Mixed Publicity For Bing & Google
Google Users Can Map Their Worlds
An increasing number of people have come to rely upon Google maps in recent years. They print directions to local attractions and use the street view feature to ascertain the availability of parking spaces. Now users who live in the UK are being given the opportunity to make amendments to the mapped Google world. They can add local features and businesses, which may be of great interest to the online community.
The Google map making feature has been available in countries such as America, Pakistan and North Korea for some time now. The locations of nuclear testing facilities and numerous historic landmarks have already been added. Business people have also registered their interest in the use of Google maps as an advertising tool.
One technology expert said ‘ This currently remains pure speculation, but with Google constantly looking to evolve, targeted advertising through Google Maps could be the next big change for this popular product.’
Microsoft Have Claimed That App Buyers Are Being ‘Scroogled’
Bing have managed to generate a fair amount of publicity by launching campaigns against Google in previous months. Now they are attempting to reinforce the point that Google is an uncaring and immoral company by highlighting the lack of privacy which Google app store users have. Apparently Google shares the details of the app purchasers, with third-party developers throughout the world.
Microsoft have even created an online advertisement, which reveals that people’s full names, email addresses and locations are being shared with the app creators. It poses the question, ‘in the wrong hands, who knows what they’ll do with your info?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly the videos conclude with direct promotions for the Windows app store.
Google A Safer Search Engine Than Bing
A study conducted by Wieder sind a German market research company has revealed that sites containing malware are more prevalent on Bing than Google. The researchers conducted 10 million Google searches and found that the leading search engine had a malware ratio of 0.0025%. The figure for Bing was 0.0012%. There is apparently a far higher chance of finding potentially harmful sites among the listings on Yandex and Blekko.
A spokesperson for the market research company said that malware is promoted by ‘creating a multitude of small websites and blogs before selecting the most frequently used search terms from top news stories and using backlinks to optimise these terms for search engines.’ Web surfers are often caught by surprise after clicking on sites that they thought to be safe.
