Testing Google WiFi in Mountain View Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOm has been selected to be a beta tester of Google’s Mountain View WiFi network; “I’m not sure if it was a random invite or not, after writing a bit about Google’s Mountain View plans, but I felt like a lucky golden ticket winner with a [...]

Shift in Google Webmaster Communications? A Webmaster World thread questions the possible shift by Google in its open communications with webmasters, especially in forums. Seems that some out there feel that the company has become a bit more cautious in announcing updates or explaining new algorithmic changes since it became public. I wonder if this [...]

iTunes Now Features Friends & Other Warner Bros Shows Apple iTunes is now featuring classic Warner Bros. TV shows such s Friends & Babylon 5 for the price of $1.99 per download. In an aggressive month of entertainment download moves by WB which includes deals with BitTorrent and Guba. “Making our television content available to [...]

Yahoo Adds ‘Save to My Web’ To Yahoo Directory Every now and then I check the directory listings I have at Yahoo! to see what is up with them. I have bookmarked them ages ago and when I have some free time I check them out. I checked last night and noticed that Yahoo! has [...]

Google AdWords Reporting Fraud or Invalid Clicks Google plans on opening up their invalid clicks information to its Google AdWords advertisers in an attempt to address concerns about click fraud. Google Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, told Elinor Mills at CNet’s News.com that Google will report the number of fraudulent clicks [...]

Fake Google Toolbar Spreading Viruses SurfControl of northern California has said in a release that they have noticed that computer hackers are now using a Google Toolbar look-alike application to lure people into installing malicious program on their computers. This malware application is capable of turning the victim’s machine into a zombie, which the hackers [...]

ReachLocal Opening Local Sales Offices I’ve now heard from several people that local search engine marketing firm ReachLocal is opening or planning to open local sales offices in selected cities. The company has for some time had a program to attract independent local sales agents. And from the beginning the plan at Reach was to [...]

Google’s New Open Source Service CNet reports that Google’s Greg Stein plans to describe a new Google service for the Open Source community at the Open Source Convention in Portland this Thursday. CNet points to a quickie post on the Google Code Blog: I’ve been working with a great team for a while now to [...]

Yahoo Taps Ramakrishnan As Social Search Research Head Yahoo has taken yet another major step to show how serious they are about their commitment to Social Search with the naming of academic database expert Raghu Ramakrishnan to head Yahoo’s research on their human assisted search projects. Rueters reports that Ramakrishnan, Vice President and Yahoo research [...]

Google Mobile Adds Traffic & Drive Times Traffic and drive times were added to Google Mobile Maps and the company is offering more customization for its mobile Personalized Homepage. Here are excerpts from the release: The latest version of Google Maps for mobile will enable users in the U.S. to view comprehensive information on traffic [...]