CNET'S DOWNLOAD.COM ADDING TROJAN AND HIJACK SOFTWARE TO THE INSTALLER

Cnet, a subsidiary of CBS Interactive, has begun wrapping installation programs it houses in a wrapper. While Download.com's TOS allow them to do this, it appears the wrapper is also being used to install trojan and hijack software. A number of users have complained of having a tool bar installed, their search provider switched to Bing and having their homepage changed to MSN, all without explicitly asking the user.

Cnet has stated they are using the wrappers to "help the user" and give them a uniform experience.

MICROSOFT LAUNCHES BING DEALS

Microsoft announced and launched a new deals website on Friday tied to its growing Bing suite of services. Bing Deals is a shopping site that compiles specials from GroupOn, Target, LivingSocial, Nordstrom and others. “Instead of building another program, we’re harnessing deals from major providers and retailers,” said Bing senior director Lisa Gurry. Microsoft’s Bing Deals offers more than 200,000 specials across the United States and, as a deal aggregator, it should eliminate the need to sign up for email alerts from multiple coupon-based services. Just like competing options, Microsoft will offer daily specials that will be accessible from its desktop website located at http://bing.com/deals and from mobile devices.

BING COSTS MICROSOFT $5.5 BILLION

Microsoft has lost $5.5 billion, an average drain of $1 billion per quarter, on Bing since it introduced the search engine in 2009, CNNMoney reported on Wednesday. Despite the losses, Microsoft’s Bing reached a 30% share of the U.S. search engine market in April of this year, slowly narrowing the gap with Google, although comScore’s figures pin the search engine’s share at just 14.7%.

Despite the constant drain, Microsoft still has a plan for Bing. During the company’s financial analyst meeting in California recently, Microsoft’s president of online services Qi Lu said his company hopes to use Bing to “reorganize the web” to “change the game fundamentally” instead of taking on Google in a head-to-head dogfight.

“We are able to try things with much more flexibility,” Bing director Stefan Weitz said. “If we make a mistake, it’s not going to take down the company.” Analysts believe Microsoft will continue to lose money, however. “Bing will likely be better than Google over time, but even if it is, users and advertisers still need to go to them,” McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Sid Parakh told CNNMoney. “To be clear, this will take a long, long time to play out. This is something Microsoft will continue to lose money on.”

CHINA'S LEADING SEARCH ENGINE, BAIDU, TO PARTNER WITH BING FOR ENGLISH SEARCHES

A year and a half after Google pulled its popular search engine out of mainland China, partly over concerns about censorship, its rival Microsoft has struck a deal with the biggest Chinese search engine, Baidu.com, to offer Web search services in English.

Baidu, previously primarily a Chinese-language search engine, made the announcement Monday afternoon, saying Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, was expected to appear on Baidu’s Web pages by the end of this year.

Baidu, which dominates Chinese-language search services here with about 83 percent of the market, has been trying for years to improve its English-language search services because English searches on its site are as many as 10 million a day, the company said.

TODAY IS IPv6 DAY! EVERYONE GET YOUR INTERNET ON

Described as a "test flight" of IPv6, today marks the biggest concerted effort by some of the web's marquee players to turn us all on to the newer, fancier web addressing system. Internet Protocol version 4 has been the template by which we've addressed everything connected to the web so far, but that stuff's now nearing exhaustion, so the future demands a longer, more complex nomenclature to tell our smartphones, tablets, printers, and other webOS devices apart.

For end users, June 8th won't really feel too different from June 7th -- this will be a change that occurs mostly behind the scenes and there's an IPv4 fallback option if you can't connect in the modern way -- but Google does warn that a very limited subset of users may experience connectivity issues as a result.

MICROSOFT TO UNVEIL NEXT MAJOR RELEASE OF WINDOWS PHONE MAY 24TH

Microsoft has scheduled a Windows Phone event in New York City on May 24th, 2011, during which the company will “lift the curtain on the next major release of Windows Phone.” We know Mango will offer Internet Explorer 9 with an integrated Twitter experience, better multitasking, and new apps such as Angry Birds, Skype, and Spotify. We’ve also heard that Microsoft will add Bing Audio for identifying music, Bing Vision for scanning bar codes, and voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation with Bing Maps, although none of these features have been confirmed by Microsoft just yet.

BING GRABS 30% OF US SEARCH MARKET IN MARCH

According to Experian Hitwise, Microsoft’s Bing managed to pick up over 30% of all web searches in the United States last month, a 5% boost in search share from the previous month. Google’s spot at the top isn’t in danger though – the search giant held on to 64.42%, far and away the top spot, but Bing and Yahoo! (which uses Bing for search results) combined are making a dent in Google’s numbers.

The important thing to note here is that the result of the study says of all US web searches in March, 30.01% were performed by Bing – so those numbers include Yahoo! users and Bing users. Yahoo! signed a 10-year agreement with Microsoft to allow Bing to power searches performed at Yahoo! back in 2009. If you break down the numbers based on the sites where the searches were performed, Bing.com is back in third with 14.32% of all searches, right behind Yahoo! with 15.69%.

Both numbers pale in comparison to Google’s 64.42%, but when you realize that Bing’s database is behind both contenders, they represent a serious challenge to Google’s dominance, especially when you see that Hitwise’s numbers indicate Google is losing search share while Bing-powered searches are up 5%.

KAYAK TO PROVIDE TRAVEL INFO FOR BING

One of Microsoft Bing's strongest attributes is the travel section. Now, it has gotten even better. Kayak, a flight search engine, and Microsoft have announced Kayak will now be powering Bing Travel. According to Kayak, Bing will have access to "all" of Kayak's travel search services globally, and it looks as if the integration will be complete "in the coming weeks."

Kayak allows users to "compare hundreds of travel sites at once," in one location for free and they claim to be "the world's largest travel site."

BING TO TAKE ON GROUPON AND LIVINGSOCIAL

Microsoft's Bing has announced it will be launching Bing Daily Deals. Microsoft will be partnering with Dealmap to bring 200,000 deals from 14,000 cities throughout the United States to Bing's desktop and mobile versions.

On the mobile version of Bing, Bing Deals will be accessed through a dedicated “Deals” tab, while on the desktop, deals will be presented as a regular part of search results.

Unfortunately, you can’t specify the types of deals you’d like to receive, since all deals are based strictly upon location. However, what you lack in specificity, you make up for in volume, since Dealmap — upon which Bing Deals is based — is a huge aggregator of deals from other sites.

GOOGLE RESPONDS TO MICROSOFT STEALING ITS SEARCH RESULTS

Google accused Microsoft of copying search results this morning, and the company's sticking to its guns: in response to Microsoft's firm denial -- "We do not copy Google's results" -- it's released another tiny batch of evidence to the contrary and a call for Microsoft to discontinue the practice for good. Mind you, Google search engineer Amit Singhal doesn't explicitly call out its competitor for "copying" results -- rather, "recycling" them through a clever combination of Microsoft Internet Explorer and the Bing Toolbar -- but the message is clear. Google wants you to view its search results as the originals, and doesn't really care how sincere Microsoft's flattery might be. [Engadget]

TOYOTA LAUNCHES NEW IN-CAR ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM

Toyota is joining the in-car computer adventure with "Entune," their own take on the apps and smartphone integration game a la Ford Sync. The first apps look solid, but will they be the first to allow user-installed apps?

The first set of apps look like pretty standard (if welcome) fare: Pandora, Bing search, MovieTickets.com. There's even Open Table support to let you book a reservation at a local restaurant as you're driving there.

There's even voice recognition, although that's a feature that's been available to some degree in Toyota's for several years. It also sounds like Toyota will be pulling data for the system via your smartphone's data plan, much like Ford has done with Sync, negating the need for a car-only data plan like some upscale marques have required.

All in all it's a welcome addition for the world's largest car maker—or one-of...I can never keep track of who's on top these days—but the key to any of these sort of systems is how easy they are to operate when you're on the go. Initial screenshots are clean and simple, but it will be impossible to pass judgement until we get a chance to actually try Entune in action. [Gizmodo]

NEW SEARCH ENGINE TO TAKE ON GOOGLE AND BING

Blekko is a new search engine that has launched in beta today.  The new engine will attempt to use human input to refine results. The Blekko.com site uses what the site calls "slashtags": a curated list of sites around a given topic. Users can create the sites, and also use them as a search modifier to only search within them.

"Bing and Google have hundreds of contractors that use web tools to refine this relevance data - classifying porn, spam, domain parks, ecommerce sites, fake 404's, markov-spam, official sites, and so on," Rich Skrenta, chief executive, wrote in a blog post. "As a 20-person startup, we asked ourselves how blekko could assemble this essential data," Skrenta added. "Hire contractors? Use Mechanical Turk? Elance? But - of course! - we know a much better way.... A way you can get orders of magnitude greater participation, while at the same time being very open about the process. Let the public in."

Slashtags filter out so-called "spammy" sites, Blekko said, but depend on the individual creators to edit them and add new sites that crop up. Users can "follow" other slashtags and use them as filters, and also apply to edit them. The site also has a "global chatter" page which auto-tracks updates to the sites and to slashtags, and can serve as a sort of communication medium of sorts.

Blekko's initial goal, the company said will be to identify the 50 best sites on the Web for the top 100,000 search categories. Over time, the site will "auto-slash" queries. [PC Mag]

FACEBOOK AND BING TEAM UP FOR SOCIAL SEARCH

Facebook and Microsoft's Bing have teamed up to introduce a "social search" engine where Facebook friends and their 'likes' are factored into the search results.  If you search for restaurants or museums, some of the search results will represent your friends "likes".  If you search for people, those with the most connections to you will rise to the top of the results.

If you logged into Facebook and visit Bing with the browser, you will get a pop-up asking if you want to participate.  If you agree, your results will use the new social engine.  If you decline, you get the regular results.  This does bring up some privacy questions.  Bing executives explain "Bing can see no more about you than anyone who goes to your Facebook page can see," and, additionally, "What you search on Bing doesn't get sent to Facebook." so there shouldn't be any issues. [Technolog]

BING GOES OLD SCHOOL TO GET USERS

Microsoft thinks not enough people are using it's search engine Bing.  So, to get interest they have decided to dust off an old promotion used during the bubble period of late 90's early 00's...Rewards!  That's right you can now get reward points good on Xbox Live or Zune.

Download and install the Bing bar (that is now stuck in my head btw)...bing, 250 points, do 16 searches with Bing, bing that's 8 points.  Get enough points and you get video games, Bing merchandise, gift cards and other dust collectors. [Gizmodo]

BING PASSES YAHOO

Microsoft's Bing search engine has surpassed Yahoo, but is still a long way behind market leader Google, according to newly released data by Nielsen.  In August, Bing grew from 13.6% to 13.9% of the US market, while Yahoo shrunk from 14.1% to 13.1%.  Google went from 64.2% to 65% during the same time.

This is good news for Bing, however it is less rosy than it seems.  In August Yahoo and Bing jointly announced that Yahoo search was now powered by Bing, effectively putting Bing in second place.

Nielsen states it only counts searches that users type in a search box and not ones that are automatically generated by search engines based on the users browsing habits.  It should be noted that comScore, Experian Hitwise and StatCounter still show Yahoo in second place followed very closely by Bing in third. [Ars Technica]

SAMSUNG FASCINATE USERS STUCK WITH BING

If you bought, or are considering, a Samsung Fascinate from Verizon Wireless be aware that Verizon has made Microsoft Bing the default search option and there is no way, other than rooting the phone, to remove this or change it to any other search provider.  Microsoft has paid Verizon a boatload of money to get their Bing search engine on Verizon's phones.

A Verizon Wireless spokesperson has tried to clarify the situation.  Once the Fascinate gets Android 2.2, the user will be able to download the Google Search app, however Bing will remain the default search provider and the search button will always use Bing to perform searches.

Didn't Microsoft get in trouble for this with their IE browser for the desktop?

BING NOT REPLACING GOOGLE ON ALL VERIZON PHONES

Contrary to what has been widely reported, Microsoft Bing will not be replacing Google on all Verizon's Android phones.  According to Verizon Wireless "that is not true. We have a relationship with Microsoft and Bing is the search engine on our multi-media phones but we have never said it would be exclusive on all of our devices."

Microsoft has also released a statement saying "the deal for Verizon Android devices is not exclusive."

The important part of the denial is the phrase "multi-media phones".  It is now suspected that Bing will be the default search engine on feature phones and low-end smartphones, with Google remaining the search provider on the high-end Android phones. [Engadget]

YAHOO SEARCH NOW BING POWERED IN US AND CANADA

Yahoo has announced they have converted their web, image and video searches over to Bing.  Microsoft has noted that this is only for Yahoo's English searches in the US and Canada.

The change comes after almost a year since Microsoft and Yahoo agreed on search and ads in an effort to combat Google.  The Yahoo search results still appear the same, with exception of a small tag line "Powered by Bing" at the bottom of the page. [Ars Technica]