The short of it is that (without a source, I might add) Bing is allegedly working with Chinese authorities to skew search results. And that Google only censors them. Right, clearly one is worse than the other. News flash - it’s the Internet, half of the crap here is skewed. And while I detest what the Chinese authorities propagate as “fact”, the idea that Microsoft is somehow doing worse that Yahoo or Google in how they present queried results is ludicrous at best.

The fact of the matter is all three search engine companies behave horribly in order to gain access to the Chinese populous. So if you are going to boycott one, best do it right and stop using search all together. Because they are all guilty of the same approach as far as i am concerned. But this is just my opinion.

This is not to say that all of Mozilla’s revenue is all coming from Google, but it does appear that most of it certainly is. Other sources appear to include Yahoo, Amazon, eBay amongst other sources not listed.

One thing is for sure though. Mozilla is poised for continued profits despite seeing any recent heat from the browser based competition. Call them too well embedded, perhaps there is something to the law of being first and most popular in the open source browser realm. Whatever the reason, both the status and profits for this browser company are going no where.

Where things get sticky however is the “news” of the news now featuring tweets from Twitter. Clever, inventive even…but where the hell is it? Apparently one must search for a timely topic. So I tried this, nothing - no Twitter options visible on my end?

Missing in action problems aside, the idea does sound intriguing assuming the results are specifically selected separately from the news we already know and love. I’d even be okay with this as a selected filter. But please, do not mix my Twitter with my news.

Basically if the ads are contained within the applications themselves, no one really seems to mind. Just make sure they are not inhibiting the option of enjoying things on the application front.

Well apparently Google has big hopes for one company in this realm, AdMob. And based on what I have been able to see myself, I think they might very well be a wise investment. Remember, advertising is not dead…it’s  just evolving.

I will say it is campaigns like this that do not lend any credibility to Bing as a legitimate threat. TV, print and Internet ads, sure. Bribery… not so much. Then again, some might say Google does the same thing. But I do not know of anything Google is doing like this on this kind of scale.

Frankly, outside of the cheesy factor, I don’t really see a lot of harm here. Besides, the sad fact of the matter is that people will either choose to use Bing based on its search performance or not. I for one, remain unimpressed and have continued to use Google.

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Then there is the matter of once again, over-taxing an already double-booked Twitter. As it is today, the service still fails far too often for my taste. Even with recent performance improvements, I think Twitter is still too vunerable to problems for it to be tied into something such as LinkedIn.

At the end of the day, I think that they need to get a handle on their outages, give more resources to the API then let’s talk about a tie in with services such as LinkedIn. But this is just my perspective, your opinions will likely vary.

Then the above linked article makes a fantastic point - Facebook users are not really good for ad placement where a product is being sold. And based on ad research I have done with Facebook myself, I would be inclined to agree.

Thankfully there has been a real push by legitimate advertisers on Facebook recently that is showing signs of potentially overtaking the crap-factor seen in Facebook’s past. With any luck, this will stick for the mainstay. No matter what though, it is going to pay to keep your eyes peeled

The deal being struck with Qtrax looks pretty promising for curbing rampant music piracy. This is not to say that it is going to solve everyone’s problems with dealing with music piracy, but I think for Baidu it may very well be a solid start.

Further expanding their reach, Qtrax is looking to launching in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This could translate into Qtrax positioning themselves into a real growth position as they enter each individual market.

For me personally, I find that Topsy provides an interesting way to track the success of individual articles. I might not be inclined to say that it is the only tool out there anyone should be using, rather something like Twitterurly.

At its core, it is one of those real time search engines. But thanks to its Digg like UI, WordPress retweet badges and ease of use, I find it is not a service to be ignored when you are in the blogging game. Too people using it to ignore it completely.

Where Bing really steps it up, is for touch devices. Likely being aimed at the iPhone, Pre and Android, Bing Mobile provides some smooth glide controls for those looking to make their touch experience a bit more fluid.

Where Bing really drops the ball is ticking off folks overseas with yet more USA only Bing applications. This is sad as it is likely there are potentially millions of people overseas who would be thrilled to try Bing Mobile. Too bad it’s not available to them.

Further reading shows that apparently, the deal is not likely to be closed before 2010. Seriously, I am sure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are thrilled to see this deal getting such a high priority. Not.

Allegedly, the rumor is that the two companies are merely looking to get their ducks in a row due to problems with alleged click fraud issues on the Yahoo! side. But those are merely rumors. Yeah, sure…

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Where the app store fails for most companies looking to get something distributed is that Apple is not going to be of much help here. They will provide you with a platform and audience, but you will have to do your own promotion. Apple just makes it simple to access.

Now let’s imagine that we are talking about those failed brands of media know as newspapers. What if a simple subscription model is provided by the app store for a flat, reasonable monthly fee of $5. Many would avoid it, with more leaping to it like it was providing something life sustaining. Yet much of the mainstream media still does not get this.

Even then, those other search engines that provides results from everywhere are not really helping with the information overload. It’s just too much I am afraid. The sad state of reality is that search has remained entirely too lazy, in my opinions. Even Google, falls into this category to some degree.

Where do we go from here? Human powered indexes and real time results appear to be the future - unfortunately, this is not going to lead to accuracy. No, this will simply continue to lead to more confusion and general frustration.

I would point out that the same thing applies to Twitter as well. A great way to communicate, but there is no way that I have found ANY data from either source to be good for anything other than the occasional URL discovery. And even that is few and far between.

But this is hardly something that Bing is alone in. Google is also getting their feet wet with this social networking search nonsense. As stated previously, I love social networking. Just don’t mix it up with relevent search results and we’ll all get along just great.

Look, Google offering a new layout is fine. But at the same time, I think Google would be wise to continue using what works. Why start changing things about if it is not needed? This is something that Google might want to start asking themselves as newer UI is often time totally unneeded.

One the other hand, the inclusion of something called structured search might be of some value as Google pushes forward. Anytime you offer more ways to search content, that can be a good thing. But it should be by choice, not being forced upon anyone.

If anything, the above article should prove to be a reminder that even protected tweets, are easily accessible and that it is never a great idea to announce stuff you would not want visible to the world.

Does this mean we should avoid using Twitter completely? No, not at all. Rather consider the fact that Twitter is a public tool for communication, hence using our best judgment when utilizing such a tool. Really should be a matter of common sense.

As news came down the line of TownNews adopting the hnews format, I suddenly found myself wondering why this matters to the reader? Looking into the matter a bit deeper, I found that in truth, all that is being offered is a consistent read. Little more than that.

Yes, it means very little to the reader. But it matters to the publisher as this translates into seeking to meet with open standards, which in the end is actually good for everyone. And with TownNews supporting the online operations for something like 1500 newspapers online, standards are becoming increasingly important in this highly competitive environment.

Clearly living on kool-aid and VC money has gotten to Twitter’s head. Sure, I fully realize that they are waiting for some larger company to sweep in and buy them out. But one must ask themselves what kind of business is that? A sell out kind? Yup, pretty much.

Twitter is holding off for the big money. Obviously learning nothing from the dotCom crash, they are perfectly content to sit around and ignore any sustainable business ideas in hopes of being bought out for as much as possible. No interest in selling out to Facebook, clearly they are waiting for Google or Microsoft.

What is interesting about this is that there is a warning that appears when trying to use Google Wave on the iPhone, stating that the browser was not setup for it. Despite this, I believe we will see more mobile users jumping on board with this as time goes on.

In the end, it seems like the biggest target for Google Wave on the mobile front appears to be related to the iPhone specifically. And why not, considering the sheer number of users available able to run what the software provides.

What remains largely unclear though, is whether or not Moto is too late to the table. Some might say they are, as only the likes of Nokia could drag their feet this long and still come out on top.

No matter how all of this breaks down, I think it is safe to point out that Moto realizes that in order to compete in an iPhone kind of world, embracing open source options like Android is about the only hope they have to not become a second class solution in this ever-changing mobile market.