Microsoft has snapped up over 1 billion $ worth of patents from AOL, convering the intellectual rights to over 800 innovations and also gives the company licensing tights o around 300 other patents.
AOL will be passing on what it calls a “significant portion” of the funds to its shareholders, so that’s a good payday for them, then. The company’s shares also received a lift, rising over 40% following the news.Microsoft has, apparently, been looking into the deal for months, so it
will doubtless be pleased to have got what it wants. Not as pleased as those AOL shareholders, mind.
Source: MicroMat Magazine
Google has taken aim at sites that cynically use search engine optimisation (SEO)to push themselves to the top of results pages. SEO is the practice of using specifc words and HTML code that Google looks for when ranking sites in search results.
Google said it would tweak its algorithm – the complicated reciepe it uses to find and rank sites – to favour those with quality content that didn’t use SEO tactics. Meanwhile, it would punish those that sneakily pack their website with keywords and other optimization tools, purely to push themselves up the ranings.
The change follows the Panda update last year, which saw Google target so-called ‘content farms’ – sites that reuse or even steal content from others in order to attract advertising.
Google also said it will include semantic tools in its search. This means it will try to understand the meaning of the words in the questions you ask, and answer your query directly, rather than focus on finding sites containing matching keywords and links.
This already happens for some popular topics, including airfares, mathematical equations, scores for major sport events and weather forcasts (see screen grab,, above), but google will now use it more widely.
Source:Webuser Magzine
