Microsoft hired a qualitative research firm to study if Google users were willing to switch to Bing. The firm in turn recruited 15 Google users and instructed them to use Bing, exclusively, for one week without revealing to them that the study was sponsored by Microsoft.

Out of these 15 participants, the study reveals that 10 indicated that they’ll switch from Google to Bing. Here are all the promo clips:

Twitter enlisted Citysearch as the first user of its Sign-Up API, which helps new users create Twitter accounts from other people’s web sites. Citysearch gets a sprinkle of social media goodness from the arrangement, fostering real-time interaction between consumers and companies, while Twitter — which has a notoriously inscrutable new user experience — gets someone else to handle customer acquisition of smaller brands as it prepares to offer corporate accounts. Citysearch says it has direct relationships with some 200,000 local merchants, and it wants to build a multi-service social media directory for small businesses.

It might take you a while to ask them all, so to make it easier Google launched a new effort to send window decals to over 100,000 local businesses in the U.S. that have been the most sought out and researched on Google.com and Google Maps. Google is calling these businesses the “Favorite Places on Google” and you’ll now start to find them in over 9,000 towns and cities, in all 50 states.

You can also explore a sample of the Favorite Places, in 20 of the largest U.S. cities, at google.com/favoriteplaces. Each window decal has a unique bar code, known as a QR codethat you can scan with any of hundreds of mobile devices — including iPhone, Android-powered phones, BlackBerry and more — to take you directly to that business’s Place Page on your mobile phone. With your mobile phone and these new decals, you can easily go up to a storefront and immediately find reviews, get a coupon if the business is offering one, or star a business as a place you want to remember for the future. Soon, you’ll be able to leave a review on the mobile page as well, just like on your desktop.

Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO, signed up to Twitter this morning – leading to speculation over a tie-up between the two tech firms. TechCrunch reported Schmidt’s account after some Googlers welcomed him on Twitter.

With a press conference at Google HQ due for later today, Schmidt’s entry into the Twitter fray has raised the prospect of the search engine giant and the micro-blogging site joining forces.

His first tweets – as @eschmidt0 – are not about what he is doing right now, but what he is thinking of, and that is his own performance.

So his first Twitter step was a bit of self-promotion, a link to his Wall Street piece “How Google Can Help Newspapers” and an attempted link to CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria – but unfortunately CNN has removed the link (in case you are interested, you find the show here).

If this is his real account let’s hope that we get a more direct glimpse of what Schmidt is about in the near future as his activity on Twitter would definitely interesting to watch.

However, the move is a bit of a surprise, because in spring, his opinion about the micro-messaging system wasn’t so good: “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of a poor man’s email systems”, he said.

@eschmidt0 already has more than 2,000 followers and is following 73 Twitter accounts – a mixture of showbiz, politics and news organisations. Of course eschmidt0 is following the Google account, too, and Marissa Mayer – the company’s vice-president of search product – who hasn’t sent a single tweet.

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On a global basis, we might already be seeing a recovery, at least for search advertising. The online advertising revenues of the four largest Web advertising companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL) increased 1.2 percent in the fourth quarter. Google accounted for all of that growth, however, so we are still waiting for display advertising to find its footing.

It is likely that in the U.S. alone, search advertising is also leading the recovery. But now that Google is mixing more visual elements into search ads (are those display or search ads?), perhaps display ads will see a boost as well.

According to Google product manager Prem Ramaswami, the company’s engineers have been working to improve DNS over the last few months. Instead of performing DNS lookups on an ISP’s DNS server, Google will use its data-center and caching infrastructure to resolve these domain names.

After SPDY (which augments HTTP), this is Google’s second major project that touches upon the core infrastructure of the Web.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? And it marries with Google’s previous efforts to expand its services very neatly–particularly since Google is now the world’s expert on “looking things up.” But the potential effects are pretty huge. Because the big dictionary makers each have their own effort at capturing an online audience to supplement falling sales of their ink and paper copies–a change caused by automated spell-checkers and the rise of the Net. And now they’re simply going to lose some of their online business to Google without Google having to make much of an effort. Of course those with an academic bent will probably want to know the authoritative definitions and etymology of particular words, and they’ll continue to be big-name dictionary customers. For now. Because you can bet it won’t be long before Google’s mastery over the dictionary is total.

Google has posted a red AIDS ribbon below the search bar on its homepage that directs users to a list of resources where people can “learn”, “act”, and “give” to help and raise awareness for people living with HIV/AIDS. (See screenshot below)

Google’s new movie listings page now includes buttons to play trailers right on your phone, ratings and categories, movie posters, upcoming showtimes, and a concise list of the nearest theaters and their distances from you. They keep information on this page succinct so you can quickly browse through shows and showtimes to help you decide which movie to see. If you want more details about a specific movie, just touch the poster or movie title and you’ll see our new movie details page that has a synopsis of the movie, a more detailed list of showtimes, the cast and crew, and pictures. Watch our trailer for a quick demo:

It also makes sense to provide you with richer types of information in the ads. If you’re looking to buy your mom a new handbag for the holidays, for instance, you might want to see pictures, prices, the addresses of boutiques in your area and a map of how to get there — all within the ad.

To provide a better search ads experience, we’ve been developing and testing a variety of new ad formats. These formats are focused on giving you the information you need, while retaining what you love about Google advertising: that the ads are relevant and useful.

If you’re in the U.S. you may have already seen a number of these ad formats when searching on Google.

As Google continue to think up innovative ways to give you the information you want, you’re likely to see even more ad formats until they pinpoint the most useful, relevant and engaging ones.

Source: Google Blog