So, it seems that BING is making an impression in the US – comScore reporting as much as a 3% increase in the two weeks since its launch. It will be interesting to see if this growth is sustained, or rather whether the £100million investment rolls on and on to fuel the hype of the new ‘Decision Engine’. CEO Steve Balmer suggested that MS are prepared to offer up 5-10% of its operating incoming in search over the next 5 years (possibly a staggering £11billion!)

I thought I’d make use of some quiet time in the office today so I finally got to watching a series of videos that Matt Cutts posted on Google's YouTube webmaster channel in Feb 09.

So we hear last week of Google’s rumoured approach to buy Twitter. People in the office of none Search Engine Marketing breed have asked how they can justify such high expenditure for what is ostensibly a non-commercial social media product.

Yet, for some funny reason, and against my better judgments, I just can’t resist checking my rankings reports every week (i would do it every day if i could) yes i know that rankings fluctuate daily, yes i know that rankings are a mere conduit for traffic, but despite all this, i just cannot help it! It’s an ego thing isn’t it?

Not even a week ago i posted that I expected much more innovation from Google into 2009...it's not even the end of January and already there has been something to wet our appetite! Coming to a internet connect near you is the Google Drive (Gdrive)- and this could be the most anticipated release of a Google product thus far.

Why’s this important for search? Well the software that these phones run make Google more accessible than ever. The Android is obviously playing for the home team, Google’s iPhone apps are some of the best available and friends tell me that Google’s app for the Storm is also good. So that leaves us with an interesting scenario - seamlessly using the world’s biggest search engine on the world’s fastest growing internet medium...interesting indeed.

Google took a slight dent in their pride in 2008, tales of misuse of data, sliding share prices and a failed partnership with its adversary Yahoo had its infamous PR machine spinning faster than a hamster’s wheel.