offering, by giving users the ability to search and register domain names.

They allow you to register just about any domain name with .com, .org, .net, .biz, and .info extensions only, but the same rules apply for registering domains as they did for adding existing domains, such as you cannot register any name with the word ‘Google’ in it.

Google partnered with two existing registration companies (GoDaddy and eNom) to be able to provide this service. This is a nice added convenience to the Google Apps suite since prior to this addition, administrators creating a site with Google were required to register their domains somewhere else. Registering domains with Google in which you are going to use with Google Apps saves a lot of time …

Google has announced a new search service to add to its catalog of search products. Google Patent Search will allow you to perform a full text search of 7 million patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Using the advanced search, Google Patent Search will allow you to search by patent number, title, inventor, assignee, current U.S. classification, international classification, issue date, and filing date.

You can actually view images of original patents online including drawings, descriptions, claims and links to the U.S. Patent office filing. Since Google Patent Search uses much of the same technology that powers Google Book Search, you can therefore scroll through pages and zoom in on text and drawings as you can with books.

My search for “ipod” returned 68 results. Browsing through the results I found some interesting ipod accessories. An advanced search for …

YouTube has announced that its videos will now be available on mobile devices starting in early December. This announcement marks the first step by the Google-owned video-sharing service to deliver video entertainment to mobile consumers.

Initially, YouTube will give exclusive access to Verizon Wireless V CAST consumers. The service will give Verizon customers limited access to a sampling of YouTube videos from their mobile phones. More partnerships and features from YouTube for the mobile phone are expected to be rolled out over the coming year.

The YouTube videos will be available on any one of the Verizon Wireless V CAST-enabled handsets. Consumers will also will be able to record and share their favorite moments using their mobile phones.

Verizon Wireless customers can purchase a V CAST VPak monthly subscription for $15.00 or $3.00 for daily access. The VPak subscription includes unlimited basic video, but application download fees …

Google has announced a free Java application that can be downloaded to your mobile device as an advanced interface to Gmail. Mobile phone users that have internet enabled phones and access can already get their Gmail through their browser, but this application gives a richer, faster and more intuitive experience, according to Google.

The new mobile interface has pretty much the same look and feel as the normal Gmail browser based application, but does not require the mobile phone browser and in turn gives quicker access to email messages through the new Java based application.

The application continues to synchronize the same way it does for the web application as well, so no data is stored exclusively local within the mobile device. Sent items, deleted items and inbox all will have the same data whether you are on your PC or on your …

What does 1.65 billion dollars buy you these days? Well, if you are Google it buys you a popular free video sharing web site and a fair share of controversy.

YouTube, which lets users upload, view, and share video clips was founded in February 2005 by three early employees of PayPal. YouTube has made headlines recently due to the scuttlebutt concerning copyright violations. Most videos posted on YouTube are original, but the site also features a certain amount of copyrighted material. This problem has caused some pundits to predict the startup eventually would be sued into oblivion.

This recent purchase by Google is the latest in a line of purchases by the search engine behemoth. Last year Google spent $130.5 million buying a total of 15 small companies.

Video sharing websites appear to be all the rage these days as marquee names like …

The latest version of Google Earth has been released in beta. This new version adds several new features that will make your Earth searching even more enjoyable.

Some of the key changes include:

A new and simpler user interface.
Textured 3D buildings are supported. This means that features on the building suck as bricks and glass will look more realistic.
The data layers have been reengineered to make it easier to find layers and turn them on and off.
The nav panel at the bottom of the screen is gone which will free up some much-needed real estate.
With Google SketchUp, you can now create your own textured 3D models.
The ability to create and share geographic information with KML.
Google Earth has been released in French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
Improvements to GPS support for Google Earth Plus.
Improvements to the terrain, making peaks and valleys more …