Search Engines' Reward Programs 83

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-is-all-so-dot-com dept.
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Search engines are dangling rewards and cash prizes to attract customers to their sites, the Wall Street Journal reports. MSN is offering free nights at the Four Seasons and other goodies to people who search for one of roughly a thousand terms on a rotating list. Yahoo's GoodSearch donates a penny to charity for each search. And Blingo hawks giveaways including iPods. But, the WSJ reports, 'There are strings attached to some of the reward programs. Some require users to register personal information like a name or email.'"
Google

Search Engine For Coders to Launch 149

Posted by Zonk from the sounds-codetacular dept.
karvind writes "According to Wired, 'Krugle' is set to next month. The search engine indexes programming code and documentation from open-source repositories like SourceForge, and includes corporate sites for programmers like the Sun Developer Network. The index will contain between 3 and 5 terabytes of code by the time the engine launches in March. According to article, Krugle also contains intelligence to help it parse code and to differentiate programming languages, so a PHP developer could search for a website-registration system written in PHP simply by typing 'PHP registration system.'" Update: 02/17 21:04 GMT by Z : Summary edited for accuracy.

Microsoft Hopes Prizes Will Attract New Searchers 195

Posted by CowboyNeal from the scratch-and-win dept.
BertieBaggio writes "Remember the long-running e-mail hoax that had Bill Gates testing an "e-mail tracing program" and offering to pay recipients big bucks if they passed his test e-mail along to all their friends? Well, the offer is true, sort of. Microsoft wants you to use its search engine, and it's got $1 million worth of prizes up for grabs for those who nibble at the offer. Following Yahoo's recent consideration of offering prizes to searchers, is this another tactic to lure users away from Google with candy and other shiny things?"
The Internet

Yahoo! Releases New Search Tool 146

Posted by Zonk from the yahoogle dept.
rcrc writes "Yahoo! Research Labs has recently released a new search tool that gives the opportunity to the user to choose whether they are looking for informational sites, or shopping sites, based upon a slider bar. This tool is currently in beta and more information can be found in the FAQ." From the article: "With the slider in the middle position, only the default Yahoo! Search sort is used. When the slider is at either end, only the secondary commercial/non-commercial sort is used. But when the slider is anywhere in between, Yahoo! Mindset presents a blend of the two sorting systems."
The Internet

Feds Fund Anti-Terrorism Search Engine 278

Posted by Zonk from the google-isn't-good-enough? dept.
Ben writes "The FAA and researchers at the University at Buffalo are developing an anti-terrorism search engine that will hunt for 'hidden' information -- like how to take down an airliner -- that can be puzzled together by grabbing bits and pieces from unrelated documents. Eventually, they say, the technique can be commercialized to improve search results on more mundane matters.`"
Microsoft

Apple and MS Battle For Desktop Search Supremacy 707

Posted by Zonk from the struggle-of-the-titans dept.
markmcb writes "As Microsoft and Apple go back and forth about who came up with what idea first, it's been hard to tell who the real innovaters are. Michael Gartenberg and Jim Allchin of Microsoft give some fair opinions on the current desktop search battle. While they do give credit to Apple's iTunes for search inspiration and to Apple being first out of the box in the OS race, they both imply that Microsoft will provide more robust features with the release of Longhorn."

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