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Yahoo has acquired the assets of the Inquisitor 3 plug-in for the Safari web browser. Mac developer Dave Watanabe created the plug-in, but will not become a Yahoo! employee. Watanabe will, however, temporarily consult for Yahoo.

Inquisitor 3 aids searchers by auto-completing their search keywords and delivers results directly in the Safari browser. When users begin to type in the chrome (you know, that area where the toolbars and menus are), websites and alternative search terms pop up to assist the searcher. Yahoo says the plug-in is similar to their Search Assist-type function, but within the chrome.

Jason Calacanis, the founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, unveiled My Mahalo at SES New York today. For more details on the announcement, read Kevin Newcomb’s story, Mahalo Adds New Social Search Tools.

Or, check out the video interview with Calacanis and product demo of My Mahalo below, which has just been posted in two parts to the Search Engine Strategies conference channel on Youtube.

My Mahalo Launch with Jason Calacanis

My Mahalo Launch with Jason Calacanis Part 2

Jason McCabe Calacanis is the founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine focused on the top English-language search terms, including verticals such as travel, products, news, entertainment, sports, food, and health. Prior to Mahalo.com’s launch in alpha in May 2007, he was an “Entrepreneur in Action” at Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firm, a position he held since December 2006.

Calacanis cofounded and was the CEO of Weblogs, Inc., a network of popular weblogs that was sold to AOL in November 2005. Upon joining AOL, he was appointed SVP. In addition, he was named general manager of AOL’s Netscape and was responsible for the July 2006 relaunch of the iconic browser as a social bookmarking news site. Prior to forming Weblogs Inc., Calacanis was the founder of Rising Tide Studios, a media company that published the magazines Silicon Alley Reporter and Digital Coast Reporter. The flagship publication later became Venture Reporter, a venture capital database, and was sold to Dow Jones.

And earlier today, Kevin Keisler of Search Engine Watch conducted a Q&A with Jason Calacanis, Founder & CEO, Mahalo.com, about the future of the Internet, social media, and SEO.

If you’re going to Search Engine Strategies London next week, bring your camera or cameraphone. And, if you upload your pictures to Photobucket, Fox Interactive Media’s site for uploading, sharing, linking and finding photos, videos, and graphics; Picasa, Google’s photo organizer; or Flickr, Yahoo’s online photo management and sharing application; then please tag your photos: SES London 2008.

We’ll be posting our own pics from the event online — and we’ll be tagging them with the phrase: “SES London 2008” – and if you tag along with us, hopefully we’ll all get found in that big photo album called Google Image Search.

If the photo sharing website you use happens to be Flickr, then we invite you to join us and post to the SES London 2008 group.

And while you’re there, why not send a buddy request to your favorite Search Engine Marketing conference? We have photos from last month’s SES Paris and we look forward to adding to the collection.

By the way, I want to encourage you to “take you best shot.” At the end of Search Engine Strategies London, I will be selecting the Best Photo of SES London 2008, the Best Photos of SES London, and Best Photography of SES London 2008. (Don’t ask me to explain my criteria. I’ll know it when I see it.)

The prize for each one of these top search terms — I mean, these prestigious awards? One static text link to your site.

Hey, that’s all I got. Unless, of course, you get some really funny pictures of people who happen to have a few incriminating photos of me — geotagged at one of the pubs near Islington. Not that I want to encourage that kind of behavior.

No, no. I’d much rather encourage you to photograph Kevin Ryan, Mike Grehan, Fredrick
Marckini, the Orion Panels, the conference sessions, the exhibitors, the crowds. You know. The photos that you can show your business colleagues.

Something like the photo to the left, which was taken back in 2004 at Search Engine Strategies New York. I think I was speaking during the Balancing Organic & Paid Listings session on Thursday, March 4. Not that anyone really cares about the past anymore — except maybe history majors.

But, the fact that you’ve read to the end of this blog post and are still hanging out at the bottom of this page with nothing but this silly text to keep you amused is proof of your deep and abiding interest in what we’re planning in the future.

So, what are you waiting for? Bring your camera or cameraphone to Search Engine Strategies London next week and tag your photos: SES London 2008.

Adding more confusion to the case law surrounding trademark issues and search advertising, a Sixth Circuit federal court in Kentucky found that keyword advertising is a “trademark use in commerce” under the Lanham Act. Actually, what they decided was that there was not enough case law to prove it wasn’t, so a motion to dismiss the case based on that argument could not be granted.

While the decision was not an overwhelming one, and should not affect future cases, it showcases the confusion in the courts surrounding keyword advertising, and overall search engine marketing issues. In most Circuit Courts – other than the Second Circuit courts in New York, Vermont and Connecticut – the findings have been that keyword advertising is a trademark use in commerce, as Eric Goldman, an Internet law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, outlines on his Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

“This case reinforces the pattern that Second Circuit-controlled courts aren’t finding trademark use in commerce from keyword triggering and all other courts are,” he writes.

If buying an ad triggered by a trademarked keyword is eventually found to be a trademark use in commerce, that would essentially prevent advertisers from doing so legally. Goldman has written quite extensively about online trademark law, and he agrees with the Second Circuit courts.

The Lanham Act defines “use in commerce” as using a trademark on physical packaging or displays, or “in the sale and advertising of services,” an ambiguous definition when it comes to the Internet and search engine marketing, says Goldman. He expects the matter to remain unresolved until Congress passes a new law or the Supreme Court makes a ruling.

Google’s current trademark policy allows advertisers in the U.S. and Canada to trigger an ad from another party’s trademarked keyword, but not to use the trademarked term in the ad text. In all other countries, advertisers are not allowed to do either.

Yahoo’s trademark policy “requires advertisers to agree that their search terms, their listing titles and descriptions, and the content of their Web sites do not violate the trademark rights of others.”

Microsoft’s trademark policy is similar to Yahoo’s (and Google’s non-North American policy). It “requires all advertisers to agree that they will not bid on keywords, or use in the text of their advertisements, any word whose use would infringe the trademark of any third party or would otherwise be unlawful or in violation of the rights of any third party.”

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected this week’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:
From the SEW Blog:

Search Blogs Awards Voting Is OnSearch Engine Journal’s 2007 Search Blogs Awards have been posted, and the voting has begun.
An [...]

OK, so we all know what people are really searching for most of the time. But if you filter out the perennial favorites (most of which are NSFW), then you can have a look at the most popular, up-and-coming search terms of 2007. In case you missed these earlier, here are the lists of top [...]

Though more and more people are using search engines all the time, that doesn’t necessarily translate into more diversity in search terms. In fact, according to Hitwise, the top 5% of all search volume consists of just 9 terms.
That’s down from 49 terms in 2005, reports Hitwise UK Research Director Robin Goad, though he doesn’t [...]

Apple’s hot gadget, the toy world’s must-have plush pets, and arguably AOL’s hottest web property represented the top three fastest-rising search terms at Google.

Catapulting to the top of the hottest queries hitting Google’s index means grabbing the interest of thousands of visitors, all happily tapping away at their keyboards and looking for details on what [...]

It’s odd, really - if Wikipedia were a person or animal, we’d be hard-pressed to actually like it, given how untrustworthy it can be.  But we do like it, and the site’s popularity gives some people all the more reason to toy with it.
Whether you’re looking up simple search terms like “dog” and “tree,” [...]

You may or may not be able to monitor the pulse of a nation through search terms, but in this case, that’s something of a non-issue; a partnership between Ask and “Entertainment Tonight” will only focus on celebrity names.
Are queries for “Paris Hilton” more popular than those for “Britney Spears”?  As the television show [...]