Issue no. 389 - 22 June 2008

• Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon - The three survivors (Economist)
  And so Yahoo! survives. The internet company - which, at the age of 14, is one of the oldest - appears in the end to have rebuffed Microsoft, the software Goliath that wanted to buy it. It has done so, in part, by surrendering to Google, the younger internet company that is its main rival. In a vague deal apparently designed to confuse antitrust regulators, Yahoo! is letting Google, the biggest force in web-search advertising, place text ads next to some of Yahoo!'s own search results. Google thus controls some or all of the ads on all the big search engines except Microsoft's. Yahoo! lives, but on the web's equivalent of life support.

Issue no. 384 - 24 February 2008

• Google 'improves' mobile search (BBC)
  Google has launched a new search service for mobile phones, promising "faster" and "more relevant results". The facility gathers regular and mobile web results, news, images and local listings, meaning people no longer have to specify a type of search. An improved "local search experience" is based on Google's belief that mobile search is more often used to find area information such as cinema listings. The service is now available in the UK, France, Germany and Canada. It has been available in the US since March last year.

Issue no. 376 - 10 June 2007

• Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine (The New York Times)
  Google seems to be doing everything. It takes pictures of your house from outer space, picks fights with Hollywood and tries to undercut Microsoft?s software dominance. But Google remains a search engine. And its search pages, blue hyperlinks set against a bland, white background, have made it the most visited, most profitable and arguably the most powerful company on the Internet.

Issue no. 375 - 9 May 2007

• The Structure of Search Engine Law (Iowa Law Review)
  by James Grimmelmann. Search engines are the new linchpins of the Internet, and a new body of law - search engine law - will increasingly determine the shape of the Internet. Making sensible search policy requires a clear understanding of how search works, what interests are at stake, and what legal questions intersect at search. This article offers the first comprehensive overview of search engine law, which it organizes into a systematic taxonomy. It then demonstrates the dense legal interrelationships created by search by discussing a series of important themes in search engine law, each of which cuts across many doctrinal areas.

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