Hotfile, one of the most popular services for sharing files has ceased their operations. In a recent court settlement Hotfile has agreed to pay a fine of $80 million for copyright infringement to several movie studios. It is the result of a lawsuit for copyright infringement started in March 2012. submitted by Disney, Fox, Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner against Hotfile CEO, Anthony Tito.

Less than two weeks ago, BitTorrent tracker isoHunt has stopped working toward a settlement that led to the dismissal of long-term litigation at the district court in California. This is a complaint against isoHunt and its owner Gary Fung, which was started in 2006 by several American film studios due to multiple violations of copyright. But it did not take long for isoHunt to reappear.

The MPAA can score another victory in their ongoing (and lopsided) battle against file sharing on the internet as the popular Torrent search site ISOHunt has announced it is closing down. For the last few years site owner Gary Fung has fought the MPAA over allegations of copyright infringement. The case resembles the one that was thrown at The Pirate Bay several years ago in that ISOHunt did not actually store files on the site. The lawsuit brings many questions to mind about search engines in general and if systems designed to index the internet can be policed.

Microsoft has released results relating to the most popular search terms on its search engine, Bing. According to these results news relating to the iPhone 5 was in first place. Apple's new mobile phone overtook the presidential elections in the U.S., the London Olympics, and storm Sandy, who follow in this order on the list of most searched for news. In addition to the iPhone, from the technological innovations, in ninth place on the list was the Kindle Fire HD while tenth place belongs to Facebook's initial public offering of shares.

According to several rumors, Yahoo could soon expand areas of cooperation with Facebook. One consequence could be a cessation of the partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo. Will the two ladies Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg change the way we search the internet, or at least give some decent competition to Google and other search engines.

Everyone knows that Google is the largest search engine around. Its role as such is so prolific that people no longer 'search' for information on line, they 'google' it. It has become a verb; a regular household name. But just how BIG is Google?

This was the first full quarter for Yahoo's new CEO, Marissa Mayer and she has already achieved great results.  The company made $1.2 billion GAAP (Generally accepted accounting principles), which is just one percent lower than the third quarter in 2012 when they made $1.217 billion. Now you are wondering how that is good; the thing is in Yahoo they like to look at non-GAAP revenues, in which they improved from $1.081 billion in the second quarter to $1.089 billion in the third. This number is excluding traffic acquisition costs and they are the main reason why they are satisfied.

Already 14 years have passed since the Google has been established, and they celebrated it with a cake doodle. Of course it has 14 candles, and after they are blown out the cake gets cut out and the remaining parts create the Google logo from the plate below. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were at Stanford University. It all started on September 4, 1998 when the company was first incorporated as a privately held company, while public the offering happened on August 19, 2004.

Some interesting news on the mobile front this morning; after browsing around the net and looking for something interesting we stumbled across an article on Information Week that was as interesting in it market implications as it is puzzling. The article was an announcement of sorts explaining that the Bing app was now available for iOS and Android, but would not be released for Windows Phone just yet.

Now the thing about this that is puzzling is the need for a “Bing App”. Most people by now will be using a browser that allows you to choose your search engine. If you are looking for Bing then you can select it there and get your fill of Bing on that front. Even Apple’s mobile Safari has Bing as an option now.  We have checked and most modern phones will let you change the web search engine from Google (or whoever) to Bing, so on this front the app seems pretty pointless.

On the other hand if Microsoft is trying to replace the default “phone” search engine they are going to have a rough time. We grabbed the Bing App for Android 2.3 (on our EVO 3D) and it would not replace the default Google search feature that pops up when you press the search icon. It also was not able to replace any of the in-app search functions so we are not sure how this App fits in (unless it is just for those die-hard Bing users).

The final thought is that this might help extend the Bing search into the mobile market and in turn bring people over into the Microsoft fold. However, this is very unlikely as a search engine is not going to change your mind about a mobile phone. So what is up with Microsoft sending out the Bing Search App to Android and iOS? We honestly do not know what they are thinking and are making a guess that someone feels it will help them in the long run (obviously or they would not have done it).

As a final thought, you might hear that Microsoft releasing this for Android and iOS shows no confidence in their own Windows Phone Platform. This is simply not an accurate statement; you see Bing is the default phone search and web search on Windows Phone already. Why make an App when it is already there. Like we said, this one is both interesting and odd.

Oh, and one last thing… if you have an Android tablet and were thinking about grabbing this, well you might be a little surprised to find out that it is not available to non-3G Android devices. We attempted on two Android tablets and received the same warning. “This item is not available on your carrier”… Not exactly the way to extend your reach in the mobile market now is it…



Source Information Week

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