The guys at the ‘plex must be rubbing their hands with glee over the figures from ComScore’s ‘first comprehensive study of worldwide search activity’. ComScore have calculated that 61% of searches performed worldwide are executed through Google’s servers - wow! And perhaps what is more worrying there’s no major contender out there either, with Yahoo hiding back in second place with a measily 14%. Poor old Microsoft have dropped to fourth place on the list with 3.5% behind Chinese search engine Baidu in third (5.3%) with Ask almost off the scale at 1.2%.

Google have certainly entrenched themselves in the search engine niche with their name now being synonymous with internet search and is used in movies, tv programs and general day to day life - ‘Just Google it’ has become a favourite phrase of many people was when referring to looking for something on the internet. Will there ever be another search provider out there that can compete with Google and more importantly do we, as searchers, want one?

Anyway for some more details on the figures check out ComScore.

Featured tags: google microsoft search search engines yahoo

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You’ve probably all realised by now that something is up at Skype. Since 2pm GMT on Thursday there have been numerous reports of Skype users inability to login to the VOIP system and Skype posted the following message on their heartbeat blog

Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Needless to say, the doomsayers are out in force blaming the outage on amongst other things, Russian hackers, Homeland Security and the limitations of p2p. The truth will out as they say, but for now I’m sticking with Skype’s official line

The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. We love our customers too much to let that happen. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user’s own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network.

Unfortunately whatever the reason for the outage, it will obviously reflect badly on Skype (and eBay?). By producing such a popular product Skype have opened themselves up to be shot down at the slightest hint of a problem, and a 24 hour plus outage is more than a hint. I feel for the guys at Skype they’ve come up with a great product that has enabled people to come closer together (for free!) and has indeed made the world a smaller place. I’m not sure how this will affect Skype in the future, I know their icon will still be displayed in my system tray, but then I’m happy to accept the rough with the smooth. People who rely on Skype as part of their business may see it differently.

By the way for those people out there who are whinging about how this is damaging their business, and they do exist - here and here - I have a couple of phrases for you, ‘Risk Management’ and ‘Contingency Plan’, phrases which are quite obviously lacking in your business plans.

Skype, I look forward to seeing you back online soon. Good luck guys.

Featured tags: skype voip

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The internet browser Firefox from Mozilla seems to be taking off in Europe, leaping from a 21.1% share to a 27.8% slice of all net surfers over a one week period at the begining of July in 2006 and 2007 respectively according to XiTiMonitor, a web analytics company. It claims that Microsoft IE usage has dropped to 66.5% from 73.3% in the same market over the same time frame.

Are European users breaking away from the MS vice like grip on browser users? I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, with Firefox features light years ahead of IE. However Mozilla will have to pull out all the stops with Firefox 3 or Gran Paradiso as the project is called. Software users can be very fickle and development laurels should never be rested on!

Some interesting figures came out in the ‘by country’ breakdown with Firefox usage at over 40% in Slovenia and Finland, yet notably the UK well behind the leading pack at a mere 18%.

Source: XiTiMonitor

Featured tags: browser firefox internet explorer microsoft mozilla

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In a desparate bid to hang on to customers, AOL, the internet division of Time Warner Inc., have been offering as much as US$3000 to staff who retained a customer attempting to cancel their AOL services.

The mass customer exodus started after AOL were forced to offer previously paid services for free once other companies such as Google and Yahoo started to offer similar services for nothing. If customers wished to cancel their paid for AOL services then they had to contact the company via fax, mail or phone. AOL only started to provide an online cancellation service as of August last year. Tactics used by the customer service reps included endlessly transferring the call until the customer gave up, aggressive attitudes towards cancelling customers and repeatedly putting customers on hold.

AOL have averted a 48 state lawsuit over these tactics by forking out $3 million and promising to change their ways. Also if you were a customer who was still charged by AOL after attempting to close their account, you can request a refund from AOL - of course you have to prove that you attempted to close your account whilst you were still paying for their services, not easy to do for phone cancellations unless you record your phone calls ;)

One thing that strikes me is that the math doesn’t really add up. $3000 to retain a customer who at most is paying $26 a month? The customer would have to stay with AOL for almost ten years for them to re-coup the pay out. Insane or what? I know the math isn’t that straightforward but even so this highlights the shoddy mis-management at AOL in not providing free services to exisiting customers whilst giving them away to new. Very sad.

Any AOL customers out there wish to share their ‘cancellation’ experience?

Source: Yahoo

Featured tags: aol lawsuit

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The Diggites have been at it again. After the guys at Digg launched a new comments system last Thursday, a group of users were in uproar immediately over the changes - oh, how we humans hate change! Kevin Rose hastily posted a message on their blog the next day indicating that they appreciated the feedback and that more changes were coming to their comments system.

Poor old Digg, dugg if they do and dugg if they don’t - apologies for the pun. I’m sure all they were trying to do was enhance the user experience on their website, but unfortunately they got it wrong and suddenly they are lambasted as some sort of evil empire trying to rule over all. Well actually they do own the website and all content within - I’ve been over this before - and if they want to screw it up by introducing a new ‘broken’ comment system then that’s their look out. For the group of people who rudely criticized Digg for the changes, vote with your feet (or keyboards) and not with profanity.

Source: ComputerWorld

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Only three days after its release on Windows, Apple have released a new beta 3.0.1 of their browser Safari for Windows XP and Vista. A number of security issues were found with the browser and these have now been patched. These issues included a “command injection vulnerability”, unexpected termination of the browser and a Javascript exploit.

Kudos to Apple for getting a patch out there so quickly but that won’t remove the egg from Steve Jobs’ face that came with the announcement of the security vulnerabilities within 24 hours of his launch of the browser.

There’s also a report over at I4U that the browser doesn’t render Korean language sites correctly.

Source: Slash Gear

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In Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at the WWDC, he announced that there is a free beta version of Safari available for XP and Vista at Apple downloads. Safari commands a decent 5% of the browser market share and a Windows version will significantly increase this figure.

Not one to complain at being able to play with some free software, I downloaded the beta and had a look around. There’s nothing ground breaking, but I guess Mac users knew that already, the standard multi-tabbed browsing, a funky snapback facility and the usual bookmark, history functionality we’ve all come to expect from a half-decent browser.

However, the main push of Safari for Windows is based on its speed. According to the Safari download page it out strips the other three main browsers in HTML & JS performance and on launch speed. I’m not too sure if that’ll play a major factor in whether the average Windows internet user picks Safari as their browser of choice but more competition has certainly got to be good.

As a web developer I wouldn’t use it that much as I’ve got too many plugins hooked up to Firefox but obviously testing my sites in Safari has now become a whole lot easier!

Featured tags: apple safari windows

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