Internet, Search Engine | featured news

When Google was a pure search engine, it was easy to appear agnostic about search results, with no reason to play favorites with one Web site or another. But as Google has branched out into online services from maps and videos to comparison shopping, it has acquired pecuniary incentives to favor its own over rivals.

Yahoo (YHOO) and Gannett (GCI) announced today that they have formed a local advertising partnership.

High-profile censorship spat reaches detente with license renewal. On Friday Google announced the Chinese government renewed its license to operate its website in China. "I'm as surprised as everyone," says Rick Munarriz, senior analyst at the Motley Fool.

Google Inc. said Tuesday it will stop automatically routing users in China to its Hong Kong site after Beijing threatened the company with the loss of its Internet license in their latest skirmish over censorship.

If Google's famously sparse home page is too plain for you, the company is giving you some more options. A bold color photo of sand dunes replaced the white background to Google's search box Thursday. You can replace the desert ...

Web search engines make our lives easier: They connect us with what we're searching for in a matter of seconds, and sometimes they bring us to places we didn't even know we were looking for.

Nokia and Yahoo — two market leaders struggling to keep up in the US mobile market — joined forces Monday, announcing that Nokia would use its purchase of mapping giant NavTek to power Yahoo's map and navigation services globally ...

Google revealed for the first time how it splits advertising revenue with search and content publishers, a move made in response to calls from publishers and regulators for greater transparency.

Google is offering an encrypted option for Web searchers, meaning that users in regimes that monitor citizens' web habits may be able to conduct searches without governments knowing.

As the eerily familiar bleeps and bloops of video games past began eminating from my computer this morning, a friend nearby immediately recognized them and quipped that he'd spent "way too much time and brain cells playing that game".

That game is Pac-Man and it's featured in a playable Google Doodle for the next 48 hours on the Google homepage.