Bing is out of beta two years after launching in Australia and following many months of work by engineers to localise the search engine’s global experience for Australian users. And, with the job done to Australianise Bing, the milestone has been marked with kangaroos in the sunset replacing the beta tag on the Bing home page.

Online search and online directories continue to attract advertisers at a rapid rate while advertising in the print directories market erodes further. In the 12 months to June this year, Australian online search and directories advertising grew 23 percent to hit $1.4 billion in total revenue, with Google still the overwhelmingly dominant player.

Google has been found not guilty of breaching consumer protection laws by failing to sufficiently distinguish between search results and sponsored links (aka adverts) but its ability to use its dominance of the Australian search market to favour its own services over those of competitors is under increasing scrutiny by the Productivity Commission.

Brisbane based Indigo Telecom will launch today a service designed to provide monitoring and emergency support, via mobile phones, to organisations with people working in remote or dangerous areas - such as journalists on assignment in war zones.

Microsoft registered the domains microsoft-sony.com and sony-microsoft.com last week. Why?

The combined might of Apple and Google/Android is creating strange bedfellows in the mobile market: in addition to its intimate relationship with Nokia, Microsoft has now teamed up with Research In Motion.

Yometa.com is the latest player to try its hand at metasearching. The company does bring a new perspective to the concept, so can it succeed where others have faded away?

Oh Bing, all ye searchers, visual and triumphant, oh search ye, oh search ye, visually with Bing. Come and besearch Bing, be the King of Bing, O come, let us adore Bing, O come let us adore Bing, O come let us adore Bing, Christ this intro’s a stretch.

Will Google and Bing introduce app search this year?

With Google having launched its list of most searched-for terms in 2010 last week, I found myself wondering when Microsoft and Ninemsn would likewise list the top things that made it this year’s Australian list of “most binged things”. Here it is!