Google search manipulation starves some websites of traffic
Google's placement of its own flight-finding service in search results is resulting in lower click-through rates for companies that have not bought advertising, according to a study by Harvard University academics.
The study provides data for how Google's placement of its own services amid "organic" search results may hurt competitors, which is the focus of an ongoing antitrust case between Google and the European Union.
How paid and non-paid search results are displayed has a powerful sway over consumers, the study found. Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, and Zhenyu Lai, a Harvard doctoral candidate, looked at when Google began inserting its own Flight Search feature, launched in December 2011, into search results. Read more...
Nations with low malware rates have better ISPs
Countries with good national security teams (CERTs) and diligent ISPs show consistently lower rates of malware infection than those states that adopt a less paternalistic approach to security, a new analysis by Microsoft researchers has suggested.
According to statistics drawn from the company's widely used Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), the countries which have shown notably lower infection rates of malware are Austria, Finland, Germany, and Japan.
Using the yardstick of computers cleaned per mile (CCM)*, Austria recorded a normalised rate of 3.3 CCM in Q4 2010, Finland 2.3, Germany 5.3, and Japan 2.3, all significantly below the global average taken from 116 countries of 8.3. These low rates have remained consistent since the first measurements taken in 2007. Read more...