Yahoo! Search has transitioned to Bing in the US and will be rolling out elsewhere as part of the agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo! where Bing will be the search engine powering Yahoo! and Yahoo! managing the ad sales for searches originating from its search site as well as from Bing’s own site.

This is part of the efforts from Yahoo! to focus more on it’s key areas as well as a joint effort by the companies to take on Google which is the reigning search engine.

Google seems to be getting ready for a head-on battle with market leader Microsoft by drawing up plans to launch it’s own Operating System which they are referring to as Chrome OS. The operating system is being billed as a next generation OS catering to the needs of the modern times. It will be an open source OS and will be built upon the Linux kernel.

Microsoft could easily create issues if it sticks to it’s guns stating many times in the past that Linux uses some of it’s proprietary technologies. Let’s see where this goes. By the way, take a look at the features of the future Chrome OS from Google.

Google has decided to move it’s chief products like Gmail out of beta. It’s being done to promote the efficient products with prospective corporate clients. With competition heating up, drop in ads sales, and a stagnating slowdown all around us, the company has definitely taken a positive step.

I am happy that Gmail and other products like Google Docs and Spreadsheets will finally be out of Beta!

With the release of Internet Explorer 8 a couple of days ago and Apple’s Safari 4, the browser wars have reached battle frenzy.

Although a major share of the web browser market is still controlled by Microsoft whose Internet Explorer is still the topmost browser, being used by over 78% users, the browser wars started with Firefox biting into a major chunk and now controlling nearly 15% with Google’s Chrome at a negligible 4% and Apple’s Safari for Windows holding a 2%.

So, now we have Microsoft’s IE 8, Mozilla’s Firefox 3, Apple’s (newest) Safari 4 for Windows and Google’s Chrome are vying with each other to grab the user’s attention in an effort to capitalize on new vistas that the internet has to offer.

Apple in it’s latest version of Safari has borrowed a lot of features from other competitors like Firefox and Chrome.

Internet Explorer 8 attempts to bridge the gaps between IE7 and FF3 while introducing some new features of it’s own like: Private Browsing, Web Slices, Web Accelarators etc. which are seemingly missing from Firefox.

I decided to test them all and installed them all on my laptop which has Windows XP SP3. After using IE8, FF3, Safari 4 and Chrome, I found that the browser which stays way ahead in terms of loading or rendering a website is still (my favorite) Firefox 3. No matter what new features may have been introduced in all those other browsers, Firefox surely leaves all the others behind when we talk of the speed at which a browser opens a page. After all, a browser is supposed to open a page for browsing, isn’t it?

But, I give 7 out of 10 to Safari for adapting to a changing scenario and bringing in new features. So what, if they are to be lifted directly or indirectly! Still, safari has a long way to go. But, it sure is ahead of Chrome.

Microsoft scores with IE8 in terms of innovation and introduction of some handy new features like visual search. So, all this make choosing a browser all the more different. From here on, it will be what a user expects from a browser, that will decide which browser to use.

What I see here is that Mozilla is delaying Firefox 3.5 on purpose. It wants the competition to open their cards before they release the next major version so that they can incorporate the best of features in it. Let us wait and see what happens.

By the way, there’s a great article about browser shoot out here. Check it out.

Google Adsense has added a new feature called, “Adsense for Domains”. By using this feature, users can park their domains at Google with Adsense displaying ads and the publisher earning money on his domain (which he is yet to use).

Domains are subject to approval from Google. So, publishers who are looking to earn those extra bucks on their unused domains can now do it using Adsense.

I will use the service myself. Let us see how effective it will be.

Well, a new feature introduced by the Gmail team lets users set themes on their Gmail Inbox. Yep, you can read the official blog entry on the Gmail Themes feature to know more. It is similar to what Google already offers on personalized Google pages.

You can select from a variety of themes or skins for your own personal Gmail experience. Let’s see what’s up next from them.

On another development stemming from Google, Lively : the online virtual reality service (similar to SecondLife) will be shut down by the first half of next year. Not, a very pleasant news but I guess Google has decided to close down the service to concentrate more on search related avenues. My view is that due to the economic downturn affecting everyone, Google has started feeling the heat with it’s ad revenues dwindling (and that affects me too as I run Google ads on my site!). In order to concentrate on it’s “core” businesses, Google has taken this decision.

For those of us who were cursing Google for not including video in Google Talk (that also includes me), the wait is finally over. Well, almost. Instead of updating the Google Talk client, Google has gone ahead and introduced a voice and video chat plugin for Gmail that integrates with your browser and allows to chat with your friends and family, right from inside Gmail.

Now, all you have to do is simply download the small web installer for Gmail that downloads and installs the v&v chat plugin on your system.

After the installation finishes, the installer takes you to your Gmail. When you login (if you are not already logged in), you will be taken to the Chat settings tab under Gmail to set your preferences for the webcam and the microphone to enable voice & video chat.

And after you are done with all this, presto! you are all set up to chat with your friends. So, go out there get your plugin and spread the word to your friends.

Now, the only thing I am wondering at the moment is when will the video chat option be integrated with GTalk? I am doing my research to find this out. Until then, just chill and chat right from inside Gmail. Adieu…

Well, I got the chrome today and so must have many of you out there. I am just finished installing it on my laptop (it is a web installer) and have imported settings from Firefox. As I write this post from Chrome itself, I feel the browser needs a lot of testing before we come to any kind of conclusion.

As for the Fox fans, there’s nothing called plugins in Chrome (for that added functionality) so do not waste time in finding similarities between the two browsers.

I must mention here that my days with IE8 Beta2 are really great. Microsoft has really done a great makeover of it’s browser. What with all the new functionalities and all. This time IE8 has really taken the lead with innovation (with Chrome following it in some features).

Choose your browser carefully while I still stick to my Fox and test the rest.

Ever since Google announced (by mistake I guess) that they are launching there own browser called Chrome, there’s been a lot of buzz. It was expected to be launched on 2nd September 2008, Tuesday (yeah you tell me when Tuesday will come??? Of course, today is tuesday!).

I tried searching for a download link for Chrome on Google, and found out that there was in fact a website for Chrome at (http://gears.google.com/chrome) (don’t bother following that link, it’s dead). Apparently, after the Chrome comic book leak posted at Blogoscoped.com, Google took the Chrome site down and postponed the launch to 3rd of September.

All this has caused a lot of chromefusion, oops!, I mean confusion. So, I finally decided that in the end I should sit back and wait for the link to appear and for the browser to be made available for download on major sites like Download.com and Softpedia.com before I go hunting for it. Or maybe, I will try it one more time tomorrow??

I don’t know. But, whatever happens I love Firefox and plan to stick with it.

So, Google has finally made public it’s browser called Chrome :

As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

Well, a band of former Google executives have put together a cuil (pronounced ‘COOL’ ) search engine. Or atleast that’s what they have thought of it themselves.

So, what does it have for us? Well, we have to test the results from this new search engine and check it out. I might test it for a couple of days from now and then match the results to that from Google’s own engine.