Consumer and business reliance on cloud computing continues to grow, along with the need of Google, Microsoft and other companies that offer cloud storage to step up reliability. During the weekend, Google Compute Engine (GCE) users experienced a brownout -- an incident similar to the one that disrupted service in February. The Register doesn't put a price on the outage, but with the growing need to connect to the cloud it's only a matter of time.

Rand Fishkin explores concepts of deep learning and machine learning to share his ideas on how it could impact work in SEO. It words sound complex, but he explains it as "we're trying to get machines to come up with outcomes on their own rather than us having to tell them all the inputs to consider and how to process those incomes and the outcome to spit out." Google uses this technology to determine images in photos and when to use them in a retargeting ad, for example. Fishkin explains.

Companies are building IP on proprietary data, not just technology. Kira Radinsky explains how initially data brings business new opportunities, but what happens next? Does data becomes the barrier-to-entry to the market and thus prevents new competitors from entering, as the post suggests? "As a result of the established player’s access to vast amounts of proprietary data, overall industry competitiveness suffers," writes Radinsky. "This hurts the economy." Radinsky points to Google as one of the biggest culprits. Even big companies like Microsoft felt the pain. Radinsky explains.

Distributing video ads to blogs, figuring out the site's overall quality score, and finding competitors are three of several features in AdWords that many marketers don't know exist. Tania Hoque walks through five to help search marketers get more familiar with the nuances and features of Google's tool. 

Marketers will thank their lucky stars when researchers at Google and Microsoft resolve mysteries in quantum computing. The amount of content across the Web and the size of video and other files will require quantum speed and processing power to render correctly. Scientists at Google and the University of California, Santa Barbara, reported in the journal Nature a significant advancement in quantum computer. The New York Times links to the research paper that suggests Google researches have successfully created an error-correction system that stabilizes a fragile array of nine qubits. John Markoff explains.

Accomplice has secured a $5 Million Series A funding round, which includes an investment by WME | IMG. This round brings total funding to $7 million. Accomplice, formerly known as Fractal Sciences, also plans to make its platform available during the beta phase to brands and agencies.

The relationship between Google and Wal-Mart Stores has ended because the two companies couldn't decide on how to use consumer data to lure shoppers into stores. Google requires retailers using its Local Inventory Ads to share inventory levels and prices, which caused tension with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart executives told Google the company wants to offer a similar local-inventory service itself, rather than pay Google to do it, per WSJ, citing people familiar with the situation.

Google is relaunching its contact manager, the search giant said this week. “Google revealed a preview of the revamped contacts on its Gmail blog, showing off a clean and colorful new design that makes it much easier to find information,” ABC News reports. Among other changes, “instead of sorting through a long, drab list of contacts, Google has neatly packaged a person's contacts into different categories.” 

There are some interesting trends in rising search queries analyzed by Wordstream per state and by topic. Many of the rising searches were brand searches related to new or growing technology and media platforms, such as the medical platform Sanford, Amazon Prime, Soundcloud, gaming platform Twitch, and Russian social network VK. Mobile phones were big news, earthquakes in Alaska and California jolted search results, and musicians that drew most of the search attention point to Iggy Azalea, Kevin Gates, and Ariana Grande. Here's the scoop.

Bob Chunn, a former vice president at Borders Group, the book giant that went out of business in 2011, believes there's money to be made from the book industry and has been meeting with angel and venture capital investors to help launch his startup ContentOro. He wants to license book content from publishers and sell it to Web sites in need of content. Seed funding will enable ContentOro to build its own online marketplace, where potential customers can use search terms and phrases to find content they want. Each customer will have sole use of purchased content, which will help search engine optimization tools direct people …