bing

Kinect's ad potential could be in augmented reality

SAN FRANCISCO--Kinect is already proving to be a hot seller for Microsoft, but some of the real revenue opportunities could lay in ads that make use of its cameras.

Speaking to a crowd as part of a panel discussion at the Web 2.0 Summit here, Yusuf Mehdi, who is Microsoft's senior vice president of Online Audience Business, said that Microsoft's gaming peripheral could one day end up offering Kinect owners a more tangible experience at trying out products right in their living rooms (emphasis mine):

"The amazing thing is, you can use your hand to manipulate. … Read more

Why one VC believes there's more to social media

Facebook keeps getting bigger. Twitter isn't going away any time soon. Even the companies built to take advantage of these companies' social-media wiring--the Groupons and Zyngas of the world--have gotten huge in their own right. It's ubiquitous, and arguably mature.

So why does Sand Hill Road fixture Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, which has spent nearly four decades investing in companies like Amazon, Google, Intel, and AOL, think it's the right time to start a fund specifically geared toward new investments in social media?

The venture firm, which had a Java-specific fund in the 1990s and launched … Read more

Verizon's exclusivity on Bing for Android ends

What does Bing now have in common with Skype? It joins the list of apps that were once exclusive to mobile carrier Verizon, and now aren't.

Earlier today, Microsoft announced that its Bing search application is now available to all Android users through Google's Android market, a move that ends the exclusivity Verizon has had on it since the end of August.

The app is no different from the one that came before it, except that it no longer matters what carrier you're on. Android users who want to grab the app can just do a search … Read more

Bing goes live with Facebook social search

Bing has rolled out its new social search, a feature that can display profiles and updates from your Facebook friends as part of your Bing search results.

This step of the Facebook integration has been in the works for a few weeks, but the techs at Bing fine-tuned the feature before yesterday's rollout, according to a post on the official Bing blog.

The new social search integrates with Facebook in a couple of ways.

If you opt to link your Facebook account with your Bing log-in, searching for the name of one of your Facebook friends in Bing brings … Read more

Gifting on eBay, Amazon through Facebook

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

eBay launches Group Gifts, a way for friends to chip in to buy other friends expensive itemsWe could see Google's Chrome operating system as early as this yearApple lengthens the time of sampling music from 30 to 90 seconds. You can now buy your Facebook friends Amazon gift cardsMicrosoft removes 3D in favor of "Bird's Eye" in Bing MapsGoogle crowdsources its security efforts, offering cash to anyone who identifies a vulnerabiltyGoogle settles its class action suit involving Google Buzz

Microsoft to drop 3D, plug-in need in Bing Maps

This story was updated at 4:50 p.m. PDT with a new headline, and additional comment from Microsoft.

Microsoft has taken the covers off a future update to its Bing Maps service that removes the need for its Silverlight browser plug-in to view an alternate mapping layer, and has also announced that it plans to remove its 3D map viewer. The changes will arguably make the service more approachable to the masses, but indicate that the company is going in a different direction with its online tools and technology platforms.

In a post on the Bing community blog, Bing … Read more

Yahoo, Microsoft using common paid search

Microsoft and Yahoo said today that they have completed the shift to using Redmond's AdCenter tools to power paid search in the U.S. and Canada on Yahoo and its partner sites.

"As of today, AdCenter powers 100 percent of paid search advertisements on both Bing and Yahoo!, partner sites and publisher networks in the U.S. and Canada," the companies said in a joint statement. It's part of the companies' massive 10-year deal aimed at joining forces in search to better rival market leader Google.

Although the companies had a goal of doing so by the end of this month, … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1329: Punching robots and BingFace (podcast)

Headlines from today's show include Facebook and Bing's new search partnership, when "bill shock" crosses over into "bill kill," and Molly admits she was wrong about the iPad. People are totally buying that thing. They're also buying Macs in droves, apparently. And also: rock 'em sock 'em robot torture. --Molly

Google, Bing market share creeps up

Google and Microsoft's Bing continue to pick up snippets of the U.S. search engine market at the expense of Yahoo, according to the latest stats from ComScore.

For September, Google's share of the 16 billion "explicit core" searches inched up 0.7 point from August and accounted for 66.1 percent of the market, while Microsoft eked out a 0.1 point rise to grab 11.2 percent. Although Yahoo remains in second place with a 16.7 percent slice of the market, it shed 0.7 point in the month.

Looking at sheer numbers, … Read more

Microsoft's Facebook stake: Maybe not so crazy

Three years ago, when Microsoft invested $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook, it looked to be just a bit nutty.

Back then, Facebook was an unprofitable three-year-old company with a business model that the ad industry still wasn't fully believing, and the News Corp.-owned social network MySpace was still bigger than Facebook both in the U.S. and internationally. Facebook's paper valuation of $15 billion at the time of the investment was believed to have been embarrassingly overinflated because Microsoft had been in a bidding war with Google over the stake in question, and indeed, … Read more