Paul Allen-backed semantic web startup Evri is buying Twine.com parent Radar Networks—which lets its users create pages (“twines”) on specific topics, like a type of food or art, and then connect with others who share that interest. Allen’s Vulcan Capital is the lead investor in both firms, which have been…

News Corp.. (NYSE: NWS) Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch celebrates his 79th birthday with a cameo on his own Fox Business Network. Among the topics ... the newspaper ad model not dead yet (if we were Gawker we’d have to follow that with “neither am I”); iPad will attract more…

At the powerhouse Abu Dhabi Media Summit here at Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, two of the biggest third-party search deals are being negotiated behind the scenes, we have learned. It just so happens that all the players involved were here for the last day or so: Google (NSDQ: GOOG)…

This is the TV ad Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) hopes will give its search engine a fighting chance against Google. Made by WPP’s JWT, the “Bing and Decide” campaign will run for three months on UK commercial TV and web.

Like many other developers, uLocate works closely with ad networks to monetize WHERE, its free mobile app that is available on a number of carrier networks and Android, iPhone and Palm (NSDQ: PALM). But WHERE often struggled to keep its fill rates high, and when campaigns ran out, it had…

Nine months since relaunching its search engine, Bing’s market share continues to inch up. It’s now at 11.5 percent, up from 8 percent prior to its remake, according to the latest comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) figures (via Business Insider). We’ve made a point of checking in each quarter, rather than monthly,…

T-Mobile USA executives explained that it abruptly ended its year-old exclusive search deal with Yahoo, and replaced it with Google (NSDQ: GOOG), because it is what their subscribers wanted. “It was customer led; the Google brand is associated with Internet and search,” Ian McKerlich, T-Mobile’s director of mobile web and…

Here’s why Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is advertising Bing on UK TV: it’s barely making the tiniest dent in Google’s search leadership. Though Google (NSDQ: GOOG) piled on eight tenths of the 617 million additional searches Brits made since Bing launched in June, Bing took just four percent of them, according…

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) may have lost its exclusive search deal with T-Mobile USA, but it is banking on a major reorganization to help recharge the company’s mobile efforts. The changes, which involves breaking up the mobile group and redeploying those employees across the company’s individual product groups, is the result…

T-Mobile USA has ended its year-old exclusive search deal with Yahoo, and has replaced the company with its chief rival—Google (NSDQ: GOOG). The deal shifts the U.S. mobile search dominance away from Yahoo and in favor of Google, which now works with two of the top four carriers. The hand-off…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has unveiled a new way to search on Android-powered phones: Gestures. According to a post on the Google Mobile Blog, the experimental application is available on Android-powered devices running Android 2.0 or higher in the U.S. Essentially it works like this: Start a search by drawing a…

Mitch Lazar, Yahoo’s European Mobile managing director, is stepping down from his post after working at the company for four and a half years. Lazar marks one of many recent departures from Yahoo’s mobile group. Over the past year-or-so, departures range from all the way at the top, like Marco…

AT&T (NYSE: T) is gearing up to launch the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Backflip, its first Android device, on Sunday, and with it comes a little surprise: The Google-powered phone has been stripped of its flagship search engine, and instead comes loaded with Yahoo. The removal of Google’s search by AT&T…

Semantic search firm NetBase has raised $9 million in a third round of funding. The company says its technology “reads sentences to surface insights from billions of sources in public and private online information.” Customers include five of the top ten consumer packaged goods companies in the U.S., who use…

Social search startup PeerPong has raised $2.8 million in a funding round from Doll Capital Management, First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures and Partech International, the company tells us. PeerPong says it’s “building a new approach for getting answers from people who know them, building the most comprehensive community and…

Two main (and related) reasons, according to a statement the Justice Department put out this afternoon: 1) The search deal is “not likely to substantially lessen competition in the United States.” Specifically, the Justice Department says that both Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) have been more focused on…

The long and rough road is still a long way to go, but they’ve at least started on it: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Yahoo have received clearance for their search agreement, “without restrictions,” from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now focus on starting…

Clicker, which promises to be a TV guide of sorts for video content online, has raised $11 million in a funding round. The round was led by JAFCO Ventures; existing backers Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures also participated. Clicker—which is headed by former Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone—says it has indexed…

Is Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) turning to “research” in its pitch to paywall-happy news publishers? MSN UK content manager Alastair Bruce has published a 60-slide personal presentation on the topic (via J.co.uk) that nicely surveys 30 paid content sites - and then concludes: our search engine will protect your upcoming charging…