Google has introduced a new feature to Google News that allows users to customize the layout and content of the news page.

A link appears in the top right corner of the news page prompting viewers to “Edit this customized page”. The link leads to a drop down that gives users the opportunity to shuffle the placement of story topics and generate on-page items based on keywords entered. After saving a user’s customized preferences, the News site is re-arranged in the configuration that works best for the user’s self-set interests.

This is a cool addition to Google news making it much easier to track and follow news articles on specific topics and faster to find the ones you’re most interested in.

Google on the March – And the beats go on…

Google is generating a lot of bad-vibes these days, having crossed the perceptual line between good and evil on a number of fronts. In less time than it took for their options to mature, Google’s new attitude has started turning formerly loyal users into critics and once slavish investment analysts into detractors. Google, which until very recently was the darlink of the search world is quickly losing its cool among the key groups it needs to support it. Read more…

The fine folks over at Search Guild have posted a snippet of javascript code that breaks the Autolink feature in Google’s new toolbar, preventing it from making on-page alterations. The links that would have appeared on the page are still available if the user chooses the drop-down on the toolbar however links will not appear on your page.

Full instructions included, some html assembly required.

To thwart Autolink with a smile on your face, please click here:
Google Autolink Killer

Several forums are tackling the Autolinks feature in Google’s new Toolbar v3(Beta). It’s getting ugly friends.

Accusations of spyware, adware and malware are springing up beside the obvious comparisons with Microsoft’s previous abuses of their powerful position.

Over at Jill Whalen’s HighRankings Forums, the discussion turns towards class action lawsuits.

Meanwhile, over at CNet, reporter Stephanie Olsen speculated on Google’s hiring of former MS product manager (and the original author of the failed MS Smart Tag auto-link software) and the fact that Microsoft continues to hold the patent on auto-linking.

Even in the quiet retirement community of Palm Springs the local daily, The Desert Sun raises questions about Google Maps (a main feature of Google autolink) and a person’s right to privacy. After writing such an angry article, one wonders what will happen if the author Cindy Uken starts to dig a little deeper.

Google is flirting with the event horizon of a massive PR nightmare.

Google shares jumped over $10 yesterday to close at 192.99, increasing in value nearly 3% over the day. Prices were expected to drop slightly as the six-month lock down on 177-million held by Google employees and early investors expired at midnight last night.

Trading was almost four times the average volume with 38,563,336 shares in play. Heaviest volumes were seen in the early hours with small spikes happening throughout the day. At the time of this writing, shares are trading on off-hour markets in large blocks at 193.32.

The 177-million that became available on Monday nearly doubled the amount that have become available in the six months since Google’s August IPO. Hungry investors were prepared to snatch up shares as quickly as they became available, hence the 3% increase in asking price.

For many NASDAQ watchers, Monday was seen as a sort of a Groundhog Day offering a favorable forecast on the search-sector. Investor confidence in Google remains quite high and that confidence helped the tech-board weather an otherwise lackluster day.

At the time of this writing, Google is up again, trading at 195.93.

Search engine watch has printed December 2004 stats from comScore Media Metrix detailing the market share of the major search engines going into the new year.

Google continues to dominate, generating 48% of all search results either directly or by providing results to smaller search firms such as the Excite Network. Yahoo follows a distant second with 32%. The pre-proprietary MSN came in third with 16% with Ask following fourth at 2%. Read more…

Just when we’re getting used to the idea that money is about to flow like it did at the end of the 90′s, dark clouds and volatility is visible on the horizon. Optimism springing from Google’s fourth quarter financial report should be tempered with memories of the industry wide alcohol poisoning suffered in the days after the last time we partied like 1999. Read more…

Google shares hit a record $210 in evening trading after the search giant released a quarterly report that beat most analysts’ expectations. Google considers itself the world’s largest generator of online advertising revenue, a claim founded on its triple digit growth from Q3 to Q4. Read more…

G-Hawg update. No shadow seen = early spring vacations for investors.

In an intense one-hour webcast and phone conference, Google released their Q4 numbers. Revenues were up 101% to $1.032 billion in the last quarter of the year. Income from operations was pegged at $303 million, a staggering 30% growth. That’s on top of two previous quarters that each showed 15% increases in income.

Watch for an initial review of the Q4 announcement in a few hours and a much longer analysis in tomorrow’s StepForth newsletter.

When Yahoo dropped Google results in favor of its own Inktomi generated listings, the search world expected Yahoo to gain some ground in market share. While this did in fact happen, the increase was relatively insignificant, and Google remained on top. Now that MSN has released its own search technology and no longer relies on Inktomi based results, will they see a significant increase in users?

My personal opinion is no. Sure their market share may increase, but I doubt, in the short term anyways, that they will make any significant increases to overtake Google. I’ll use myself as an example. I personally look at search results across the big three on a daily basis across a wide range of industries. In my opinion (and I am sure many SEO’s and webmasters will back me up on this) MSN now provides better, more accurate and relevant search results. That being said, I still use Google for my personal searching.

Whether I am at home, or in the office, Google is my search engine of choice. My wife uses Google, most of my friends and family use Google, and lets face it, the majority of searchers worldwide use Google. So why, if MSN is providing better results, do I still revert back to Google, knowing that I will most likely have to filter through a bunch of rubbish.

I think this is due to a number of factors. For years now I’ve been using Google, dating back to before I entered this industry, at a time when Google was providing relevant results. So a big part of this is habit. My fingers automatically type Google.com whether I like it or not. My default home page is set to Google. The only toolbar I have installed is the Google toolbar. This began for the checking of Page Rank, but now I use it almost exclusively for its search field.

Even though I know MSN provides better results (in most cases) I still use Google. This makes me think that the general public, many of which are unaware that MSN has changed, will also stick with Google. Behavior patterns are hard to break – although a month late, perhaps I will make it my new years resolution to stop using Google.

Part of the draw to use Google is the cleanliness of the site. Even though MSN has released, along with its new results, a new look and feel, it may still seem too cluttered, and many times slow loading, for users looking to simply perform a basic search.

The general searching public likely doesn’t realize that results from one engine are more relevant than that from another, or that the results generated in MSN were once duplicates of what you would find in Yahoo. Many tend to stick with what they know – they’ve always used Google, and as they haven’t “shopped around” so to speak, don’t realize that the other engines may have more to offer. Old habits are hard to break – and until such a time as a “quit Google patch” is invented, many may be there to stay.