Software giant Microsoft has proven its serious about trying to take on Google in both the Internet search and online advertising arenas, first through its abortive hostile attempt to take over Yahoo, launching its own comprehensive Internet search engine in Bing, and then making a ten-year search deal with Yahoo to have Bing handle Yahoo’s searching. Now, it seems Microsoft is looking to increase Bing’s visibility and erode Google’s market share at the same time, potentially by buying out some of Google’s high-profile search partners.
According to the Financial Times, Microsoft has already had early discussions with Ruper Murdoch’s News Corp—which owns social networking giant MySpace—about paying News Corp to have its sites removed from Google’s search index. And News Corp isn’t alone: according to the report, Microsoft has also approached other publishers about paying them to remove their content from Google’s search engine and have it available exclusively through Bing.
The discussions are described as preliminary, and tie into newspaper publishing’s increasing discomfort with search engines indexing their content and effectively serving it up to Internet users without bringing traffic to the publishers’ own sites (and paid advertisements). News Corp’s Murdoch has already been making noise about taking the majority of his newspaper’s behind so-called “paywalls,” where only paid subscribers would be able to access the news content. The Wall Street Journal, a News Corp paper, is perhaps the most successful newspaper behind a paywall, although its content and audience are not typical for the broader newspaper industry.
Back in 2006, News Corp entered into a $900 million search deal with Google that made Google the exclusive search and keyword advertising provider for Fox Interactive Media sites, including MySpace. It’s not clear how any potential deal to exclude News Corp content from Google would (or would not) run afoul of that arrangement.
If Microsoft is able to strike deals with News Corp and other newspaper publishers, it could set an interesting new precedent for the content industry, where search engines pay publishers for the right to index their content.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.