Technology, Search Engine | featured news

Yahoo has put the IP squeeze on Facebook, slapping it with a patent lawsuit during the quiet period in the run up to the social network's IPO.

Google+ has been called a "ghost town," a "little version of Facebook" and "dead" since its launch last year. Users have continually questioned what it is and why they would want to use it. Google's senior vice president of social business, Vic Gundotra, attempted to rebut critics' claims during a panel at South by Southwest on Friday and defended Google+ against allegations that users are fleeing a stagnant service. Traffic has declined more than 30 percent in the past four months, according to one estimate.

In 2010, Google gave its search engine a jolt, moving the web’s de facto gateway onto a new software platform dubbed “Caffeine.” Designed by Google itself, Caffeine was a way for the company to more rapidly add new links to its massive index of websites, including news stories and blog posts and chatter from web forums. According to the company, it provided “50 percent fresher” search results than its previous indexing system, which was based on a seminal Google creation called MapReduce.

Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson is preparing a massive restructuring of the Internet search firm, including layoffs that are likely to number in the thousands, according to a report.

On Thursday, Google's much-discussed new privacy policy goes into effect.

Everyone’s heard the expression: Job searching is a full time job. But it isn’t until you find yourself sitting in front of a laptop, eating take-out, and scrolling job sites night after night that you realize how much of your life becomes consumed by the search. It takes time to find the right position. And yes, it’s a lot of work. But, like anything, there are things you can do to make it a little easier on yourself.

Google recently announced it was unifying its privacy policies and would be sharing the data it collects about users between all of its products, starting March 1st. That means your web searches and sites you visit will be combined with other Google products like Google Plus and YouTube. If you'd rather avoid that, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reminds us you can remove your Google search history and stop it from being recorded.

Discovery comes just days after Web giant was found to be sidestepping the user privacy preferences in Apple's Safari. Read this blog post by Steven Musil on Security.

Yahoo Inc and its Asian partners, China's Alibaba and Japan's Softbank Corp, have called off talks over a tax-free sale of the U.S. company's Asian assets, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.

It appears that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney now has a Rick Santorum Internet-age problem. Searching for "Romney" using Google now yields a page defining the meaning of the term as "to defecate in terror" within the first five links or so.