Bing makes ground on Google

GOOGLE released search engine refinements recently as Microsoft begins to lure people to Bing and Twitter heightens appetites for real-time updates and news.

Google modifications include tools that let people limit online searches to only serve up results from the past hour, or by specific date ranges.

Patrick Riley, Google engineer said, "this can be particularly helpful when you're looking for the freshest information. If you have an idea of when the information you're looking for may have been published to the web."

Bing's making ground

The Bing search engine Microsoft launched in May was designed to intuitively understand what people are seeking online and challenge Google.

The US software colossus described Bing as a "Decision Engine" aimed at online shoppers trying to make buying decisions, plan trips, research health matters, or find local businesses.

Bing posted a slight increase in its share of the US search market in August, the third month in a row of gains, according to online tracking firm comScore.

Bing increased its market share to 9.3 per cent in August from 8.9 per cent in July and 8.4 per cent in June, comScore said.

Google remained the overwhelming leader of the lucrative US search and advertising market in August with a 64.6 per cent market share, a dip of 0.1 per cent from July. Yahoo!'s share was unchanged at 19.3 per cent in August.

Apple giveaway for 1 billion apps downloaded

Apple is approaching the 1 billion mark for applications downloaded from the iTunes App Store. The Billionth customer will recieve a swag of Apple gear.

Update: The number of downloads is about to hit 980 million.



Apple put up a countdown on their WEB site on Friday. As you can see there has been over 933 million applications have been downloaded from the App Store since it went live last July. Whoever manages to download the 1 billionth application will come away with a pretty good collection: a MacBook Pro, a 32GB iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a $10,000 iTunes gift certificate.

More than 32,000 applications have been added to the Apple App Store. Along with the promotion, Apple released some stats on the top downloads in both the paid and free categories: Facebook has been downloaded the most times among the free applications, while Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D has received the most downloads among paid applications.

A link to the count down page can be seen here.