From: E-Commerce Times: Take That, Google - Viacom Inks Ad Deal With Yahoo

In this recent article from E-Commerce Times by Keith Regan, there was an announcement of a partnership between major internet search engine, Yahoo, and Viacom. Viacom is the owner of television stations such as MTV and Nickelodeon. Google was not happy because Yahoo is a major rival of them and this agreement is intended to help Yahoo gain market share on Google. The websites will use Yahoo's new technology called "Panama." It is a lot like Google and it is very advanced. It will decide on many different factors which ads will be shown.

In the deal it states that Yahoo will become the provided search engine for Viacom internet sites. Some of these include sites like MTV.com, Nickelodeon.com, and Comedycentral.com. This could eventually lead to yahoo being used on over 140 of Viacom's sites. The article goes on to discuss the room for the expansion becuase of the huge presence that viacom has on the web. In addition it tells how stocks rose for Yahoo quickly following the merger. This was a good sign for Yahoo because at the same time, Google's stock went down slightly.

This was a very good article. It is interesting because this will increase competition which is always good for us, as consumers. We are very curious to see how this new system "Panama" will do. If it becomes very popular Google might be in trouble, but for now they are okay. Hopefully this will make each company become more creative and we will have exciting new things in the future.

To read the full article go to: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/56807.html

From CNN Money: "Wikipedia's next steps"

According to an other article by David Kirkpatrick from CNN Money, Wikipedia founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales plans to start a new search engine. Like the other Wikia sites, the engine will be open-source based; the ranking of each search result will be determined by a volunteer community, similar to the one that currently oversees Wikipedia. Wales' motivation for creating such a search engine is allowing users to know and control what goes on behind the scenes:

"Search is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the Internet," he says,
"and unlike most of the infrastructure, today it's not transparent. We have no
idea how things are ranked or why." He believes that in the "open society" he
seeks on the Internet, it's important to have mechanisms in place that enable
people to "look under the hood" at the tools they use.

This has important implications for the future of search engines. As Wales is quoted stating in the article, the creation of this engine is "political" because of the extreme importance of the search engine to the Web. If the project is successful in allowing users to find what they really want by using humans rather than bots to determine search results, Wikia's new branch may rival the currently all-powerful Google.

Also, by bringing the interactive, user-determined format of the Wikia sites to the search engine, Wales' new project is indicative of the continuous shift toward the Web 2.0 school of thought.

You can read the article here: http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/22/magazines/fortune/fastforward_wiki.fortune/index.htm