Battelle Talks Future Of Search At SMX West

It's not easy to predict changes in the search industry on even a month-to-month basis; divisions get closed, new products are launched, and market shares waver constantly.  But at SMX West, John Battelle discussed the much more distant future and made some interesting forecasts.

Netflix Reaches More Than 10 Million Subscribers

Netflix said today its online movie rental service has reached over 10 million subscribers, reflecting its widespread and growing popularity among movie fans. The company says it has added more than 600,000 net subscribers since January 1. It surpassed nine million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2008 and ended the year with 9.4 million subscribers.

Google Introduces Social Bar

The Google Friend Connect Team has introduced a new feature to the service - a social bar. You can set the bar to appear at the top or bottom of you page.

Q&A With Founder of Q&A Search Engine SnappyFingers

SnappyFingers is a Question/Answer search engine that has been on the web since last July. It is currently still in beta. I had a chat with Chirayu Patel, the founder of SnappyFingers to find out a little more about it.

Google To Pay Copyright Holders $60 Per Scanned Book

Google has started paying authors of out-of-print books under a $125 million copyright settlement agreement reached in October concerning Google Book Search. Authors and publishers around the world are receiving detailed information about their legal rights and options by email and postal mail. Class members can visit this Web site for complete information about the settlement.