Week That Was – 2009-12-04

Apple went shopping and picked up Lala, a music service that lets users listen to any song on its site once for free. Customers can then opt to buy the track for 10 cents and listen to it on the Web. Unlike Apple iTunes, Lala’s music is stored on servers, instead of being downloaded to the user’s computer. If customers decide to download a track, the cost is 79 cents — compared with iTunes’ price of 69 cents to $1.29.

Google

In an effort to provider users with real-time updates on financial news Google Finance has added steaming news to their service an update last week. Real-time web has been a growing trend on the web in he last few months, we can expect to see similar updates from other portals including Microsoft and Yahoo to follow soon.

Google quietly rolls out Google Dictionary, a few cool features but overall no big surprise to see this service being launched. Is it time to say goodbye to www.dictionary.com?

One of the key differentiators to Google’s search engine compared to others is its simple look and feel, and it looks like they’ve made the front page even cleaner.

Considering the vested interest that Google has on the internet being better and as fast as possible they have launched their own DNS service, is there no stopping to the number of web-based services Google will offer the world?

Google’s Year In Review (Year End Zeigest) went list live, and the top rising searches of 2009 included Michael Jackson, Facebook, tuenti, Twitter, sanalika, new moon, lady gaga, windows 7, dantri.com.vn and torpedo gratis.

Microsoft

After months of success at increasing their market share Microsoft’s Bing had a slight slip as internal testing resulted in the search engine going down for 30 minutes on December 3rd.

Microsoft also released their top search words for 2009, included in the list were Michael Jackson, Twitter, Swine Flu, Stock Marketing, Farah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze, Cash for Clunckers, Jon and Kate Gosselin, Billy Mays and Jaycee Dugard.

Yahoo

Yahoo announced they are integrating Facebook Connect on their sites; it makes sense with 350+ million people around the world using Facebook why not make it as easy as possible for them to use and share information on Yahoo properties.

Yahoo Year In Review was released last week, lots of surprises. Top searches included “Michael Jackson, Twilight, WWE, Megan Fox, Britney Spears, Naruto, American Idol, Kim Kardashian, Nascar and Runescape.