Information Industry--Micromedia Canada's Micromedia Acquired by ProQuest
From the news release, "ProQuest Company's (NYSE: PQE) Information and Learning unit announced today that it has acquired Micromedia Limited, Canada's largest developer, publisher, and distributor of value-added reference information for academic, government, and corporate markets. Founded in 1972 and headquartered in
Toronto, Micromedia licenses information from media, government, and other sources, creates abstracts, and delivers the information via the Internet, CD-ROM, microform, and print media." "Stephen Abram, vice president of corporate development for Micromedia, commented, "We are pleased to join the ProQuest family. ProQuest has a uniqueunderstanding of the library market and the products we create and distribute.This pairing is an ideal combination for customers, publishers, and employees." Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. See Also: Direct to Micromedia See Also: Direct to ProQuest
Web Search--Google On the Google Beat 1) Word from the Googleplex that search interfaces in Belarusian, Javanese, Occitan, Thai, Urdu, and Klingon are now available. You can select your interface language (72 languages now available) on the Google preferences page. 2)PC World has a brief chat with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt. 3) Those of you who use Canada's Sympatico.Ca portal will notice that search results are now being powered by Google. The same is true for Germany's Web.De portal. Like most Google powered sites both of these services do not offer the Google Cache feature. Thanks to Webmaster World for the news tip.
Web Search Industry--Pay-Per-Click Engines
Trademark Infringement
Source: San Francisco Chronicle "Search Engines Sued for Delivering Hits Based on Payment"
From Verne Kopytoff's story, "Mark Nutritionals, a diet pill manufacturer in San Antonio, says that people who enter queries about its product, Body Solutions, are misdirected to competing Web sites that have paid for top billing. The suit claims the search engines are allowing an illegal "bait and switch." The lawsuit -- believed to be the first of its kind -- is a major challenge to pay-for-placement search engines, which provide links based not on relevancy, but on who pays. The Federal Trade Commission is already investigating Web sites using this technology for not explicitly telling consumers the results are advertisements in disguise. Mark Nutritionals filed its civil suits against search engines AltaVista, Overture, FindWhat and Kanoodle. The suits, which ask for a total of $440 million in damages, were filed Monday in federal court in San Antonio." See Also: "Suit Targets Pay-for-Play Sites" (via News.Com)
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