Over the past few weeks, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has kicked off a no-holds barred campaign to promote Bing, its new search engine. While most of the hullabaloo has been focused on the PC, the company is also moving the brand into mobile, where it faces steep competition. Most notably, the…

The sudden interest in the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett was apparently too much for Twitter’s search engine, which quickly got overloaded and returned results that were increasingly delayed—when it returned them at all. Later Thursday evening, Twitter said it had disabled the search field on users’ home…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has signed a deal with Hyatt to put the hotel chain’s ads on Verizon (NYSE: VZ) phones, on which the software giant is the default search engine. Bloomberg reports that the deal to be announced at today’s Cannes Lions advertising conference is part of Microsoft’s attempt to…

Amazon.com (NSDQ: AMZN) search subsidiary A9.com has purchased SnapTell, a startup that offers users a way to search for product information from their mobile phones. Its free iPhone and Android apps let people take a photo of a piece of media—like a DVD, CD, or video game—and then immediately see…

—Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T) claim wireless market is competitive: The two largest U.S. wireless carriers responded to U.S. lawmakers, who are concerned that the four largest cell phone companies doubled their text message rates from 10 cents in 2006 to 20 cents in 2008. Verizon and AT&T…

The largest Taiwanese Telecommunications Company Chunghwa Telecom has signed an agreement with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) to integrate the company’s oneSearch service into the carrier’s portal, according to Lin Jen-Hon (pictured, left), a VP of Chunghwa Telecom’s mobile business group. The Chunghwa Telecom executive told Dow Jones Newswires: “This is a…

—Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Map Upgrade: Google said you can now search Google Maps using your voice on Android. It also improved their business listings to include content such as store hours, prices, ratings and reviews, and added transit and walking directions. Users must manually upload from the Android Market. Google…

Through a very successful TV ad campaign, and the tagline, “There’s An App For That,” Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has cornered the market on mobile applications, or so it seems. If going forward, the smartphone battle is turning into a competition over how many apps one phone has compared to another,…

—ESPN (NYSE: DIS) ScoreCenter: ESPN Mobile has launched a third app on the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) App Store: ESPN ScoreCenter is a free app that will be sponsored at launch by Lexus, and delivers real-time scores, live game info, game summaries and statistics to iPhone and iPod touch users in…

San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMob, which provides ads to 1,500 applications on the iPhone, said today that it is launching new types of banner ads for the iPhone that attempt to engage more with the user, by using tools such as search and social networks. The new ads will be available…

After Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) unveiled “Bing” search last week, designed to challenge Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) on the internet, the company made a mobile version available, likely to threaten the other search providers’ dominance in mobile. The site, which became available yesterday, is at m.bing.com.  ZDNet’s Mary-Jo…

Today, at Google I/O, the company’s annual developer event in San Francisco, the conversation revolved a lot around the Internet giant’s PC services, but there were a few nuggets about the company’s Android, the company’s mobile operating system, according to TechCrunch, which was there to cover the news live. To…

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has launched voice-enabled OneSearch for its iPhone app, which will let users conduct a search by simply speaking. The service also lets people customize the My Interests tab by clicking on “add anything”, speaking the topic they’re interested in, and selecting the relevant content to add. The…

—Buzzd BlackBerry: Buzzd has launched a free app on Blackberry AppWorld that aggregates listings from 20 partners into its location-sensitive city guide and social network. The application includes: Live search; autodetection of location; click-to-call venues; and integration with maps, calendar and contacts. Buzzd was one of the first three investments…

—USA Today: USA Today has launched a free Android application which will let users access news, weather, photos and interactive polls. Articles can be read, shared via e-mail, SMS or Twitter and saved for later reading. The app will also have sports scores and images from the days news. Revenue…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has released results from a study today that shows mobile phone users search differently based on whether they are using a smartphone vs. a traditional cellphone. Separately, Google also unveiled new search features today, including one that will allow people to synchronize searches between their computers and…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has grabbed headlines for trademarking two possible new names for Live Search—Bing and Kumo. But our sister site paidContent found that the company has quietly applied to trademark a third search brand name too—Sift. The name appears to be intended for use with mobile phones, judging by…

Mobile entrepreneur David Bluhm has built several successful mobile companies—including mForma and Medio Systems—thanks in part to very clear business plans, The longer-term mission of his latest venture, Zero260, isn’t quite so clear, though. This week, at CTIA, Zero260 launched three basic photo-sharing apps for the iPhone—PhotoFeedd, TravelFeedd and CarFeedd.…

Carmel, Ind-based ChaCha, which helps people search for answers over mobile phones using SMS, confirmed it has raised $12 million in new capital. The investment was first reported in January, but only confirmed by the company yesterday in a press release. The company said the capital will go towards expanding…