Search engine and portal operator Lycos has been sold to Indian digital marketing firm Ybrant Digital by South Korea’s Daum Communications for $36 million. That’s significantly less than the $95 million Daum paid for Lycos in 2004. The agreement calls for Ybrant to purchase all of Daum’s stock in Lycos…

Arnon Mishkin is a consultant focused on media and internet companies. The easiest way to clear a room of internet-savvy media executives is to suggest that maybe they should close their sites to crawling and prevent Google (NSDQ: GOOG) from carrying excerpts of their content. “Look, our ability to sell…

The Mirror’s associate editor urged the news business to rely less on search engines and more on its journalism, in a World Newspaper Congress World Editors Forum keynote in Hyderabad, India. Matt Kelly, who first began his public crusade this summer on paidContent:UK, said: “In our great frantic headlong rush…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) India today launched a voice search application for mobile phones that run on the Nokia S60 platform. Most Nokia (NYSE: NOK) phones in the N and E series, apart from some models by Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC), use the S60 platform, which is designed for…

It’s been a busy 24 hours in the life of the Yahoo-Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Search Deal. Our coverage: Deal Talk With Yahoo’s Schneider, Microsoft’s Mehdi: ‘Adding Display Is Boiling The Ocean’ Why Microsoft Appears To Have Gotten The Better End Of The Search Deal If Microsoft Wants Yahoo’s Mobile Search,…

Updated: The 18-month Microsoft-Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) saga finally enters a productive phase (regulators willing) with a 10-year global search and advertising sales pact between the two companies. The deal, much of which has already been reported, was announced formally before U.S. markets opened. Yahoo estimates that the deal will improve…

Malaysia based media conglomerate Astro Group has acquired a 50 percent stake in online firm Mogae Digital for $5 million. Mogae Digital is promoted by Sandeep Goyal and Tanya Goyal, the Indian JV partners of Japanese giant Dentsu, the single largest ad agency in the world. The proceeds of the…

Indiatimes has launched a local search service in partnership with OnYoMo reports Pluggdin. The service can be accessed via Indiatimes’s wap portal as well as via SMS (ASK to 58888). I tried out the SMS search service with the query “Wall E Bandra” and was instead provided with results pointing…

Sure enough, the days without incident were indeed numbered. T-series has issued a notice to Guruji.com amongst other websites including MSN, MySpace and Bharatstudent. It has accused them of allowing users to upload content on their platforms. The report features quotes from T-Series, VP (digital content), Neeraj Kalyan, stating in…

Sequoia funded Guruji.com has launched a music search service. The release claims the service indexes songs ranging from 1932 till date, across all ‘major’ Indian languages. I put it to the test by throwing names of classical Indian artists from a 2003 recording and was pleased to find it threw…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) India is planning to expand its SMS search services in India reports ET. MS, which currently has a tie-up with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) for SMS search services is looking to partner with other operators, including RComm as part of an expansion which includes ‘four major operators’. The…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has reportedly launched a voice based local information service in India, in Hyderabad. Syed Abbas writes (via Labnol) that the service, launched on the number 1800-41-99-99-99 is similar to that of Just Dial, and after the call, 3-4 SMS’ are sent to the user. Google does have…

[by Cerius Shah] Guruji, the Sandstone Capital and Sequoia Capital funded search engine, has added Gujarati to its supported language searches, and also launched a WAP application (screencap) for enabled phones. The Gujarati virtual keyboard is supported only by IE currently. Also, there isn’t much of a Gujarati site. Besides,…

It’s Buy ByIndia or Bye ByIndia…the site which was acquired by Web2Corp in August 2006 is on the block, up for sale on ebay, here. Is this India’s first portal auction? I’m not sure…the minimum bid for site starts at $500,000 (around Rs. 2 crores), and the auction closes on…

[by Cerius Shah] The marriage season continues. Airtel goes with Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) with MSN and now Reliance has tied the application knot with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). According to this story, Reliance users can use the full suit of Yahoo’s oneSearch service (news, answers, Flickr and wiki’s.)…

We’d been told in the comments to this post that JustDial, a local search company, is in the process of launching an SMS service; apparently, there was a delay because not all operators had switched from the 5 digit short code to the five digit short code. JustDial has now…

More financial firepower for Guruji: the local search engine is reported to have received less than $10 million in funding from Sandstone Capital. Gujuji Co-founder and CEO Anurag Dod has been unavailable for comment. Guruji had received $7 million in seed funding from Sequoia in its first round, and was…

At the Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has announced that it has tied up with 9 new mobile operators for its OneSearch service; this takes Yahoo’s OneSearch tie-ups to twenty globally. Three of the new signups are Indian: state owned telco BSNL, Chennai based Aircel and Mumbai…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is expected to announce its Open Handset Alliance and Linux-based mobile software on Monday next week, and some reports that in India, Bharti Airtel is set to emerge an early partner for the project. Bharti already has a strategic partnership with Google on mobile search.