Many industry watchers don't think Microsoft stands a chance in search, so why does the software giant persist in chasing Google? In short, "search is not solved," says Microsoft search team member Stefan Weitz in an interview with Ars Technica's Emil Protalinski. "We're not at where we'd like to be." Weitz explains that people are generally happy with search until the data shows they are no longer happy with it. Well, in the last six to 12 months, Microsoft has learned that only about a quarter of users are satisfied with the results of their first query; about half either …

In a research report, Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield makes a couple of startling conclusions about Google's attitude toward social networking: one, the search giant doesn't care about social networking; two, social networking is gradually making search less relevant. According to Greenfield, Google's algorithm isn't well-suited to social networking sites, which is why its search deal with MySpace isn't performing as well as expected. "Nine months have gone by since our note, with MySpace now having just over a year left on its search deal with Google...and Google has done nothing to improve its social search algorithms," Greenfield says in …

A new report from Forrester Research claims that social media has not yet entered the mainstream, as 75% of marketers have budgeted less than $100,000 for social media efforts over the next year. Instead, 45% of respondents said their social media budgets are determined on an "as-needed" basis. "In order to be successful, brands have to have dedicated strategy and programs to make these (venues) work like their other marketing vehicles," Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang said. Despite the recession, 53% of respondents said they expect to increase spending on social media, while 42% said their social media spending would stay …

"Hearst will continue to publish seattlepi.com, but it would be a mistake to think of it as the Seattle P-I Online," says PaidContent.org's Staci Kramer, because the 146-year-old pub is losing 88% of its workforce in the process of moving from print to the Web only. The new seattlepi.com will have just 20 staffers, compared to the 150-plus the paper had before closing operations Tuesday. Kramer points out that the scaled back operation becomes "a petri dish" for Hearst as it tries to figure out how to make a similar transition in other cities. Many believe the struggling San Francisco …

AT&T is in denial about its mobile network problems, says GigaOm's Om Malik, who says the lack of backhaul bandwidth was so disappointing, he was forced to trade in his iPhone for a T-Mobile 8900 BlackBerry and "a plain old phone from Verizon." Nevertheless, the telecom giant keeps denying that its having bandwidth problems, most recently in a New York Times article that was published on the same weekend that iPhone-toters were up-in-arms about network problems at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. AT&T ultimately fixed the SXSW problem by switching on 850 MHz band on eight cell towers in …

An AOL insider tells Kara Swisher that ex-Googler and new Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong "would not have taken the job if the plans for a spin out of AOL were not in place and it's in everyone's interests to signal that it's a go right away...The only catch is the poor economy, but even that should not prevent Time Warner from doing what's right to finally fix AOL." Meanwhile, Armstrong is scheduled to formerly address the company today and has chosen to do so from AOL's erstwhile headquarters in Dulles, Va. Sources say he will give the address alongside …

Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay thinks buying Twitter would be a really bad idea for Web giants like Google and Yahoo, says ZDNet Editor Larry Dignan. In a research note, Lindsay calls Twitter a "pre-business," warning the Web giants against the perils of buying companies that may never forge a sustainable business model. "Don't get us wrong -- we like Twitter and we think the concept of sending short open standard messages reporting on your activities is actually much more fun and more valuable than it sounds," Lindsay says in the note. "The problem is that Twitter falls into the broad …

Last week, VentureBeat reported that in-game advertising company IGA Worldwide is seeking additional investment or a possible sale. Obviously, the recession isn't helping, says CNet's Dave Rosenborg, but video games were supposed to be a bright spot in the battered technology sector, so what gives? Rosenborg argues that the real story here is that in-game advertising has yet to mature, which is why companies like IGA are struggling. "The current problem is that every in-game advertisement is a custom project," Rosenborg says. "You can't just pop in text or graphics as you do with an ad network such as …