Motherboard: Verizon Launches ‘Private’ Search Engine After Years of Violating Its Customers’ Privacy. “Verizon has spent the better part of the last decade mired in privacy scandals and lobbying the government to ignore or legalize its bad behavior. Now it’s launching a new privacy-centric search engine, apparently hoping you forgot all of that ever happened.” It’s apparently Bing in a privacy wrapper, and I’m as cynical about the offering as this Motherboard article.
search engines
Search Engine Land: Google January 2020 Core Update rolling out later today
Search Engine Land: Google January 2020 Core Update rolling out later today. “Google announced on the @SearchLiaison Twitter handle Monday morning that it is rolling out a new core update later today — the first core update for 2020. Google generally now rolls out these algorithmic updates every few months or so.”
Neowin: Google announces the ‘winners’ of the controversial choice screen search engine auction
Neowin: Google announces the ‘winners’ of the controversial choice screen search engine auction. “Google has announced the search engines that it’ll show to new European Android phone users as an alternate choice to its own Google Search service. This change comes as a result of Google being fined €4.34 billion for ‘illegal tying of Google’s search and browser apps’ after which the firm announced it will begin asking users which search engine they want to use on their Android phones.” DuckDuckGo should be popping champagne.
TechCrunch: Pro-privacy search engine Qwant announces more exec changes — to ‘switch focus to monetization’
TechCrunch: Pro-privacy search engine Qwant announces more exec changes — to ‘switch focus to monetization’ . “More changes have been announced in the senior leadership of French pro-privacy search engine Qwant. President and co-founder Eric Leandri (pictured above) will be moving from an operational to a strategic role on January 15, the company said today — while current deputy managing director for sales and marketing, Jean-Claude Ghinozzi, is being promoted to president.”
Search Engine Land: The big list of 2019 Google search algorithm updates
Search Engine Land: The big list of 2019 Google search algorithm updates. “Google’s pace of tweaking and updating Search has accelerated dramatically — it made 3,200 changes to Search in 2018 alone, up from about 400 changes back in 2010. Just a sliver of these changes receive public confirmation or even draw substantial attention, but those that do can (sometimes) provide insights into the kinds of content that Google prioritizes and ranks well.”
Search Engine Journal: Yandex Announces Major Algorithm Update
Search Engine Journal: Yandex Announces Major Algorithm Update. “Yandex calls its update Vega. This update features 1,500 improvements. Of those improvements, Yandex highlighted two that they said impacts the search results in an important way.”
Study: Bing search results suck in entirely new and profound ways (Mashable)
Mashable: Study: Bing search results suck in entirely new and profound ways. “Bing continues to surprise in all the wrong ways. The Microsoft search engine has long been the butt of jokes for its perceived failings as, you know, a search engine, but a new Stanford study suggests its true faults are significantly more troubling. Specifically, according to the report, Bing returns disinformation, conspiracy theories, and white supremacist content at an alarming rate. “
