As we enter the holiday shopping season, Google is ramping up its product search efforts. As we know from research data, more than 46 percent of in-store purchases are influenced by online research. The online-research for offline purchases market is huge ($917

Microsoft this morning announced several new efforts to gain some ground in the booming social/casual gaming market. The company will be debuting an all-new version of MSN Games (see preview here), bring new social games to instant messaging client Windows Live Messenger