Considering that Google has been paying $300M per annum to be the default search engine of Firefox, Yahoo must have put a lot of effort into beating that offer.
The word of the year must be “diversification” for Mozilla, as it ditched its 10-year default search engine in favor of Yahoo, and it started signing deals with local search engines in Russia and China. In other words, if you happen to be in one of those countries, don’t be surprised if Yandex or Baidu are set as default browsers. That doesn’t mean that Google has been abandoned altogether. Instead, it is still featured as a built-in search engine, just that it’s no longer the default one.
“At Yahoo, we believe deeply in search – it’s an area of investment, opportunity and growth for us,” pointed out Yahoo CEO Marrisa Mayer. “I can’t wait to see what innovations we build together.” That must be true, if they convinced Mozilla to drop Google as their default search engine. To put things into perspective, Google had almost 68% of the market share this May, while Yahoo barely has 10%. Not to mention that Yahoo’s search engine is actually powered by Microsoft Bing. The Yahoo-Microsoft deal will expire early next year, and then Yahoo will roll out its own search engine.
“Google has been the Firefox global search default since 2004. Our agreement came up for renewal this year, and we took this as an opportunity to review our competitive strategy and explore our options,” explained Chris Beard, Mozilla’s CEO in a statement today. “We are excited to partner with Yahoo to bring a new, re-imagined Yahoo search experience to Firefox users in the U.S. featuring the best of the Web, and to explore new innovative search and content experiences together.”
There’s a lot of dispute regarding the best Web browser out there, and Chrome may have the largest market share, but it lacks many important functions. Of course, there are plenty of add-ons that compensate for that, but it’s one thing when certain features are offered by default, and a completely different thing when you need to install extensions. If you want to take the Mozilla route, feel free to give Firefox Aurora (or Firefox Developer Edition, as it’s been known lately) a try.
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Firefox Developer Edition that replaced Aurora, or the $25 Firefox OS smartphone for developing countries.
The World Wide Web is a larger domain than you can imagine. It’s a wealth of information, right at your fingertips - that is, if you know where to look. It didn’t take too long for people to realize that the quantity of data out there was so large as to be unmanageable without some method of working through it in an organized fashion. Thus, search engines came to be.
Aside from a few tweaks here and there, search engines remained as they were, with a couple of exceptions (remember MC Hammer and WireDoo? It eventually went bust after less than a year online, so it looks like something can touch this – if you get what I mean.)
Eventually, specialized ones began cropping up, such as search engines that helped people find jobs that matched their qualifications. Others include shopping-centric tech tools, like NextTruck, which uses strict but inclusive search functions for finding the right car for your budget, and directory search tools that can help you find old classmates and long-lost acquaintances.
But the evolution of search engines doesn’t end there. Researcher Ray Kurzweil spoke at New York’s Exponential Finance conference recently where he claims that people will be having a deeper relationship with search engines by 2029. It sounds like something straight from a movie - and it is, as that’s basically the plot behind Her which was headlined by Joaquin Phoenix.
While future search engines might not have Scarlett Johansson’s sultry voice, it might have her bubbly personality and intelligence. Considering the fact that most people spend most of their time on their computers, it’s not hard to imagine a relationship developing eventually. If you’ve watcher Her, then you know how the story goes (or will probably go.)
Kurzeil explains: “Computers will be at human levels, such that you can have an emotional relationship with them, 15 years from now.” His comments came after a chatbox, masquerading as Eugene Goostman, passed the Turing Test, which was developed to test where a machine exhibits human intelligence or not.
What do you think?
[via Debrief]
So you just heard the most awesome song, but weren’t able to fire up SoundHound in time to capture enough snippets of it to search for its title. You could always look up the lyrics, but Google won’t be able to help you out if you can’t remember enough relevant lines.
Your last hope–and best bet, at this point–is SongTapper. It’s basically a search engine that searches for songs based on its beats. If you can hum along to the tune or remember the intro or sound of its chorus, then you can just tap out the rhythm by tapping on your space bar and SongTapper will do the rest for you.
It’s not the most accurate thing in the world, but the results might just amaze you. Check it out HERE.
VIA [ Red Ferret ]
The post Songtapper: Find the Name of That Song By Tapping appeared first on OhGizmo!.
