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Microsoft: Exchange Online outage blocks access to Outlook mailboxes
Microsoft is investigating an Exchange Online service outage that is preventing customers from accessing their mailboxes using the classic Outlook desktop client. Microsoft first acknowledged the incident (tracked under EX1189820) at 09:57 AM UTC and, according to user reports on the DownDetector outage monitoring platform, it’s also causing server connection and login issues. “Users may be unable to […]
Google confirms AI search will have ads, but they may look different
Google Ads are not going anywhere. Eventually, AI Search results on Google and likely other properties will have ads. Google recently reported $56.57 billion in revenue from ads on Search and YouTube. You obviously can’t expect ads to disappear from its search business. Right now, Google has two AI features. The first is AI Overviews, which appears at […]
Brave launches ‘Ask Brave’ feature to fuse AI with traditional search
Brave Software, the creator of the privacy-focused web browser and search engine, has introduced a new subsystem called Ask Brave that unifies search and AI chat into a single interface. Ask Brave is free to use, accessible from any browser at search.brave.com/ask, and designed with privacy at its core. In essence, this new system combines […]
Google to make it easier to access AI Mode as default
Google plans to make it easier for users to access AI mode by allowing them to set it as the default, replacing the traditional blue links. AI mode is an advanced version of Google Search that uses large language models to summarise information from the web, so you can spend more time on Google than […]
Microsoft investigates OneDrive bug that breaks file search
Microsoft is investigating a known OneDrive issue that is causing searches to appear blank for some users or return no results even when searching for files they know they’ve already uploaded. In a support document updated this week, the company shared that this bug impacts Windows, Android, iOS, and web users. “Some OneDrive personal account users may […]
Microsoft fixes Outlook on the web search issues, failures
Microsoft is working on fully mitigating issues causing Outlook on the web and SharePoint Online users to experience delays or failures when searching. Tracked under EX1063763 in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, the issues are caused by infrastructure components responsible for processing users’ search requests that perform below acceptable performance thresholds. The company first acknowledged this Exchange […]
Google begins unifying search country domains to Google.com
Google has announced that it’s retiring separate country code top-level domain names for search, like google.co.uk or google.com.br, and unifying them under Google.com. Previously, Google used to have separate country-code domains (like google.ng or google.com.br) so people could get results that were more relevant to their local area. Over time, however, Google improved how it figures out […]
Brave Search now lets users ‘Rerank’ results from favorite sites
Brave Search has introduced a new feature called Rerank, which allows users to define search results ordering preferences and set specific sites rank higher. Brave Search is a privacy-focused search tool created by Brave Software, which uses its own web index to generate search results. It is marketed as a privacy-first alternative to Google or Bing search […]
DuckDuckGo blocked in Indonesia over porn, gambling search results
Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has been blocked in Indonesia by its government after citizens reportedly complained about pornographic and online gambling content in its search results. The government’s choice to block DuckDuckGo isn’t surprising considering the cultural and religious context, with Indonesia being a Muslim country where gambling is prohibited and porn is viewed as […]