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Microsoft earlier this week unveiled a new feature that gives instant rebates to some consumers who use its Live Search Cashback program to buy items from eBay. Usually, consumers must wait 60 days to get their rebates. The announcement of the new speedier payment feature came on the heels of a Black Friday fiasco, when the Live Search Cashback service became a source of severe frustration for many of its users.
Google’s stock snapped out of its recent funk Tuesday after new data showed the Internet search leader is becoming even more dominant in the most lucrative part of the online advertising market. Internet research firms comScore and Nielsen Online both said the volume of search requests at Google has climbed substantially over the past year while rivals Yahoo and Microsoft are losing market share.
Just weeks after being linked to a scandal over tainted milk that killed four infants and sickened thousands in China, Chinese search engine giant Baidu has been hit with more bad news. Shares of Baidu plummeted after China’s state-run television network reported that the company had sold links to unlicensed medical sites with uncorroborated claims about their products.
The Internet search market is dominated by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live Search. However, there are also a range of niche players that focus on areas such as travel and health. Those observations, according to Scott Prevost, General Manager of Powerset, a semantic-based search engine company headquartered in San Francisco.
Four years after Microsoft paid US$1.6 billion to Sun Microsystems to settle an antitrust and patent suit, the once-bitter rivals are teaming up on Internet search.
Under an agreement announced Monday, Sun will offer Microsoft’s MSN Search toolbar when users download Java Runtime Environment, or JRE.