Nowadays, even Google is questioning Google's rose-colored portrait of its ever-expanding search advertising monopoly. The way senior vp Jonathan Rosenberg tells it, Google will gradually tweak its AdWords ad platform until it displays almost no ads. Ad "coverage" on the world's largest search engine has certainly shrunk over the past several months, and when the subject was mooted during July's q

Off-demand computing - First Amazon, now FlexiScale Another large cloud is on the fritz. Following last month's much-discussed Amazon S3 outage, most (if not all) of XCalibre's FlexiScale cloud went dark on Tuesday, and nearly two days later, the UK-based hosting outfit has yet to restore service. According to XCalibre CEO Tony Lucas, the outage has affected "a vast majority" of businesses relying

It looks like Google is prepping another underwater comms cable. In February, the search giant finally admitted it was partnering with five Far Eastern outfits to stretch a cable from the US to Japan. And now, says a comms-happy research outfit dubbed TeleGeography, Eric Schmidt and crew are planning a second cable system that would connect Japan to Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, and

Microsoft researchers claim to have proved the pop-social-psychology shibboleth that we are no more that six degrees of separation removed from any other human being on the planet. The six degrees of separation theory first espoused by Stanley Milgram has given students and newspaper columnists something to talk about since the late 1960s. Researchers at Redmond apparently took it upon themselves

Google's strict code of secrecy calls for extra silence when the subject is AdWords, the epic money-making machine fueling the company's drive towards world domination. But sometimes, the truth slips out. Earlier this month, during Google's all-important quarterly earnings call, a financial analyst outed the company's plans to squeeze who knows how many extra dollars from the world's online advert

Facebook's decision to release under open source a large-scale data management project similar to - and inspired by - Google's BigTable has received backing from an unusual quarter: Microsoft. Data center futures architect and distinguished database developer James Hamilton, has complemented the pimply faced social network for releasing what he said "looks like a well-engineered system." Hamilton

Structure 08 Amazon CTO Werner Vogels believes that cloud computing will be commonplace within two years. Before delivering his Wednesday morning keynote at Structure 08 here in San Francisco, Vogels looked ahead to a future incarnation of this cloud-obsessed mini-conference. "At Structure 10, the whole discussion will be different," he said. "All the things that now seem new will be established."

Say what you will about Bill Gates. The man is consistent. Gates' farewell speech at this week's TechEd conference closed out his full-time role at Microsoft with the usual thud. The man has a gift for stating the obvious and detailing what's to come when it's already here. This time around, Gates went after The Cloud. And how could he resist? Nothing receives as much hype as the SaaSy world of to

In the early nineties, when David Vaskevitch decided that Microsoft should tackle the enterprise database business, the first thing he did was pick up the phone. He dialed the sharpest software minds he knew, and he asked each one who he should talk to about all things DB. They all gave the same answer: Jim Gray. And each described him in exactly the same way: Jim Gray, they said, is smarter than

Google I/O Google has offered a spot on its cloud to every developer down on earth. And it can almost tell you how much it plans to charge for this sky-high real estate. Early last month, Google unveiled App Engine, a service that lets outside developers build and run web apps on the company's very own distributed infrastructure, and this morning, it opened the platform to world+dog. Previously, A

After threatening to limit print-on-demand sales to books printed by its very own print-on-demand printer, Amazon is facing an anti-trust lawsuit. Earlier this year, as we reported here at The Reg, the world's largest e-tailer told many print-on-demand publishers it would destroy their Amazon "Buy" buttons if they didn't start using BookSurge, the POD printer it purchased back in 2005. Amazon says

Google has added image ads to its Image Search engine. Earlier this month, in a radio interview with Bloomberg, Google indicated that image-happy ads were on the way, and they officially arrived this morning, during a press event at the company’s headquarters. "What we’re announcing today is a new suite of image-related experiments [in which we're] pairing display ads with image search," said R.J.

Google wants to make darn sure that when Verizon opens up its wireless network, it actually opens up its wireless network. In a new petition (PDF) to the US Federal Communications Commission, the world's largest search engine questions whether Verizon is planning to sidestep the commission's new open access rules, urging Kevin Martin and crew to put an extra clamp on the mega telco. Thanks to some

Microsoft today abandoned its attempt to buy Yahoo!, after a short weekend of negotiations in which it raised its $44.6bn offer by $5bn. Microsoft thinks the deal still makes sense, if not at the price - another $5bn - that the Yahoo! board wants. But it won't go hostile - as Yahoo! would engage in scorched earth tactics, it says. So what next? Yahoo!'s share price will go down, probably a lot. Mi

Interop 2008 We've seen more than enough folks all atwitter and wetting their shorts over cloud computing at Interop 2008 Las Vegas. So it was a bit of a surprise to catch a panel at the show with Google and Amazon reps discussing what keeps businesses from embracing the technology. The four-man panel, moderated by BitCurrent analyst Alistair Croll, took a much more grounded approach to the subjec

Nearly a decade ago, Google unveiled an algorithm called PageRank, reinventing the way we search for web pages. Now, the company says, it has a technology that can do much the same for online image search. Last week, at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing, two Google-affiliated researchers presented a paper called "PageRank for Product Image Search," trumpeting a fledging algori

Apple gets into mine-sweeping, missiles and storage Apple CEO Steve Jobs may need to order up a camouflage version of that infamous mock turtleneck. His company bought chip start-up PA Semi this week - a move which results in Apple inheriting a business that stretches from storage systems to missiles. PA Semi's version of the PowerPC processor became popular for such an eclectic array of kit thank

Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer yesterday dropped the biggest hint yet that Redmond could turn its back on rival Yahoo! if its hostile bid to buy the internet search engine is rejected. The Wall Street Journal reports that Ballmer, speaking after a conference in Milan, said: “We know what Yahoo! is worth to us. We offered a lot of money: $44 billion. If their board thinks that’s fair, great. If not,

Microsoft has officially unveiled a preview of Live Mesh, the web services platform seen as a key plank of the company's aggressive software plus services strategy. Chief software architect Ray Ozzie, who has been evangelising the project for some time, lifted the skirt on Microsoft’s Live Mesh last night. The service will initially provide file sharing and folder synchronisation for Windows XP an