Down Time

Yes you have listened it correct. Now China is going to launch its own Search Engine to compete with Google in search engine market. China Mobile, the world's largest mobile phone company, has signed a framework agreement with the nation's official Xinhua news agency to set up a search engine. After Google closed its search engine in China this is somehow expecting by many experts.

The deal comes as US Internet giant Google surrenders share of the world's biggest online market to its Chinese rival Baidu, following a battle with Beijing over censorship and cyber attacks that Google says originated in China.

Xinhua announced the deal in a brief statement and a spokeswoman for Hong Kong-listed China Mobile confirmed its parent company had signed the agreement.

Shares in China Mobile, which had 554 million subscribers at the end of June, ended up 2.5 percent at 84.15 Hong Kong dollars (10.8 dollars) on the news, reversing earlier losses.

Google's share of the world's biggest online market fell to 24.2 percent in the three months to June, from 30.9 percent in the first quarter, research firm Analysis International said last month.

At the same time, Baidu increased its dominance with its market share rising to 70 percent in the second quarter from 64 percent in the first three months of the year.

China's search market was worth 2.67 billion Yuan (394 million dollars) in the second quarter, up 48 percent year on year.

The number of web users in China now stands at around 420 million, according to official figures released last month.

In March, Google said it would no longer bow to government censors and effectively shut down its Chinese search engine, automatically re-routing mainland users to its uncensored site in Hong Kong.

Add our RSS Feed to know more about it

The United States is now the top source of spam, accounting for almost 19 percent of all junk e-mail sent throughout the world, according to a new report out today from Sophos.

The security firm's "Dirty Dozen" report highlighted the top 12 countries responsible for the world's supply of spam during the third quarter. With the United States generating almost 2.5 times more spam than second-place India, the country now accounts for almost one in five junk messages. The United States' 18.6 percent share of all global spam also showed a significant jump from its 15.2 percent share in the second quarter.

Click To Enlarge Image!

Among the other top sources of spam, according to Sophos, are India with 7.6 percent of all global junk mail, Brazil with 5.7 percent, France with 5.4 percent, and the U.K. with 5 percent.

The report also highlighted the growth in spam from social-networking sites over the third quarter. Last month, Twitter users were hit by a "MouseOver" exploit that redirected them to third-party spam sites if they simply hovered over a link in a tweet. And over the summer, Facebook users faced their own scams, ones that attempted to trick them into filling out bogus surveys, with the information then used to spam their friends.

Much of the spam now being generated around the world isn't coming from the spammers themselves but from botnets, networks of infected computers directed to send junk mail to other unsuspecting users.

"You should never even be tempted to open a spam message out of curiosity, as it can only take a second to effectively hand over control of your computer to the spammers," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, explained in a statement. "If your computer does become part of a botnet, you're also inviting further malware infections, which may compromise your personal or banking information."

A spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott confirmed the investigation, but declined further comment.

The review appears to be focused on whether Google is manipulating its search results to stifle competition.

The pecking order of those results can make or break websites because Google's search engine processes about two-thirds of the search requests in the U.S. and handles even more volume in some parts of the world.

That dominance means a website ranking high on the first page of Google's results will likely attract more traffic and generate more revenue, either from ads or merchandise sales.

On the flip side, being buried in the back pages of the results, or even at the bottom of the first page, can be financially devastating and, in extreme cases, has been blamed for ruining some Internet companies.

European regulators already have been investigating complaints alleging that Google has been favoring its own services in its results instead of rival websites.

Several lawsuits filed in the U.S. also have alleged Google's search formula is biased. Google believes Abbott is the first state attorney general to open an antitrust review into the issue.

"We look forward to answering (Abbott's) questions because we're confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users," Don Harrison, Google's deputy general counsel, wrote in a Friday blog post.

Harrison said that Abbott has asked Google for information about several companies, including: Foundem, an online shopping comparison site in Britain; SourceTool, which runs an e-commerce site catering to businesses; and MyTriggers, another shopping comparison site.

All of those companies offer features that Google includes in its search engine or in other parts of its website. Foundem, SourceTool and MyTriggers have previously filed lawsuits or regulatory complaints against Google.

"Given that not every website can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it's unsurprising that some less relevant, lower quality websites will be unhappy with their ranking," Harrison wrote.

Google says its closely guarded search formula strives to recommend websites that are most likely to satisfy the needs of each user's request. If it didn't keep its users happy, Google argues that people would become disgruntled and switch to other search engines offered by Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ask.com.