Microsoft has added a pair of features to the Bing search platform on Windows Phone.

In a posting to the Bing UK blog, the company said that it would be equipping the search platform with additional options for mobile users. The update will allow users additional options for scanning and viewing content on their handsets.

The Bing Vision add-on will add the option to scan in QR and bar codes as well as image recognition tools which will allow users to view sites and retail information by scanning images from DVD and CD covers. Additionally the tool will recognise book covers and data from the Microsoft Tags platform.

The company is also looking to expand its image recognition platform into the print media space. Set to launch in March, Bing Imaging for Newspapers will allow the handsets to take pictures of newspaper and magazine articles and then match the article with its online edition.

The reception of the Imaging for Newspapers platform will be watched closely by newspaper and magazine publishers who have seen their print readership plummet in recent years and have strugled to transition their business models into the digital space.

Microsoft may again be bidding for Yahoo, but this time for a minority stake in the company and in partnership with private investment firm Silver Lake Partners, according to reports.

AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong has said, meanwhile, that his firm does not plan to buy any Yahoo assets.

Yahoo has asked for bids to be submitted this week, according to Bloomberg. Other bids are expected to come from private investment firms Thomas H Lee Partners and TPG Capital, reports say.

Another report by DealBook has said that Microsoft will join forces with Silver Lake Partners and TPG Capital to secure 20 per cent of Yahoo.

All the firms involved in the bid have refused to give official statements, but the fact that Microsoft is making another offer for Yahoo would hardly come as a surprise.

Relationships between Microsoft and Yahoo have been far from stable in recent years but, even though Yahoo has fallen a long way from its status as an internet giant, Microsoft remains interested. Microsoft still basically wants Yahoo to compete better with Google.

Redmond attempted to buy Yahoo in 2008 for $44.6bn (£30bn) but was rebuffed. At that point Mcirosoft chief executive Steve Ballmer denied any chance of new acquisition talks and said that his firm had "moved on".

But Microsoft and Yahoo announced a 10-year search partnership in 2009 to allow them to compete with Google.

The deal was signed by Yahoo's new chief executive at the time, Carol Bartz, who was hired to turn Yahoo around after the firm's search market share had fallen sharply against Google's. Bartz was recently fired by Yahoo's board for failing to succeed with this strategy.

Bartz's priority was clearly to improve Yahoo's display advertising business, launching Rich Ads In Search, which let advertisers include images, video and location in adverts. However, problems with Bartz's strategy arose this year, as Yahoo's advertising business was not keeping pace with its rivals'.

Meanwhile, problems also arose with Bartz's 10-year search deal with Microsoft, and in April Yahoo attributed a 28 per cent profit slump to technical problems arising from the partnership.

Google has announced plans to give more weight to "standout" content in search results by introducing a new tag for publishers to include in HTML headers, in another sign of the web firm's growing desire to marginalise spam and rehashed content.

The news, which was announced over the weekend, follows the introduction of Google's much-publicised Panda algorithm, which was designed to remove content farms and duplicated content from its all-important listings.

The new content tag, introduced for Google's US edition only at present, can be placed by publishers into the HTML header of articles, explained Google in a blog post by product specialist David Smydra and products manager Justin Kosslyn.

Doing this may result in Google News adding a 'Featured' label on its homepage and News Search results, no doubt soon to be the holy grail of news sites.

"You can use the tag to point to your own content or to point to other sources with standout stories. Standout Content tags work best when news publishers recognise not just their own quality content, but the original journalistic contributions of others when your stories draw from the standout efforts of other publications," they explained.

"Linking out to other sites is well recognised as a best practice on the web, and we believe that citing others' standout content is important for earning trust as you also promote your own standout work."

But content creators take note. Google warned that using the tag more than around seven times a week may result in tags becoming "less recognised, or ignored altogether".

It's yet another curveball for publishers and journalists to deal with, therefore, but one which, if it works in the way Google hopes, will give greater weight to better, original content on the web.

Let's hope it does do this and not end up penalising certain sites which have no idea why, as some of Google's previous 'innovations' in this area have done.

Ever wondered what it must be like to work at Google? I'm Feeling Lucky, The Confessions of Google Employee 59 by former marketing staff member Doug Edwards provides a unique insight into that very question, charting his six years at the firm from 1999 to 2005.

The book covers Edwards' journey through the weird and wonderful ways of Google from its early days as an innovative startup trying to cut deals with then giants Yahoo and Inktomi, to becoming the undisputed leader of the search market.

As a writer, Edwards is honest enough to discuss his own insecurities about a lack of technical knowledge and the marketing mistakes he made as he came to terms with Google, to make his voice trustworthy. For example, he thought that changing the home page logo for doodles was madness, only to be proved spectacularly wrong when the doodles became part of the Google brand that internet users came to love.

Lunch with The Grateful Dead's chef
Edwards also offers a look into the minds and personalities of the two driving forces of one of the most successful businesses of the modern age: Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Their focus and sheer bloody-mindedness, as well as their love of efficiency and mathematics, leaps off the page, and are traits that continue to come through now as the company competes on the global stage.

Edwards is also astute at explaining how Google tried to keep pace with its own growth, and how Page and Brin refused to adhere to tried and tested corporate methods.

With staff working 16-hour days, 4am starts commonplace and engineers living at the Google campus, it's no wonder that Page and Brin offered all food cooked by the former Grateful Dead chef Charlie Ayers free to employees.

Despite the joy at the firm's success after all the hard work, there is something depressing in the way Edwards recounts some of Google's great triumphs that led to nothing more than a better way to display ads.

Google overtook all and sundry because it delivered better search results and displayed better ads. Page and Brin come across as guys who wanted to change the world with Google, but needed the best ads to allow them to do so.

Battles with Marisa
It's not Page and Brin who are the villains for their ability to sell better ads in I'm Feeling Lucky, though. That role is played with increasing frequency by current vice president of location and local services, Marisa Mayer.

Mayer and Edwards regularly clashed over design, wording, layouts, launches and other issues over which Edwards claims, quite reasonably, that he should have had dominion.

Edwards often seems to suggest that Mayer went above his head to get her way with or without complete backing but, as with all office politics, there are two sides to a battle and Mayer no doubt has other opinions.

Given the mindset of Google's founders - 'Why not just hire the best people?' - it is probably not surprising that the firm quickly became a battleground of super smart, ambitious go-getters. And given Mayer's prominence at the company now, you can imagine she's not a woman who backs down.

It's also a fascinating and telling example of how the ethos of a fresh, dynamic, do-things-different startup can quickly become a corporate institution with various fiefdoms and personalities battling for control.

Cashing out
The growing corporate nature clearly took its toll on Edwards, and the book comes to a close shortly after Google has gone public and Edwards leaves the firm at which he spent so many years of his mid-40s helping to become a global powerhouse.

Edwards is happy enough, though. Why wouldn't he be? Despite never revealing the exact details, he has baited the reader many times with mentions of the shares he received on joining the firm - "It looked like they'd put the comma in the wrong place" - that he subsequently cashed in when the firm went public.

"I didn't how how it felt to earn more money in one day than I had in 30 years of hard work. I didn't know then, but I do now," reads the book's back cover blurb, making the idea of rushing to Silicon Valley to join a startup highly appealing.

For anyone who's had more than a passing interest in Google, or wondered what it must be like to work for a company that begins with a bunch of guys around a single desk and becomes a world changing firm, I'm Feeling Lucky is definitely worth a read.