Microsoft Wants Your Search

   Microsoft realizes that the majority of web searching is done using Google but they’d like to see that change. The company’s Bing search engine is widely used and it’s also the driving force behind Yahoo’s search engine; however, Google still retains a larger share of overall search activities. Since the number of searches conducted on any given search engine directly affects the advertising dollars generated therein, Microsoft has decided to put their money where their mouth is: Challenge people to take a close look at Bing and Google side-by-side and judge for themselves which is best. They believe that Bing has improved greatly over the last few years and think it’s possible to get people to change their search habits if they see that improvement.

Grum Botnet Shut Down

   There has been some very good advancement in the world of fighting cyber criminals and spam with the recently reported destruction of the Grum botnet. This was accomplished by a firm called Fire Eye, which has been fighting malware and spam for quite some time. This particular botnet had been responsible for millions of spam e-mail attacks over the last four years and According to Fire Eye, Grum has been eliminated. This is a time for celebration because any regular person that uses a computer and has received spam far too often should see some level of reduction in net spam because of the success of Fire Eye.

Yahoo Must Choose an Ad Partner

   It does appear that Yahoo has a very distinct decision to make in the very near future: continue with Microsoft, or engage in business with Google. It is all about revenue of course and that's where Yahoo has reportedly seen fairly consistent reductions with regards to its current relationship with Microsoft. This is all about ads and a lot of people nowadays do recognize Google as perhaps the leader in online advertisement. Yahoo used to be partnered with Google if they choose to do so again it may end up producing more revenue than what they've seen in being partnered with Microsoft. This is perhaps not as cut and dry as some people might think; it is not a simple thing but rather a complex business arrangement.

Microsoft will give Windows 8 users 'Do Not Track' options for IE10

   When Microsoft releases Windows 8 on October 26 of this year it will include Internet Explorer 10. Although not enough people are concerned about it (studies indicate that many people don't necessarily take the time to change many settings on the computer), the do not track (DNT) option in IE 10 will be something that people will be presented with when the first start the new Windows 8 operating system. DNT is a system built into the browser which signals online advertisers literally not to track the user when browsing the Internet. According to Microsoft, the default settings will enable DNT but users will be presented with the option to change settings regarding DNT during initial setup. It is worthy of note that some people would even prefer not to use DNT simply because whatever ads they see will be tuned to their activities. It is also worthy of note that if DNT is turned on, using a program such as Advanced System Care or MalwareBytes can clean up the results of being tracked whenever a user wishes.