Google and Caffeine

Almost ironical my blog's name has Caffeine too!

Anyway, it's pretty much still hot, and everywhere - I mean - even the BBC has a story on this!

In a crux: it's Google's new search engine. Some say it leaves Bing behind, some say nothing (like myself, since I haven't used it properly yet).

Google says (via BBC - I'm a bit too lazy to check out their blog :P ) that it is the "first step in improving the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results".

Basically, the result order/layout, it's "freshness" or "recency" of articles and other under-the-hood things have been improved. Caffeine will replace the main search engine once testing is complete.

Well - either way, I think I'll still use Google heh. This isn't making me drool more, but improvements are welcome.

EDIT: BetaNews has an article on what's different in Caffeine. Take a look here.

One rival to Google: "Bing-hoo"

Ever since the announcement of Microsoft's and Yahoo's partnership, it's around the blogosphere that there's now only one major rival to Google: and that's Bing.

In the deal (the details can be found everywhere on the internet - use Google ;), Yahoo will replace it's search with Bing (and other changes will take place). This means no more Yahoo! (sob).

Is it for the better or worse? Google thinks it's not good (and they have every reason to be threatened, considering how quickly Bing's gaining momentum in it's market share) and MS/Yahoo think it's good (since this is a market controlled by one major player, and the smaller ones don't really stand a chance without consolidation).

What can I say! Good luck to both companies!

Google's getting Binged quite quickly!

Just saw this on TechCrunch's article: Bing's share is nearing 12%, courtesy of comScore's stats.

I swear, this is getting quite interesting, after Microsoft taking out a makeshift patch for the prevention of explicit content from being automatically played over a hover.

I have to say, Bing ain't all that bad, y'know!

... and Bing(o) was his name-o

Microsoft decided to bring into the market a search engine called Bing. I'm not too bothered about the epistemology of the name, but hey - it's catchy!

Anyhoo, Googling Google reports that Bing has overtaken Yahoo (in terms of the market share) and is now "stealing share from Google".

But hey - there are reasons for this. First (and foremost), it's getting quite a bit of fanfare. No surprise.

Secondly - they've hijaced IE6's search bar! By accident or otherwise, Microsoft is saying that they're looking at it, but is it really something that was done intentionally in order to grab a lot of market share, or...? It's anyone's guess.

Now for the extra junk: if you go to bing.com, you'll see that there's a background image that changes, and if the mouse hovers over certain portions of the picture, small snippets appear. That is neat, especially for a search engine.

What's not so cool is that videos get played automatically if you hover the mouse on them. And yes, that works for porn too. I don't condone pornography, but well... a major booboo on Microsoft's part. They say that there's a small workaround to that - but it's not permanent.

Let's see if Google gets Bing Bong'd on it's door... BetaNews is doing a story on Google vs. Bing here, here, here and here. There could be more comparisons around the internet - feel free to search.

PS: I'm horrible when it comes to online formatting - if the logos are disjointed, it's because I've decided to blog regularly - for the first time :P

UPDATE: WXPNews will be carrying out a Bing and Google Comparison