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Author: Jane, Paula J. phane@infotoday.com

Googleplex always has interesting news--and sometimes it proves to be controversial. Google introduced a new version of its Chinese search site. But the Chinese site raised eyebrows when Google revealed that it would comply with Chinese government censors and restrict access to certain topics and sites. (Reportedly both Yahoo! and MSN have also done the same.)

In an interesting juxtaposition, this Chinese controversy happened about the same time the Bush administration asked a federal judge in San Jose, Calif., to force Google to comply with a subpoena for information. Prosecutors requested a random sampling of 1 million Internet addresses accessible through Google's search engine and a random sampling of 1 million search queries submitted to Google during a 1-week period. Google said it would resist. Reportedly, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL received identical subpoenas and chose to comply with them. The government was reportedly hoping to push for the reinstatement of the anti-pornography Child Online Protection Act.

Google is now allowing consumers to buy and rent videos from major content partners through the Google Video Store. The company also announced Google Pack, a bundle of software from Google and other companies that consumers will be able to download and install on their computers. Google also made these announcements during CES. This is the first year Google and Yahoo! have attended the show, but with the search engines now chasing multimedia content, it's a logical venue.

Google continued to move across media lines with its purchase of a radio company. Google has agreed to acquire dMarc Broadcasting, Inc., a digital solutions provider for the radio broadcast industry. dMarc connects advertisers directly to radio stations through its automated advertising platform. In the future, Google said it plans to integrate dMarc technology into the Google AdWords platform, creating a new radio ad distribution channel for Google advertisers. Guess the smart move for Internet search engines is to chase ad money.

Finally, Google has taken Google News officially out of beta (but only the English-language version). First launched in September 2002, Google News could qualify as one of the longest running beta Web services. With the official launch in late January 2006, the company added a new Personalized Search feature (in beta, of course). From the FAQ: "Personalized Search orders your search results based on your past searches, as well as the search results and news headlines you've clicked on. You can view all these items in your Search History and remove any items you'd like." Users need to be logged in to access the feature.

Yahoo! "goes" beyond the browser. At CES, Yahoo!, Inc. announced the launch of Yahoo! Go, a new suite of products "designed to extend the company's reach beyond the Web browser."

• Yahoo! Go Mobile is a set of applications--Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Photos, calendar, address book, Web and image search, news, sports, and finance--for mobile phones.

• Yahoo! Go TV will deliver personalized services to the PC-connected television.

• Yahoo? Go Desktop is a suite of applications that will connect users to information without them having to open a browser window on their PCs.

Video continues to be hot. AOL bought Truveo, a video search service. According to the company, Truveo's approach to video search uses a proprietary Web crawling technology called "Visual Crawling." This technology has enabled Truveo to amass "one of the most comprehensive indexes of high-quality, current video on the Web."

Ask Jeeves introduced a new image search service. The new service was developed internally and replaces the picture search it used from Picsearch. The company said it employs new patent-pending techniques for analyzing images, quality, and content as an additional measure for ranking and provides improved Smart Answers. I don't search for images very often, so, in this area, I deferred to my colleague and search expert Chris Sherman.

Here's what he wrote in SearchDay: "The bottom line: Ask [Jeeves'] new image search is a step ahead in a notoriously tricky area. With the quality of its image search results, combined with the new Zoom query, refinement feature, I'll be using it as my default image search service going forward. That said, I fully expect to continue using all of the image search services described, given the relatively undeveloped state of the technology in general."

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By Paula J. Hane

Paula J. Hane is Information Today, Inc.'s news bureau chief and editor of NewsBreaks. Her e-mail address is phane@infotoday.com. Send comments about this column to itletters@infotoday.com.