Google AdWords has just rolled out a new targeting options for mobile ads .  If you're an AdWords publisher running ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full internet browsers, this new feature will let you target specific mobile devices or carriers instead of targetting all of them. This new feature will be most useful if you're running ads that contains specific messages pertaining to specific devices or carriers.

Microsoft has just announced that its Bing Maps service is finally leaving the beta state. And as it prepares to become a full-pledged Microsoft geo-mapping service, Bing has brought some new stuff with it. These new features aims to give users better experience while using Bing Maps. Perhaps equal to how good Google Maps is or even better?

Business Week is running quite an interesting story regarding ongoing talks between Apple and Microsoft that would make Bing as the default search engine on the iPhone, replacing Google. Citing sources familiar to the matter, the said talks have been going on for a week now. This is interesting because it not only shows the growing rivalry between Google and Apple but also because Apple and Microsoft used to be rivals, or remains to be rivals in the computer market.

Microsoft has quietly rolled out a minor enhancement to its search autosuggest feature. In fact it is so quiet that you wouldn't really notice it, in case you're using Bing.com. But if  you're too observant you might notice that when you type in your query on Bing.com, the suggested search terms are now more timely and relevant to breaking news and hot trending topics. According to a post on the Bing blog ,

Amidst the issues that's happening right now between Google and China, Google decided to cancel the scheduled launch of its Nexus One phone in the country  this week. Citing a reliable source, AP is reporting that Google's decision to cancel the launch of the mobile phone was indeed related to Google's recent threat of shutting down its Chinese-based search engine since China refused to scale down it's restriction on the search engine. If you may have read last week,

It seems that one of the first order of battle for Yahoo is to spike up its search product. As early as now, Yahoo is preparing for another year of struggle, with a few ups and more down as it goes up against Google who continues to lead the search engine market and a still unclear future with its partnership with Microsoft Bing. So, straight from its Search Marketing Blog ,

The Google Mobile Blog has just posted a short note announcing a new feature of its search suggestion on Google.com for mobile phones.  Currently working on iPhone and of course on Android phones, the new search suggestion feature now either remembers your phone's last location or your current location. This means that you can save some precious time trying to determine which among the search results are relevant to you, based on where you are right now,

Following up Nielsen search market share data, Hitwise has also released their search metrics for December 2009. And just like Nielsen's stats, Google is also leading the pack, getting 72.5% of all searches conducted in the U.S. during the said period. This is equivalent to 1% growth rate from November 2009. All the three other search engines trailing Google from behind suffered  a decrease in searches. Yahoo got 14.83%, down from 15.93%, Bing got 8.92% from 9.34% and Ask.

Here we go, latest search market statistics released by Nielsen indicates that Google again rules the search market in December. Google gets 67.3% of all the 9.9  billion searches made last December. That's actually 6.7 billion shares conducted on Google's search engine. Following Google  far behind are of course Yahoo and Bing getting 14.4%  or more than 1.4 billion searches and 9.9% or 986 million searches, respectively. Other searches were made at Ask.com,

We all know by now how bad the strain of influenza that hit the world last year was. And if  the CDC warning is to come true, we might be experiencing a second spike of flu activity anytime this year.  The CDC is basing its warning of course to the similar event that happened in 1957. So, to prepare for this event or any other influnza strike, Google has released flu estimates of 121 cities in the U.S.

So, VMware has officially annonunced that it is buying email and collaboration software vendor Zimbra which was acquired by Yahoo in 2007.  Although financial terms of the acquisition were not divulged, some observers say that it is actually lower the amount Yahoo paid for the company when it was still a start-up in 2007. According to the Press Release obtained by AllThingsD , VMware will utilize Zimbra to further  its mission in simplifying datacenter, desktop,

Google has issued an official statement regarding its business operations in China, specifically its Chinese search portal - google.cn. Specifically, Google told Chinese authorities that it will stop censoring search results on the Chinese Google site. And dependeing on how things will turn out, Google might later be foreced to shut down the said site. In a long post at its official blog site,

Bing is enhancing its Health search facility by focusing on enabling users to quickly obtaing relevant information and make better decisions related to their pressing health issues/problems. By providing more content from its new partners, Bing is augmenting instant answers with health data that helps users gain more information when they conduct health-related searches on Bing. So now, when you do a health-related search on Bing,

It has been quite awhile since Google's GDrive project has been talked about. In fact it seems that Google may have shelved the project already. But not until now, as Google just announced that Google Docs users can now upload, store and organize any type of file in Google Docs. This may not be GDrive per se, but it could be Google's baby steps towards launching GDrive or possibly turning Google Docs into it. Users can now upload any file,

Google has just added a useful button to its  mobile homepage - tagged "near me now", this feature lets you search by using your location as the query.  Currently available for iPhone and Android phone users in the U.S., "Near me now" utilizes GPS for determining your whereabouts and then searches for results near your location. The new Google mobile homepage feature lets you easily search for popular categories of nearby places.

Admob just released a new metrics showing a significant spike on ad impressions for Google Android. AdMob's report was based on the ad requests received from AdMob network's mobile sites and applications. Here are the higlights of AdMob's latest metrics: 97% increase in worldwide requests from Android devices, totalling to 1 billion ad request between October-December 98% of the ad requests came from HTC devices in October,

Is Apple trying to disrupt the anticipation, hype and excitement over Google's announcement of the Nexus One by announcing their own announcement of the Apple Tablet? None other than the Wall Street Journal reported and sort of confirmed that Apple is indeed launching its much talked Apple Tablet , which is due for launch not until March 27. While Google is about to officially unveil the Nexus One in a few hours from now.

Don't look now guys, but only 16 months after it was officially released, Google Chrome is now the world's no. 3 browser , based on Net Applications' web browser usage data for December. What makes this more interesting is that Chrome has edged out Apple Safari which has been occupaying the third spot next to Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer. Google Chrome registered a 4.63% market share while Safari got 4.46% making it the no.4 browser for the first time.

It's the New Year which means it's time to start thinking about your New Year's Resolutions ! We know your New Year's celebration may not be or should not be over yet. Most of us are still probably recuperating from last night's revelry. So, what come's after New Year's Eve and New Year's Day celebrations, bowl games and lots and lots of food? How about starting to plan the things that we want to do this year? The bad habits that we've been trying to break,

For those who value Google's often delayed toolbar pagerank, Google is giving you all a nice New Year's Eve present - the annual page rank update.  It seems Google is now making this an annual gig as it also made a toolbar pagerank update the same time last year. Let's see now, the last time Google had a Toolbar PageRank update was last October .