Google accuses Bing of copying search results

New York: Google has weathered criticism in the past that it has copied some features of Microsoft's Bing search engine, like background images. Now it has turned the tables, alleging that Bing copies something much more important: search results.

Danny Sullivan, head of the blog Search Engine Land, wrote Tuesday about "a sting operation" by Google that the company says proves that Bing watches Google's search results to improve its own.

Google says it suspects Microsoft is doing this by using Internet Explorer 8 and the Bing toolbar, both of which send user data to Microsoft, to watch how people use Google. In a company blog post, Microsoft did not deny that. But Harry Shum, corporate vice president of Bing, called Google's sting "a spy-novelesque stunt" and "a creative tactic by a competitor."

Google grew suspicious when it noticed a few odd things about Bing's search results, such as surprising similarities between the top results in the two search engines -- including results that Google considered to be mistakes, Amit Singhal, who oversees Google's search ranking algorithm, wrote in a company blog post.So Google went into detective mode.

It invented about 100 gibberish search queries, like "hiybbprqag," and matched them with results that had nothing to do with the query, like a theater seating chart. Mr. Singhal likened these queries to "the search engine equivalent of marked bills in a bank."

Then it asked 20 of its engineers to install Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 with the Bing toolbar, search for the rigged words and click on the made-up results. Sure enough, Bing soon started pointing people to the nonsensical search results for seven to nine of the 100 queries.

The result? "Some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results -- a cheap imitation," Mr. Singhal wrote.

Mr. Sullivan, a long-time search industry analyst, came to the same conclusion. "It strongly suggests that Bing was copying Google's results, by watching what some people do at Google via Internet Explorer," he wrote in his comprehensive piece.

Mr. Shum wrote that Bing uses more than 1,000 signals to determine search results -- including "clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the Web in order to help us improve the experience for all users." Translation: Bing watches what people click when they visit Google and other sites.

The tussle is the latest in an ongoing battle between Google and Microsoft on many fronts. In search, Google has prided itself most on the relevance of its search results -- which no doubt contributes to its 67 percent search market share. So it is particularly sensitive for Google that Bing, in some cases, mimics its top results.

Mr. Sullivan wryly noted that when Bing started in 2009, people joked that it stood for "Because It's Not Google," and wrote that now it may as well stand for "Bing Is Now Google."

Internet will run out of IP addresses by Friday

London: The internet will run out of numerical IP (Internet Protocol) addresses by Friday. But the web will not ground to a halt. A new system, Internet Protocol version 6 or IPv6 will replace version 4.

Every device connected to the net is assigned a number. But with millions of web enabled phones now online, the numbers are running out.

The system, set up in the 1980s with a maximum of 4.1 billion addresses, was supposed to never run out. The original creators of the web initially thought it would be used only for academic purposes.

IP addresses act as phone numbers to ensure that surfers reach websites and e-mails and find their destination, the Daily Mail reports.

The authority that governs such addresses will distribute the last batches Thursday.

"It will just be 'business as usual' if everyone gets their job done," said John Curran, chief executive of the American Registry for Internet Numbers, one of five regional groups that dole out such addresses. They cover the US, Canada and the Caribbean

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Clean Up Windows and Your Hard Drive

If you have a PC, chances are it runs too slowly for your tastes. Over time, your computer slows down due to all the virtual junk that accumulates in there.

It doesn't have to be that way. With the help of free and low-cost downloads, you can turn your sluggish system back into the youthful, zippy machine it once was. Read on to find out how.

Hands down, the single download with the most comprehensive set of tools for cleaning a PC and making it run faster is CCleaner, which gives your system a thorough scrubbing and makes it like new. For starters, it gets rid of all the unnecessary files that programs, browsers, and Windows itself leave behind; it'll eliminate .tmp files, cache files, file fragments, history lists, and more, including detritus from apps such as the major Web browsers, Microsoft Office, and Adobe Flash Player.

If that's all it did, this program would already be a must-have--but it can do more, as well. You'll find a very good Registry cleaner for zapping outdated Registry files (see the Registry section below for more on that topic), plus a tool for deleting Internet cookies you don't want while leaving behind the ones you wish to keep. And if you don't want to use the Windows uninstaller, CCleaner has a built-in uninstaller, too. Sound overwhelming? No worries: CCleaner lets you select the tasks it should perform. For example, you can tell it to erase traces that Chrome and Firefox leave behind, but not to clean up after Adobe Flash Player or Windows Media Player.

Just as remarkable, you don't have to pay a pretty penny for this program--it's donationware. You can pay what it's worth to you, from zero dollars on up.

Another useful freebie is 360Amigo System Speedup Free, which cleans the Registry, removes junk files, and defragments your hard disk. It's not as comprehensive as CCleaner, and it tends to overreport problems, but it's still worth a look.
Sweep Away Gunk
The very first time you start up a new PC, you might expect it to be free of gunk and unnecessary software, such as trialware. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Even on a PC's maiden voyage, you'll typically find it loaded down with "craplets"--unwanted demos, trialware, and the like that the software makers have paid the PC manufacturer to install. These craplets junk up your hard disk, and can slow down its performance.


What to do? Download and run the free PC Decrapifier. It seeks out and removes dozens of craplets to help make your PC a smooth-running machine. It won't clean out every piece of unneeded software; instead it looks for a list of known craplets, demos, and trialware. Regardless, even if you have an older PC, this tool is worth using, because that unneeded software may still be hiding on your computer.
One cause of many system slowdowns is the Windows Registry, which contains information about all your installed software, your preferences, how Windows should run, and more. Over time, as you install and uninstall software, change your preferences, and so on, the Registry fills with outdated entries, incorrect entries, and entries that conflict with one another. The likely result? Your system slows down and becomes more susceptible to crashing.

Note, however, that the benefits of cleaning the Registry are the focus of much debate. In some cases, Registry edits may help an ailing PC; in others, they may create problems. Before diving in, read "Are Registry Cleaners Worth It?" for some analysis.

If you want to try Registry cleanup, look to Advanced Registry Optimizer 2010, which finds problems and fixes them for you. You can have it do all the cleanup automatically, or tell it which items to clean and which entries to ignore.

The software gives you greater control over Registry cleaning than does CCleaner, but you'll be able to fix only 100 entries with it unless you pay the $30 fee to buy it. If you are confident about making sweeping changes to the Registry, get this program; otherwise, CCleaner will do fine for you.

Be aware, too, that you should always create a Windows system restore point before using Advanced Registry Optimizer 2010--or any Registry cleaner--in case it makes changes that cause your PC
Remove Duplicate Files
Lurking on your hard disk are plenty of duplicate files that take up space for no reason. If they're media files such as music or photographs, they could be consuming hundreds of megabytes of storage. Finding them all can be tough because identical files may have different names, and even files with the same name may be sitting in different directories.

The $20 DupeRazor Duplicate Files Removal Kit searches out duplicate files, tells you when it finds them, and then lets you delete them. It works lightning fast, zipping through several thousand files in minutes.

Be aware that it does make mistakes sometimes, so be sure to use its built-in ability to launch files to examine them before deleting them. If you'd rather not vet the possible duplicates so closely, you might prefer the more accurate (and, at $30, more expensive) Easy Duplicate Finder.

Defragment Your Hard Drive (but Not Your SSD)
Here's one more reason your PC might be sluggish: The hard disk may be fragmented. Windows stores files in pieces, and as you open and save them, those pieces go to various parts of the hard disk, leading to fragmentation. When you open the files, your PC needs to work harder to find them across the many different pieces. Fragmentation is a bigger problem for older PCs, but even new systems reap a benefit from defragging: If you happen to lose any files, defragged data will be easier to recover. (Solid-state drives, however, don't need frequent defragging; for more information, see "Defragging: Why, How, and Whether.")

You can solve the problem with the free Auslogics Disk Defrag, which finds fragmented files and then stores all the pieces in each file contiguously so that they open faster. You get a lot of control over how to defragment your hard drive, including setting a defragmentation schedule and determining what priority Auslogics Disk Defrag should get if it works while other programs are running. You can even move system files to the beginning of the hard disk, which may help performance.

Make Your PC Boot Faster
PCs seem to take an eternity to boot. That's because many programs set themselves to run automatically at startup even if they're not needed, which makes your PC chug along at boot time while you twiddle your thumbs. And once your PC boots, it runs more slowly since too many unnecessary programs are loaded.

The free Soluto does an excellent job of correcting matters. Soluto runs in the background and examines what applications and services load during startup. Then it analyzes them, and--using data from other Soluto users--it groups them into programs that need to run at boot, programs that don't have to run at boot, and programs that might be required at boot. You then make the decision about which ones should load.

The result? A faster-booting PC--and possibly a speedier PC overall.

Why Facebook eats most of your time

LONDON: If you think that Facebook eats up most of your time, then it's only going to get worse, suggests a new study.

Researchers at City University of Hong Kong have suggested that users become more active in online social networks as they grow bigger, reports New Scientist.

The researchers considered behaviour in two online networks: the Chinese blogging site Sina and a peer-to-peer file-sharing system called Tianwang.

By comparing the growth of these networks with user activity, they managed to settle a long-standing argument. There are two competing schools of thought when it comes to the growth of online social networks. One suggests that networks grow in a linear fashion: in other words, the activity of each user doesn't change much and so network activity grows in proportion with the number of users.

However, the second theory suggests that network growth is non-linear: as a network grows in size, users also use it more, causing total network activity to increase far more quickly than the linear model would predict.

The study results support the non-linear hypothesis, as the researchers observed that both blogging and peer-to-peer file-sharing sites see users becoming far more active on the networks the larger they get.

In the case of the peer-to-peer network, the team found that if the number of users doubled, their activity rose by a factor of 3.16. They also discovered that the bigger the inequality in activity between users, the quicker the network would grow.

"It makes sense that the total activity in a social system would be non-linear, because in a social system, the more people there are, the more things there are to do," said Mike Thelwall, of the University of Wolverhampton, UK.

"This would probably transfer to Facebook and Twitter, too. You might start to rely on Facebook or Twitter if a high proportion of your friends were on them," said Thelwall.

The team has also found that the increased activity follows a pattern known as a time-invariant power law-one of the upshots of which is that all users tend to become more active in the network. So there's no point deluding yourself: Facebook definitely is sucking up more of your time than ever before.

How to increase Internet speed?

There is no specific software for this purpose, as the Internet speed depends on the deal you have with your Internet service provider ( ISP). However, you can optimise your computer and browser for better speeds.

For example, if you are using an older version of Internet Explorer, you can upgrade to the latest IE9, Opera, Firefox or Chrome browsers for an instant speed boost.

These browsers render pages faster and hence make better use of your existing internet speeds. You can also install certain extensions like AD Blockers with Firefox and Chrome, which effectively block out unwanted pop-up and banner ads on certain websites — this will ensure that those pages load faster as well.

Finally, certain extensions like FasterFox (on Firefox) and FastestChrome (on Chrome) can make some automatic adjustments to boost speed.

FB.com costs Facebook $8.5 million

In the 21st Century, Shakespeare might ask, "What's in a domain name?" To the 6 million-member American Farm Bureau Federation, the answer is a lot of money.

Facebook paid $8.5 million to acquire the Internet address 'fb.com' for internal use by its employees from the largest US farm group.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the purchase on November 15, when Facebook unveiled its new messaging service. But he didn't reveal the pricetag.

"The Farm Bureau agreed to sell us fb.com and we in return have agreed not to sell farm subsidies," Zuckerberg said in an account on techcrunch.com.

At their annual meeting in Atlanta, Farm Bureau officials on Tuesday said the organization earned $8.5 million by selling a couple of domain names but is barred from identifying the buyer. The farm group uses fb.org as its Internet address but may own four dozen domain names related to farming.