It was almost a decade ago that Google established itself as the principal search engine in the web world and since then has hardly faced competition that can be put into the record books. The recent launch of another search engine, named Cuil (pronounced cool), was a simple reiteration of this fact. Though Cuil has been crafted and developed by former Google compatriots, Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier, the overall product was not even a close second to Google.

If our readers may recall, we had reported in December last year that, Google was in the process of testing a knowledge storehouse called “Knol” and it was expected to give a tough competition to the free online encyclopedia “Wikipedia”.

Near the end of June 2008, Yahoo! had dispatched a letter to its stockholders, focusing primarily on Microsoft and Google issues. However, it also contained heavy references to the proxy war that had been brewing between Yahoo! shareholder & private equity investor Carl Icahn and Yahoo! Inc.

(Image Courtesy: AfterMarketNews)

Google has announced, that it is in the process of acquiring, ZAO Begun ("Begun") from Rambler Media for a total sum of $140 million. “Begun” is a leading Russian context advertising service. Google intends to provide a wider platform to the advertisers, through which, they would be able to access a broader network of sites to advertise on. Publishers will also get a huge advantage, as they will be able to run a wider range of advertisements on their websites. With this new acquisition, Google hopes to provide the users with more relevant advertising across a much wider set of websites.

The much anticipated Google second quarter financial results for 2008 have been announced.

According to Google, "Strong international growth as well as sustained traffic increases on Google's web properties propelled us to another strong quarter, despite a more challenging economic environment," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. "As we continue to focus on innovating in our core business of search, ads and apps, we also look forward to enhancing the experience of our users and expanding the reach of our advertisers and partners with new technologies and formats, particularly as our integration of DoubleClick gains momentum and creates new opportunities in display advertising and elsewhere."

Just last month, Google Inc. was sued by a startup company called LimitNone LLC for Trade Secret Violation. Now, according to Information Week, in yet another court case, Google has been sued by lawyers from the San Francisco-based Schubert Jonckheer Kolbe & Kralowec, citing "low-quality ads". In Internet terms, low quality advertisements refer to the advertisements that generate a poor response or an unacceptable conversion rate. Such conversions can arise due to placement, audience targeting, or related factors.

In March this year, I had reported to my readers about the Yahoo! and Click Forensics joining forces to combat the ever growing threat of 'Click Fraud'.

Now according to New.com, Click Forensics, that is one of the biggest independent click-fraud auditors, along with Yahoo! Inc. has taken the fight straight to 'Click Fraud' with the launch of its new software, known as 'Factr'or short for 'Fully Automated Click Tracking Reconciliation'. This is one of the newest weapons that both companies are going to use to handle click fraud cases, swiftly and decisively. This service will be available to the Yahoo! Advertisers at $250 monthly and thousands of dollars a month, depending on the account's size.

Ask.com has announced that, it has entered into a search deal with the online image hosting giant, Photobucket. This deal between Ask and Photobucket includes sponsored listings and other advertisements. This means that from now on, at Photobucket, instead of Google, we will find Ask powering Photobucket's search. However, most of the sponsored lisitngs would still be coming from Google.

Here is the Press Release for the Ask & Photobucket deal:

Via the Yahoo! Search Blog, Yahoo! has announced that, it has launched Yahoo! Search BOSS, an acronym for 'Build Your Own Search Engine'. It is a web services platform that allows developers and companies to create and launch web-scale search products by utilizing the same infrastructure and technology that powers Yahoo! Search.

Google has announced via the Official Google Blog, the launch of Google Lively. It is a '3D Virtual World' where users are able to create avatars, their avatars’ rooms, customize their avatars with their own photos and videos via YouTube and embed their Lively virtual rooms into blogs and websites.