TipAdept Dot Com

The search-engine wars are alive and well -- and Bing is the beneficiary again. Microsoft's so-called decision engine grabbed 11.5 percent of the U.S. search market in February, according to comScore.

Although that's only a slight increase over January, when Bing boasted 11.3 percent of the search market, it's an incremental improvement Microsoft is glad to see for its less-than-a-year-old engine.

But it's not all good news for Microsoft, if it cares anything about its newly approved partner's standings. Yahoo's bleeding led to Bing's gains. Yahoo's U.S. search market share dipped from 17 percent in January to 16.8 percent in February, comScore reported.

Bad for Bing?

Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, parsed the data. He noted that Bing continues to grow its user base, although it seems to have slowed a bit. Meanwhile, Google is unaffected.

"Those feeling the competitive pinch of Bing appear to be Microsoft partner Yahoo and the two smaller major search providers, Ask and AOL. The irony of Bing's success, partly at Yahoo's expense, is that Microsoft hasn't seen any growth in the combined share of Bing and Yahoo, which has remained largely flat," Sterling said. "The Yahoo search slide has now been going on roughly a year, and it has to be a matter of concern to the company. However, it's not immediately clear what they can do to arrest it."

Jeffries & Co. analyst Youssef Squali also noted the shifting fortunes between Bing and Yahoo. In a research note dated March 10, Squali noted how Bing has added 350 basis points of growth since its June 2009 launch. Meanwhile, Yahoo has shed about 330 basis points since May 2009.

"While the share losses have been exacerbated by the ongoing rollover of tool-bar partnerships (with HP and Adobe), we continue to believe that it is critical for Yahoo to...

Apple tightly controls not only the approval of third-party applications for its App Store but also its developers. Apple's developer agreement says "Public statements regarding this agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties" require Apple's written approval.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation made the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement public. EFF obtained the agreement via a Freedom of Information Act request to NASA, which recently released an app for the iPhone.

As Apple readies its iPad for release -- at the same time a rash of competing tablets are expected -- the question of how much control Apple should have over developers is "particularly relevant," EFF Senior Counsel Fred von Lohmann said. He detailed several "troubling highlights."

Restrictions, Restrictions

Developers are banned from speaking about the terms of the agreement, even though the terms aren't defined as trade secrets. Apple imposes a gag order on developers apart from any trade-secret issues.

By using Apple's software development kit, developers agree to distribute their creations only through Apple's App Store. Apple can reject an application for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements set up by Apple.

Thus developers can sink hundreds of hours of development time into an app, have it rejected by Apple, and have no choice but to toss that work out. "So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you're prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like?Cydia?or?Rock Your Phone," von Lohmann said.

The EFF also complained that Apple bans reverse engineering -- "including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law." Apple even outlaws "enabl(ing) others" to reverse-engineer the SDK or iPhone OS.

The SDK also appears to include a complete ban on tinkering with any Apple products -- not just jailbreaking...

MySpace is attempting to bring back old users and attract new ones with a complete revamp of the social network. The plans to change come after the social network has lost market share against its rivals.

Once considered the household name for social-networking web sites, MySpace lost its top position in the market once Facebook began to attract new users at high rate.

Expected changes include a cleanup of the cluttered layout and faster page loads. The bigger changes include a focus on music. These features will be made available in the next few months, according to MySpace, with users able to share music playlists with other users.

MySpace executives have been talking about the changes in recent weeks. The revamp is because MySpace "really wanted to show the crowd how MySpace is thinking different about the advertiser experience," said MySpace's Nada Stirratt, chief revenue officer, in a post.

Focusing on Youth

This lets MySpace hone in on a core user base of music-oriented fans and young people seeking self-expression, according to Ray Valdes, a Gartner analyst.

MySpace's focus on a younger audiences makes sense since adults favor Facebook, according to recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A total of 73 percent of all adults 18 and older who use social-networking sites have a Facebook account. Seventy-one percent of those adults are between the ages of 18-29.

"These changes are welcome and necessary, but by themselves cannot reverse powerful market trends," Valdes said.

But many observers question if these changes will be enough to attract new users. In January, MySpace had 119 million unique visitors, a 7.4 percent decrease from the same month in 2009, according to ComScore, a provider of online traffic reports. MySpace executives, however, expect that number to grow to 200 million or 300 million. While the number...