With the recent Microsoft-Yahoo merger, it will now be even more interesting to see how the search market competition plays out.

Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, will provide the search results for Yahoo! enabling Microsoft to have the best chance at taking down industry-giant, Google.  The transition in the search results is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Yahoo! is certainly struggling with only 15% of the search market in their grasp.  With Bing improving the most of late, this percentage could drop even more.  While Bing and Yahoo! are still in the midst of a merger that will combine the efforts of both brands to overtake Google, Yahoo! brass still want their brand to be a powerful entity by itself as these improvements show.

One interesting component of all this is Microsoft. There’s been some chatter of them bidding for the rights to provide AOL’s search results via their 10 month old “decision engine” Bing. This would be another step towards Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Google and claim more of the search market. However, their bid would likely be outbid significantly by Google.

One can only admire Bing’s effort to compete against Google’s powerhouse.  You might recall last summer’s deal between Microsoft and Yahoo!.  Once this deal is reviewed and finalized, it will be rather interesting to see how Bing progresses as they will be the clear cut number 2 in this market.

The recent healthcare debate has brought about an increase in the sales of such ads. A Google search for “euthanasia” yields an ad with a link to moveon.org, a liberal organization. The link leads to a page titled “Top Five Health Care Reform Lies-and How to Fight Back.” It is the only ad that appears on the side of the page.

The interest groups often change the titles of their ads to keep up with new developments appearing the news. The activity has grown significantly in past months, dating back to last year’s election. Peter Greenberger, Google’s Director of Political Advertising, said, “[In] the course of a year or the last 18 months, the way people are using the online medium has dramatically changed.” Last year, Google received over $15 million for advertising from the Obama and McCain campaigns.

The main reason that advocacy groups are campaigning via online advertising is its reasonable price, with some organizations spending only a few thousand dollars for certain entries. As Internet and search engines use continues to increase, online advertising will remain an effective option for businesses.

A U.S. District Court dismissed a lawsuit against Yahoo! by a woman who sued the search engine for search results associated with her name.  Beverly Stayart claimed that Yahoo! purposely linked her name to pornographic websites and erectile dysfunction drugs. The court dismissed the case, ruling that Yahoo! was protected under the Communications Decency Act.

Stayart filed her case in February and accused Yahoo! of various trademark violations, claiming that she is the only Beverly Stayart on the Internet. Those allegations failed because if there has ever been a person with her same name, Stayart would have a major problem proving the links were associated with her. Judge Rudolf Randa addressed this by saying: “No one who accessed these links could reasonably conclude that Bev Stayart endorsed the products at issue.”

Vanity search or egosurfing is a popular process referring to web users exploring the results of their own name on a search engine. This case shows that while a user may be unhappy with websites that result from a search of their name, little can be done due to the likelihood of someone sharing a same name. In sum, this case sets a precedent that will likely prevent copycat lawsuits from springing up across the country, sapping search engine time and resources.

Antitrust authorities in Italy are examining Google (Italy) after publishers of news websites complained that the search titan was not giving them a fair share of revenue from online advertising.

The accusers claim that Google does not disclose criteria for ranking content on its news site. Consequently, agencies such as newspapers are unable to maximize the amount of money gained from advertising. Search engines such as Google and Bing actually do give some information regarding rankings, but do not give their entire method in order to avoid complications.

Carlo Malinconico, president of the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers, said “Publishers provide much of the content on the Internet, but they get nearly nothing for it….This is not fair, in our opinion. Our feeling is we lose more than we gain.” Newspapers also claim that Google Italy discriminates against sites that do not want to be associated with Google News by dropping them from the search engine completely.

According to comScore, Google controlled 68 percent of all search queries in July, a mere 76.7 billion entries. It still owns nearly 90 percent of searches in Italy. As long as Google continues to dominate the search world, similar antitrust claims will remain common. While the allegations are serious, experts don’t see the probe going far.

Last month’s Microsoft/Yahoo! deal continues to draw attention throughout the search community. The market share of Microsoft’s Bing.com has continued to increase slightly since its June launch, but it is still a far cry from Google’s dominant stance in the industry. It is hard to argue that the deal is not affecting Google; the company has unveiled an update to its search platform. Experts see it as a response to the move, but Google denies such claims stating that the update had been in the works for awhile.

Perhaps the greatest challenge that Bing faces in its fight against Google is search loyalty. Google has simply become a habit for users over time, with most giving little thought to a potential switch. Gord Hotchkiss, CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, said “For Microsoft-Yahoo to disrupt the Google habit, they have to offer a compelling enough reason to do the cognitive heavy lifting required to break a subconscious habit.” Bing will need to change its casual users into faithful ones.

Microsoft and Yahoo! may also be confronted with antitrust issues as a result of their agreement. The question posed by the partnership is whether or not online advertisers will benefit more with a single, more powerful rival to Google when compared to two less threatening foes. It will be challenging for regulators to make a case due to the fact that the number two and three competitors are joining forces (as opposed to the top two in a market). Legal officials are not expected to complete a review until 2010.

While nothing has changed dramatically since the agreement, competition among search engines is sure to remain strong.

Google has introduced Caffeine, a new and improved version of its search platform (the update is currently available for use under an alternative link). The move is described as an “under the hood” update, meaning that nothing will change externally, and the average user will not recognize much of a difference.

Google Caffeine has proven to be more effective at incorporating recent information such as news stories into its top results. The update has also made Google search slightly faster. In his blog, Google software engineer Matt Cutts reiterated that the update will not bring extreme change: “This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure. But some of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback.”

The update may begin to address Google’s challenge to incorporate real time search. Results from social websites like Twitter are more common, but Microsoft’s Bing seems to still have the upper hand in this regard. There have been past talks of Google and Twitter working on a real time search deal.

Experts see the update as a response to the recent Microsoft/Yahoo! search deal, but Google says that the move has been in works for months. Google may control nearly 75 percent of the search market, but it is not about stop working on new innovations. “Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve, Cutts said.”