Is Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) changing its approach to online spending? The company, which had said as recently as a year ago that it was willing to invest 5 percent to 10 percent of its operating income on its search business for up to five years, wasn’t willing to spend enough…

Inflection, an under-the-radar startup which owns genealogy website Archives.com, has raised $30 million in a first round of funding. The company charges users $39.95 a year to access historical records and build their own family trees on the site and it is apparently doing very well, despite competition from sites…

Any search deal with AOL (NYSE: AOL) would start with the same given: search-advertising revenue will continue to decline as it loses access subscribers. But AOL CEO Tim Armstrong says the deal with Google to extend their search partnership through 2015 should make each search it does get more lucrative—and…

Ending months of speculation about whether AOL (NYSE: AOL) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) can make a new search deal, the companies announced this morning that Google will be the portal’s exclusive search partner through Dec. 31, 2015. The expanded search and content deal now covers mobile search and puts AOL’s…

NHN, which dominates the search market in South Korea and has been relying on Yahoo to power search ads on its Naver search engine for six years, says it won’t be renewing the deal—marking the second time in two months that a major Asian partner has cut ties with Yahoo…

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and big directory publisher Dex One are expanding their local advertising partnership, which lets advertisers who buy listings on Dex One’s DexKnows search site place their ads on Yahoo Local search results as well. The deal comes as Yahoo is renewing focus on local ad sales and…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) continues to buy up social-related firms in preparation for the launch of the new social networking effort it has under way. Its latest acquisition is mobile game startup SocialDeck, which is behind several very-addicting mobile games, including Shake & Spell, a spelling game that users can simultaneously…

Google’s proposed $750 million acquisition of travel search technology provider ITA Software isn’t ready for take off quite yet; Google says the Department of Justice wants more information about the acquisition before giving the deal its OK.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) continues to pick up talent—and to add to its tech ability to compete with Facebook—by acq-hiring. The latest: buying social search startup Angstro and hiring its highly respected co-founder Rohit Khare to work on its social net Google Me. Khare started the company in 2006 with investor…

Over the last year, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has talked repeatedly about the importance of both local content and local advertising. But, while the company has announced local ad partnerships with Gannett (NYSE: GCI) and direct marketer Valassis, it’s been mostly quiet about bringing new local content to its sites. That…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is giving its real-time search service—which aggregate updates from sites like Facebook and Twitter—a refresh. The company says that real-time results, which have been integrated among standard web results since December, will now also be accessible from their own site. In making that change, Google is taking…

Tencent, the Chinese internet company behind IM service and portal QQ, has bought up Comsenz, a Google-backed company which is behind the Discuz online discussion board platform, which is extremely popular in China, among other community products. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) had invested $1 million in Comsenz two years ago. It’s…

Appolicious, the app directory site founded by former Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) News head Alan Warms, is broadening its ties to Warms’ former employer. Appolicious is launching a new site dedicated to helping people find third-party apps that work on Yahoo sites, including the homepage and Yahoo Mail. The company is…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has bought up heavily-backed comparison shopping site Like.com, in what is likely a bid to bulk up its product search results. Like.com, which was established six years ago as Riya, aggregates items for sale from various sites around the web; it’s best known for letting users look…

Federated Media Publishing has acquired the core technology belonging to semantic search provider TextDigger. The sum was not disclosed. As part of the deal, FM will absorb TextDigger’s technology and will bring on several of its staffers, including CEO Tim Musgrove. In turn, TextDigger, sans its semantic technology and the…

Microsoft’s Bing search engine isn’t getting much branding play on the “powered by Bing” Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) search result pages, which are making their debut this week. Do a search on Yahoo, and you’ll need a magnifying glass to figure out that the results are actually coming from Microsoft (NSDQ:…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is shuffling the top management of its MSN portal, six months after rolling out a major redesign of the site. The company has hired Ted Cahall, who left his post as CTO of AOL (NYSE: AOL) in January, as its new corporate vice president of MSN.

Search engine and portal operator Lycos has been sold to Indian digital marketing firm Ybrant Digital by South Korea’s Daum Communications for $36 million. That’s significantly less than the $95 million Daum paid for Lycos in 2004. The agreement calls for Ybrant to purchase all of Daum’s stock in Lycos…

Apple’s Steve Jobs somewhat famously said in April that people aren’t searching on their phone, but instead, are using apps. He reasoned, apps on the iPhone “get you into every corner of the internet…This is a new phenomenon that is occurring on the iPhone for the first time in history.”…