Take a week off, a lot of things happen. Here’s a round up of the news that was.
Lots of folks arguing that Google’s new version of its toolbar (covered here) is an unwarranted intrusion on the rights of site owners and/or users. Dan Gillmor covers it here, SEW here. Myself, I think it’s just another feature, and if you don’t want it, don’t use it. I like the idea of control, and agree that ideally a toolbar user could toggle it on or off. But in the end, if it’s useful, it’ll take. If it isn’t, it won’t.
In lighter news, Lycos announced a dating search application. Can’t find a date? Use a search engine.
JupiterMedia restates the obvious, with gusto, in a new report about vertical search: “JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), today projected in its newly released report, “Vertical Search: Early Marketers Will Reap Rewards of Low Pricing,” that the search industry will develop in much the same way historical media markets before it have, with the broad-based search engines spawning a raft of vertical search engines dedicated to specific categories. ”
Google announced a new movie showtimes search feature.
AOL announced a new local search solution. This feature is for both AOL and web users, and points a major trend for AOL toward embracing the open web, as I have written in the past.
Remember job scraping search engine Indeed.com? It’s got competition: Workzoo.com.
And lastly, it was not a great week for net stocks, search in particular. GOOG went down on some analyst skepticism, as did Yahoo.
I had a great time down in LA with my kids, and even got some business done to boot – LA is very much in the search/media/technology nexus. More on that as I dig out.