Considering this week Firefox went for broke with its download day (and they really broke it at first too, oops…), I think it`s apt to look at what software will be available to us when Web 2.0 arrives. To me, downloading and starting up the new Firefox 3 was like eating sweeties, with the brand new buttons and the pre-emptive search bar and the Most Visited icon, sigh…

Nicholas Carr wrote a very long, very interesting article in which he posed the question: Is Google making us stupid? In it he alleges that the way in which Google structures its information encourages us to skim over data rather than absorbing it. He says that after years of chasing down information on the Net in this way, his attention span is such that he can no longer read long bits of text, that his mind starts to wander after 2 or 3 pages, and that deep reading has become a chore, not a pleasure.

Wikia Search, an open-sourced search engine, was released in January 2008 and made public by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, even though it has no association with the collective knowledge leaders. The recent update, alpha version 2, now allows users to add, remove, or change organic search rankings. Ratings, highlighting, and annotation are also available for users to edit results.

Wales says the project is a year in the making and that the ethos behind Wikia Search is to ”…build a freely licensed, completely open and transparent, community-driven search engine.” In Wales` estimation, Wikia Search will take a minimum of 2 years to reach industry standard quality. He admitted that there will still be some “glitches and bugs” that will need to be addressed along the way.

Recently, my significant other landed an opportunity to work in a retail company. Due to my past experience within the retail sector, she asked for my advice. My response was simple, “Keep your clients happy, regardless”. My reasoning was that word of mouth spreads faster than wildfire, and wildfire is bad for any company trying to make a few bills. Also, my father recently had a vehicular issue and subsequently called the insurance company to get it sorted out, but he was shunned to the extent that he is considering publicly stating his unhappiness at the manner in which the situation was dealt.

Yahoo has discovered that outsourcing data storage and management has become expensive and inadequate in capacity to meet their demand, and is consequently developing a multi petabyte SQL database. The system will, like Google`s BigTable, use a system of distributed columns rather than the typical tables system, which is organised by rows and columns. The difference from Google`s BigTable is that Yahoo`s database is designed for a SQL interface.

Google`s BigTable method of using distributed columns employs a plurality of storage servers, one with a database engine that partitions database tables into column chunks.

Choosing a consumer market to go after can be a difficult choice to make in business. This is especially challenging when the section of the market you are targeting has very specific needs. Ask.com has recently announced that they aim to target their search results around a more feminine market. As women can be particularly fussy, they`ll need a lot of oomph in their marketing strategy.

Perhaps you`ve heard of siloing, which is a method of categorising content on your site, revolving around a central theme. You determine that theme and its sub-topics by looking at the target key/search phrases for your business and its relevant market. You then optimise your site`s internal PageRank by linking the “silos”, or as Microsoft would say, the “blocks”, together using rel=”nofollow” tags on pages that are unimportant in relation to the main theme. Ideally, this means that Google would crawl only the quality internal links to the site, and derive the PageRank successfully from the upper-tier pages. The thinking goes that on account of the nofollow tags, PageRank is siphoned off into the most “searchable” pages.

Barry Schwartz of searchengineland.com has written that Yahoo! now redirects those who use their search platform to their country`s version of the search engine by default. He relays information directly from his editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan, who at the time of the post was in the UK.

According to Danny, Yahoo! will now redirect someone searching within the UK to the “UK & Ireland” Website. The searcher will initially be allowed to opt out and return to the main Yahoo! domain, which will then return as their default page, unless they forego this option, in which case they remain “local”. A laymen, or average search engine user, can still easily reach a country site version by typing in the address URL into their browser address bar. The redirect only happens when someone from Germany, for example, tries to access Yahoo.com , and are automatically taken to their local version.

When Google first began, no one knew quite what to make of it. They had a policy of “Do no evil”, they didn`t conform to traditional business practices, had unique hiring practices and took pride in their inherent quirkiness. For instance, they`re now famous for their dedication to staff satisfaction with their free lunches, massages and relaxation rooms. They also allow employees one day a week to work on whatever project they want.

Yahoo! hasn`t succeeded in the great PPC race nearly as much as Google, because they focused more on how much advertisers are spending to determine where to place their ads, rather than on sheer relevance. Is it no surprise then that they are running to Google to try a last resort and probably ineffectual boost to their overall share value? Yahoo! co-founder Yang is still too stubborn to go into a more substantial partnership with Google. The two week trial of placing AdSense into Yahoo! search results is set to take up only 3 percent of their ad space. It goes to show that sometimes following the leader (Google) is the more profitable venture.