A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Pandia looks into the future, predicting what search might look like in 2015, a new Wikipedia search engine is launched called WikiSeek, Google and Yahoo! gain market share while Microsoft loses ground, phishing scammer could get 101 years in prison, Nick Wilson gives us his 2007 linkbaiting guide, MySpace hit with online predator suits, and finally a funny video that proves that cars are not good at ice skating.

Monday

• Pandia Looks at Search in 2015 - Pandia is celebrating its 8th birthday and instead of rehashing the news from the last 8 years, they give us a glimpse as to what the search infrastructure might look like 8 years from now. What does their crystal ball reveal? Google is still going strong and has their hands into more things than ever;  Microsoft buys Yahoo! in 2008; teenagers abandon the Web all together, having moved over to virtual realities like 3DLife and Otherland; YouTube evolve into a site for news-clips, 2010’s comedies and live family snap shots; and all the major media corporations including NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox have gone bankrupt mainly because the TV set and the radio receiver has been replaced by Internet computers. That's just a small sampling of what is predicted. Check out entire article at Pandia. t is quite an interesting read.

• WikiSeek, A New Wikipedia Search Engine - TechCrunch reports the launch of a new Wikipedia search engine called WikiSeek, a search engine that indexes Wikipedia sites as well as sites that are linked to from Wikipedia. This new offering has two purposes. First, it offers a much better search engine than the one that currently exists on Wikipedia. Second, the fact that it also indexes sites that are linked to from Wikipedia means that, presumably, it will return only very high quality results and very little spam. Additionally, Wikiseek utilizes Searchme's category refinement technology, providing suggested search refinements based on user tagging and categorization within Wikipedia, which they claim makes results more relevant than conventional search engines.
  
  
• Google and Yahoo! Gain Market Share While Microsoft Loses - The latest comScore figures are in which show Google capturing the largest market share ever recorded - 47.3%. Yahoo comes in second at 28.5% followed by Microsoft at 10.5%, Ask at 5.4%, and AOL/Time Warner at 4.9%. An interesting revelation is that despite the launch of Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's Live continues to show a drop in usage. Danny Sullivan provides some in-depth analysis of these latest figures, comparing other rating services as well as a look at stats over several months.
  

• Man Convicted in AOL Phishing Scheme - CNet News reports that a California man convicted in an AOL phishing scheme faces up to 101 years in prison. Jeffrey Brett Goodin, who was arrested last year, was found guilty of operating a sophisticated phishing scheme in which he would send e-mails posing as AOL's billing department to trick people into giving up their credit card information. The messages would urge recipients to update their AOL billing information or lose service and referred them to fraudulent web pages created to collect credit card information. Goodin is scheduled to be sentenced on June 11. personally I hope he gets the maximum sentence which would send a strong message to others looking to scam innocent people in this manner.

• Nick Wilson's 2007 Guide To Linkbaiting - A recent post at Search Engine Land by Nick Wilson on the subject of "linkbait" is a most excellent read. Nick points out that the linkbait landscape of 2007 is different than two years ago when it was first mentioned, and as such requires some rethinking and reassessment of strategies if it is to be effective. He talks about textual linkbait, site-based tools and software as linkbait and the holy grail of linkbait - widgets. A must read if you are serious about acquiring quality links to your site in the most productive way.

• MySpace Hit With Online Predator Suits - Four separate families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site. "In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users," said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer. Apparently the families are seeking monetary damages in the millions of dollars. One can only wonder wonder how long it will take before other social networking sites are next on the list. Discussion over at Threadwatch.
  
  
• Cars Were Not Meant For Ice Skating - All I can say is that I'm glad I live in Arizona.