Microsoft, Search Engine | featured news

Microsoft Corp is considering a bid for Yahoo Inc, resurfacing as a potential buyer after a bitter and unsuccessful fight to take over the Internet company in 2008, sources close to the situation said on Wednesday.

To recap, Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, sent a shot across the bow of Apple, Microsoft and Oracle, accusing them of participating in an “organized campaign” to take Google’s Android platform down through patent lawsuits.

Baidu and Microsoft have added another element to their developing cooperation: This year the Chinese search engine will start sourcing some results for users' English-language searches from Microsoft's Bing search engine, the two companies said.

The case could turn into the biggest showdown between the government and a major technology company since the Microsoft antitrust trial more than a decade ago.

We recently broke the story of a small search software outlet named Masterobjects taking on Amazon.com in a notable patent infringement lawsuit, later also taking Google to court. Now it's apparently Microsoft's turn to get sued by the company, and my guess is more will follow.

Microsoft said its Bing search engine and mapping service will be the default options for Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices.

Slowly but steadily, Microsoft Bing has become a potent threat to Google in the search market. Over the last few months, Microsoft’s aggressive strategy with Bing has started to yield market share gains over competitors Google, Yahoo and AOL in the U.S. search market. Bing’s market share, which was around 11% in September 2010, is now close to 14% as of February 2011.

No wonder Google seems so panicked about Bing. The latest results from market researcher Experian Hitwise show not only that Bing grew at Google's expense in January. They also show that Bing is delivering more accurate results. In the U.S., Bing now powers more than 27% of search results, up from 25% in December. That's despite a slight decline in traffic to Yahoo's search site, which has been powered by Bing since December.

Google alleges Microsoft uses its web browser and Bing Search bar to harvest information on Google users.

A consortium of companies including Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Meebo and more announced tonight that it will launch a new system on Monday that will let website owners discover which social networks a site visitor uses and prompt them automatically to log-in and share with friends on those network.