The long road toward Microsoft and Yahoo’s search deal could be set to get a little longer, or fall off a cliff. Both companies have long expected the U.S. Department of Justice to scrutinize the deal to install Microsoft as the exclusive search provider for Yahoo’s Web pages, which would also see Yahoo end its [...]

Google’s economist Hal Varian says Google’s search patterns show that the economy is recovering:… Tweet This Post

Twitter has already had repercussions in the courtroom. Now it has had them at Microsoft’s annual company meeting as well. Employee tweets from the gathering Thursday revealed that we may see a major update to the company’s Bing search engine as early as next week… Tweet This Post

Add another name to the list of opponents of the Google Book Search Settlement: Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights. In testimony before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Thursday, Peters tarred the deal as “fundamentally at odds with the law” and villainized Google, saying the company is making a “mockery” of the copyright protections [...]

Mary-Jo Foley at our sister site ZDNet spotted a few eager Twitter users spilling the beans on Bing 2.0 following Microsoft’s annual company meeting, where employees were apparently given a preview of some new features that will be rolled out over the coming weeks. Some attendees had the changes coming next week, while others thought [...]

The U.S. Department of Justice has furthered its investigation into the proposed search engine deal between Microsoft and Yahoo by asking both companies to provide more information. The two companies received an additional request for information earlier this week as expected, Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans told CNET News… Tweet This Post

Here comes Bing, version 2.0. Microsoft (MSFT) held a huge company meeting at Safeco field in Seattle yesterday and news of Bing 2.0 hit Twitter during the event… Tweet This Post

When the US Copyright Office first heard about the proposed Google Books settlement, it found the idea a “positive development.” Then, after reading the fine print, it changed its collective mind, deciding instead that Google was really out to rewrite US copyright law through the courts. Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, today explained to [...]

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has now agreed to let any book retailer resell access to the out-of-print books it is putting online via its Google Books search engine. But the offer does not seem to have appeased the company’s critics, who contend that Google will still wield too much control over the book industry—and particularly over [...]

Aviv Refuah, the young CEO of the public Israeli company Netex Corporation, has managed to score a US patent on an internet search option developed by the company he founded that could well force major Internet search players like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to cough up royalties for future use of the technology… Tweet This [...]

BRUSSELS, Sept 7 (Reuters) – The French government plans to file its objections to Google Inc’s (GOOG.O) plan to digitize millions of books in a New York court this week, a French Culture Ministry official said on Monday. “France will send its observations to the U.S. court today or tomorrow,” Nicolas Georges, director for books [...]

First Germany, now France. Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has written to a US court urging it to stop a $125 million settlement between Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and US book publishers, warning that Google will have unfair control over European works and a “monopoly (on) digitising European orphan works without permission” (via Reuters)… Tweet This Post