I'm quite impressed with the folks over at Yahoo Search after using the new Livesearch on AlltheWeb.  It's similar to Google Suggest or some of the other tools that Danny mentions, but surpasses all of them because it actually returns results as your type.  That's right, forget about pressing enter or clicking a search button; results come back automatically, on-the-fly.  Talk about fast searching...I love it! 

Via the Google Analytics Blog, Microsoft will reportedly announce the acquisition of DeepMetrix, a long-time player in the web analytics market.  In a move remanicent of Google's purchase of Urchin one year ago, Microsoft will integrate analytics into their AdCenter engine.  This just reinforces the fact that if you're running a PPC campaign, you MUST have an analytics suite to track success.  Viewing the bounce rate, visit paths and conversion rate of your PPC is impossible without analytics. 

Plug:  The Zunch PPC team uses zWebTulz extensively to track our clients PPC spend from every engine. 

IAC Bows New Ad Campaign For Ask.com

I think it's really cool to see TV advertisements for search engines and even more so for Ask.com.  I have used Ask.com for quite some time now and feel that it's newly added features create a more unique search experience than the other primary engines.

It's like a play-ground fight over who is THE king of the monkey bars only in this case the future of information technology and billions of dollars are at stake. 

This is going to get really good in the coming months!

Microsoft and Google Set to Wage Arms Race

Scott blogged on the IE7 Beta, which was released last week to the public.  Now Google is belly-aching about the search bar and which engine is set to default.  Without question, no one expected Microsoft to do anything but set MSN as the default search provider on its own browser.  But Google and everyone else knows these few hundred square pixels on the toolbar could mean big swings in search engine market share toward the end of this year and into 2007.  With IE still at 85% market share, and Firefox losing steam, Google might be getting desperate. 

Incidently, you didn't hear a peep from Google when Firefox and Opera, both Google allies, set Google as the default search engine in their browser.  But now, Google would be happy to open those up if MSN will reciprocate.  Yeah, right...

This goes back to something I wrote about last fall.  In order to Google to survive, they cannot count on users typing in google.com in the web browser.  This will be an archaic practice in a matter of months.  Since most users will take the path of least resistance, Google must get in front of your face proactively.  They seem to be doing well on some fronts, but the browser / operating system battle could pose problems.