Google unveils reinvented search; Facebook suit plods on

Silicon Valley is all about innovation, and even search stalwart Google reinvented itself by announcing new-and-improved search features on Tuesday.

The new Instant Pages feature relies on a user’s web habits to predict a search as the terms are typed into the search bar. For example, given my history of web usage, Google predicted that I was searching for Firstpost after I merely typed the letter “F” in the search bar.

[caption id=“attachment_26422” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“Your Google search just got a lot more zippy. Mike Blake / Reuters”]  [/caption]

Google said that search times will be cut from five seconds to two.“Every time we shave even 50 milliseconds from the search process, users search more and more,” Google Fellow Amit Singhal said at a Tuesday briefing. (Improved speed, of course, helps the company turn a larger profit since more searches translates into larger advertising revenue.)

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An audio search function is also now available, and when I tested this feature, Google produced a link to Firstpost in .49 seconds.

Additionally, a revamped image search makes it possible for users to drag and drop a photo into the search bar; Google will then provide information about the location and other details featured in the photo.

But given that its mobile search has increased five-fold in the past two years, Google is also tweaking phone-based searches for touch screens. Once key words are entered into the search bar, the engine provides a menu of predicted searches that can be accessed in the tap of a finger.The new interface also offers one-tap shortcuts to finding nearby services such as restaurants, cafes, and ATMs.

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In other new app news…

Facebook is also reportedly announcing a new photo-sharing iPhone app, according to a TechCrunch report. The website called the new application “awesome” and “killer,” but little is known about how it will work. It has, however, been described as a combination of existing photo-sharing apps such as Path and Instagram, as well as Color, which permits location-based sharing.

IPO parade

In the steady parade of web IPOs, the free online radio service Pandora saw its stock jump to $26-a 60% increase from its $16 IPO price-in its first day of public trading. By mid-day, shares had dropped to below $20, for a valuation of about $2.8 billion. Some Valley observers are hailing Wall Street for finally pricing a tech IPO correctly.

In terms of its financials, according to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Pandora’s hasn’t yet turned a profit.Its revenue was “$55.2 million and $90.1 million in fiscal 2010 and the nine months ended October 31, 2010, respectively” and its net loss was “$16.8 million and $0.3 million in fiscal 2010 and the nine months ended October 31, 2010, respectively.”

Pandora joins the growing list of web companies that have recently gone public, or are poised to do so. Groupon announced earlier this month its intentions to raise $750 million through an IPO. And CNBC reported this week that Facebook is slated to follow suit in the first quarter of 2012 with a valuation of $100 billion.Social gaming company Zynga could also file for its IPO at any minute, according to All Things Digital.

These developments follow on the trading frenzy following the LinkedIn IPO late last month. ZipCar also went public earlier this year.

Long live Winklevosses v. Zuckerberg

And the legal drama lives on between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the three founders of ConnectU, who claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social networking site when they were all students at Harvard.

ConnectU founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and their business partner Divya Narendra, currently have two cases going against Zuckerberg.

One case , whichwent before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, challenged the multi-million dollar settlement between the parties that was finalised in 2008 on the basis that Zuckerberg misled them on the valuation of Facebook stock. When the ConnectU founders lost this legal challenge, they appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Another case is before a Massachusetts district court, alleging that Zuckerberg didn’t provide documents required by law during the initial round of litigation.

Though Facebook attempted to get the Massachusetts case thrown out, the Ninth Circuit ruled on Tuesday that all related litigation-including the East Coast case-would be frozen until the High Court makes its decision.