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Features

• Opinion: More innovation means less control. Is that bad?

  Innovation in mobile computing, search and social media increasingly means taking control away from users, but at what cost?

• Facebook's search tool could be big money maker

  If users take to Facebook's new search tool, the social network could be in line to haul in a lot of advertising dollars, say industry analysts.

• Facebook turns up the heat on Google Search

  With Facebook's new search service out in the open, the social network seems to be on a collision course with search giant Google.

• FTC gives Google slap on wrist instead of face

  After a nearly two-year antitrust investigation, Google escaped with more of a slap on the wrist than a slap in the face, say industry analysts.

• Google's antitrust settlement means few changes

  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's antitrust settlement with Google will create few changes in the way the company operates, both critics and fans of the deal said.

• Google rides out service blockages in China

  Google's services have been riding a bit of a rollercoaster in China over the last several days. A one-hour or even 12-hour blockage wouldn't hurt the company. It's the potential for a much longer blockage that could be problematic for Google, says one analyst.

• Google considers Bing a serious threat

  Google very publicly called out Microsoft's Bing search engine -- claiming that it copies its search results from Google. The initial charge has been followed by a back and forth exchange of insults and accusations, but one thing that is sort of lost in the melodrama is that Google apparently considers Bing to be a serious threat.

• Google management shuffle: Right move, wrong guy?

  Today's announcement that Google co-founder Larry Page would replace Eric Schmidt as the company's CEO was a surprise, but maybe it shouldn't have been. While the company's earnings are still stellar, Schmidt has made a series of embarrassing statements and the company has had some very public failures.

• Google's Realtime Search update does what Twitter won't

  Searching for status updates is not Twitter's forte, so leave it to Google to make its own Realtime Search engine more powerful instead.

• Google's China decision ignores conventional wisdom

  Google's decision to stop censoring search engine results in China, announced in a blog posting Monday, flies in the face of common wisdom when it comes to doing business in the country.

• Bing gains again -- should Google worry?

  Microsoft's Bing search engine may still be a bit player in the lucrative online search business dominated by Google, but it's slowly and steadily gaining users.

• Bing now a serious challenger to Google

  Given undistinguished history of Microsoft's late and unlamented Live Search engine, the predecessor to Bing, it's easy to dismiss Redmond as a hapless also-ran in the search market. But given the vast sums of money and resources that Microsoft is investing in its fledging Google challenger, this could change in a hurry.

• Google Caffeine FAQ: your questions answered

  Google has unveiled Caffeine, a "next-generation architecture" for its Web search platform. The retooled search engine is said to be faster, more accurate, and more comprehensive than the current Google search setup.

• Yahoo Search: RIP

  Yahoo started out in 1994 as a ragtag site called "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web," named after founders Jerry Yang and David Filo who were at the time students at Stanford University.

• Searching where Google can't

  We read a lot about the delivery, and popularity, of SMS services such as market prices, health advice and job alerts in developing countries, information there is clearly a need for. Only last week Grameen's AppLab initiative, in conjunction with Google and MTN, launched a suite of SMS services in Uganda. These are the services you'll get to hear most about when you search the Web, trawl the blogosphere and attend various conferences on the subject. It all seems pretty sewn up on the content side -- I mean, what else could people earning a few dollars a day (at most) possibly want?