Every day 268 million people use Google to search for something. The query goes in, the company's software programs, called spiders, crawl the Web and deliver back the most relevant links. The interaction is so simple—and the hidden calculation behind the results so complex—that it's no wonder people tend not to notice much about the process. Who bothers to ask the ingredients of a magic formula?

For all of its experiments with maps, books, e-mail, and social networking, Google is still an empire built on search. Ninety-seven percent of the company's $23.7 billion haul in 2009 came from advertising. While Google doesn't break out what each of its individual ad products such as AdWords or AdSense generates, multiple people within the company concede that Google is as dependent on the "Sponsored Links" generated by search queries as an oil nation is on its wells.

Since Google's 1998 debut, the search results page—where a home page query is returned with 10 suggested links on the left and multiple advertiser links on the right—has been through seven subtle redesigns. The most recent, in May 2007, saw the addition of images and video in what was dubbed "universal" search. On May 5, Google began rolling out its eighth iteration, which Marissa Mayer, vice-president of search products and user experience, calls "particularly large and particularly important."

Google has long had advanced search capabilities, but they were difficult to find. The goal was to surface them and integrate them into the main results page. Users now get results with an extra column of tools to drill deeper into information. That means a query can be quickly refined to show only results from shopping sites, say, or just videos on a topic, or the latest news results. Add in a new logo and a splash of colorful icons on the left side of the page that guide users through the new options, and the look is noticeably different.

Given that the shift of a single pixel can impact Google's profits, why would the company ever mess with the most successful product in the history of the Internet? "The Web is always changing, evolving, and innovating," says Mayer. "It's important even for sites that people use every day and are very familiar with, like Google, to update their look."

It's not just the look that's been updated. Microsoft's Bing, Facebook, and Twitter have made a case for the past few years that Google's search, based on ranking the overall relevance of a Web page, is outmoded, and that the future lies in an integration of relevance with real-time search. In December, Google conceded the point and announced it would begin indexing the Web in real time to help users organize the cacophony emanating from social media.

Some experts are skeptical of introducing complexity to the results pages. "Advanced search almost never works," says Jakob Nielsen, principal of the Norman Nielsen Group and co-author of the book Eyetracking Web Usability. "People don't want to use a search engine. They want to get away from a search engine. That's the reason the advertising works so well—the search engine is one site they want to get away from so they might go to an advertiser." In other words, Google has thrived precisely because it hasn't tried to envelop its users in a full-frills experience.

For the first time since an explosion on a drilling rig 15 days ago left an undersea well spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers succeeded in shutting off one of the three leaks from the damaged well late Tuesday night, a spokesman for BP said on Wednesday morning.

Though by itself the move was not expected to reduce the amount of oil being released — estimated at 210,000 gallons a day — it “does enable to us to make progress, to winnow down the focus from three leaks to two,” said the spokesman, John Curry.

Submersible robots, controlled remotely from a ship on the surface, were able to place a specially designed valve over the end of a leaking drill pipe lying on the sea floor in water about 5,000 feet deep, and stop oil from escaping at that point, Mr. Curry said. The company had been trying since Monday to place the specially designed valve but had been hampered by rough seas and high winds that diminished on Tuesday.

With one valve shut, BP is now turning its attention to capping the worst of the leaks. Crews have loaded a 98-ton, four-story structure called a containment dome onto a barge, and are expected to tow it at midday Wednesday to the site of the spill, a 12-hour trip.

The plan is to lower the dome to the sea floor and place it over the leak, capturing the gushing oil and funneling it up to a rig waiting at the surface. That is expected to be operational by the end of the week, BP officials said.

Weather conditions continued to look promising on Wednesday, allowing recovery crews to move forward on several fronts to control the spread of the oil slick.

Mr. Curry said crews were preparing to conduct a “controlled burn” of some of the oil at sea, and that skimming boats were out in other areas to corral the thick oil from the surface of the water. Aircraft were also expected to resume dropping dispersants from overhead.

The report of progress in containing the leak came as BP, which is responsible for cleaning up the vast oil spill resulting from the fatal explosion and fire that destroyed the rig it was leasing, acknowledged that the flow of oil could become vastly larger than initially estimated.

In a closed-door briefing for members of Congress, a senior BP executive conceded Tuesday that the ruptured oil well could conceivably spill as much as 60,000 barrels a day of oil, more than 10 times the estimate of the current flow.

The scope of the problem has grown drastically since the rig, the Deepwater Horizon, sank into the gulf. Now, the discussion with BP on Capitol Hill is certain to intensify pressure on the company, which is facing a crisis similar to what the Toyota Motor Company had with uncontrolled acceleration — despite its efforts to control the damage to its reputation as a corporate citizen, the problem may be worsening.

Amid growing uncertainty about the extent of the leak, and when it might be stanched, pressure on BP intensified on multiple fronts Tuesday, from increasingly frustrated residents of the Gulf Coast to federal, state and local officials demanding more from the company.

The company considered a broad advertising campaign, but top BP executives rejected the idea before planning even started. “In our view, the big glossy expressions of regret don’t have a lot of credibility,” said Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman.

Instead, the company has dispatched executives to hold town meetings in the affected region, and it has turned to lower-profile social media outlets to trumpet its cleanup efforts and moves to organize volunteers.

India’s Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Wednesday that India needed to turn its full attention on halting population growth.

In 2000, when India crossed the one billion mark, the country had hoped it was making enough progress to get its population to stop growing by 2045. Nowadays the government believes that is more likely to happen in 2060, when the country reaches 1.7 billion.

Mr. Azad has voiced his concerns on India’s population growth before. But he shied away from recommending any mandatory measures, according to a statement of his remarks.

“We need to give people access to choices and empower them to choose their family size,” said Mr. Azad.

The minister’s stance is one that governments around the world adopted after a major population conference in Egypt in 1994. In India, the backlash against a campaign under former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the late 1970s to sterilize large numbers of men, by many accounts forcibly, has also led government officials to play up the importance of choice since then.

Yet even today, although the government promotes condom use in television and ad spots, and private companies have also been advertising newly available emergency contraception heavily, sterilization is still the most commonly used form of birth control. Female sterilization, to be precise.

Just over half of married women in India use some form of birth control, according to this paper from the Planning Commission, which guides India’s economy. Of women using “modern” birth control, about 85 percent use sterilization. Even teenagers have been known to undergo the procedure.

“Although reported by only a negligible minority, sterilization was the most commonly adopted method even among married adolescents in India,” said a 2003 Population Council report. “A review of data on contraceptive behavior of adolescents in Asian countries shows that India is the only country where such a pattern prevails.”

In part that’s because even into the 1990s India had numerical targets in place for specific birth control methods like sterilization. (Male sterilization rates, however, are very low because health officials shied away from promoting it in any major way after the 1970s).

But the focus on this method over all others may have unintended consequences.

According to a 2009 study published by the Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research, the fact that female sterilization is the most widely known and used form of birth control could add an extra 52 million people to the population by 2050. The study’s authors suggest that not having much access to birth control that allows them to delay or space out their babies encourages women to have children quickly and close together and then get sterilized. When that pattern is repeated over generations, the authors say that the population grows faster than if those women were having children later in life.

Bids for an all-India license to offer faster wireless services reached 110.5 billion rupees ($2.46 billion) on the 22nd day of an auction, according to a statement on the department of telecommunication’s website.

Nine mobile-phone carriers including Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s largest, and Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s biggest, are vying for the spectrum to offer third-generation services in the world’s second-largest wireless market by subscribers.

The government is auctioning spectrum for operating 3G services in India’s 22 designated telephone zones. It plans to sell 93 licenses to provide high-speed data to mobile phones and computers that may raise an estimated 500 billion rupees, helping reduce the nation’s fiscal deficit.

A total of 128 rounds have been completed in the auction and bidding activity will be extended to all zones in round 132, the statement said.

The government will issue daily updates on the bidding and all data collected from bidders will be made public after the auction is over.

The World Bank approved on Wednesday $292 million in loans to finance two infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, through its Investment Promotion and Financing Facility (IPFF).

The IPFF, operating since 2006, has helped boost Bangladesh's electricity generation capacity by 5 percent by adding 178 megawatts electricity to the national grid and two special economic zones at Dhaka and Chittagong.

Bangladesh currently faces up to 2,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity shortage a day that causes severe sufferings as well drastic fall in industrial production.

The IPFF operates under the oversight of Bangladesh's central bank and funds are allocated to local financial institutions for on-lending to private-sector infrastructure projects.

"Bangladesh has an enormous investment need in infrastructure," said Zafrul Islam, World Bank's acting country director for Bangladesh.

"We expect this financing ... will be used to increase infrastructure supply in the power sector - renewable energy and energy savings - as well as bridges, ports, container terminals, water treatment plants, waste disposal projects, and others," a World Bank statement quoted him as saying.

The credits from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank's concessionary arm, have 40 years to maturity with a 10-year grace period; they carry a service charge of 0.75 percent.

The lead investigator at Bangladesh's new war crimes tribunal, set up to prosecute perpetrators of atrocities during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan, resigned Wednesday, an official said.

Abdul Matin, a former top bureaucrat, submitted his resignation in the wake of allegations by senior officials that he had ties to the country's main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which sided with Pakistan during the war.

"He resigned citing personal reasons," the home ministry's senior information officer Mohammad Sahenor Miah said.

Matin was named the head of the seven-member investigation team for a special tribunal, set up in March this year, to prosecute Bangladeshis who sided with Pakistan and committed murder, rape and arson during the war.

Leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami have been accused of both committing and facilitating the murder of freedom fighters and many of the country's intellectuals during the nine-month struggle.

Last month Alauddin Ahmed, an advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, accused Matin of being a key activist for the Islamic Chhatra Sangha -- the now defunct student wing of Jamaat.

Matin has vigorously denied being a member of the student wing, saying that he was neither a freedom fighter nor an activist for any group which opposed the liberation struggle in 1971.

Today is World Press Freedom Day. In an exclusive interview with VOA, Abed Khan, well-known journalist and columnist of Bangladesh, spoke about the freedom of press in Bangladesh.

Reporters Without Borders says this year, nine journalists have been killed around the world and nearly 300 are in prisons. Recently, Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization that supports the expansion of freedom around the world, reported that Bangladesh is one of those countries that have advanced in the field of press freedom. Abed Khan speaks about this and explains the reasons behind it.

Abed Khan speaks about the different media sources that the country now benefits from. There are various newspapers and tv channels that allow journalists to give their reports allowing the public to make more informed opinions and decisions. Media owners, competing with each other, have now adopted new approaches to spread the news. Though it is challenging sometimes, the future looks optimistic.

Abed Khan is the editor of the daily newspaper Kaler Kantho (Voice of Age). Before this, he was an editor for Samakal, Jugantor, and Bhorer Kagoj, three well-known media houses of Bangladesh.

The Bangladesh government is contemplating importing cotton yarn directly from a few African countries, in a bid to contain the recent flare-up in cotton yarn prices. This was announced by Commerce Minister Lt Col (retd) Faruk Khan, at the inauguration of a textile training programme at a hotel in Dhaka. He also suggested setting up of a warehouse to stock raw cotton and cotton yarn to help weavers and clothing producer’s access them at affordable prices.
He also blamed the unprecedented increase in raw cotton prices, which have shot up by 30-40 percent, in the last few months for the rise in cotton yarn prices.

Bangladesh have recalled former skipper Mohammad Ashraful to their Test squad for the forthcoming tour to England.

The 25-year-old was left out for the series between the two sides in Bangladesh earlier this year.

But he hinted at a return to form by making 65 off 49 balls against Pakistan in a World Twenty20 match on Saturday.

Bangladesh have named uncapped paceman Robiul Islam, 23, in a 15-man squad for the tour to England, which features Tests at Lord's and Old Trafford.

"He brings a lot of energy and has brisk pace," said chairman of selectors Rafiqul Alam.

"Robiul is strong and aggressive and we feel he can be a handy option in English conditions."

There is also a place in the squad for 26-year-old medium-pacer Mahbubul Alam, who made the last of his four Test appearances in December 2008, with all-rounder Aftab Ahmed and left-arm spinner Enamul Haque Jr omitted.

Bangladesh, who will again be captained by Shakib Al Hasan, are due to begin their tour with a three-day game against Surrey at the The Oval, starting on 9 May.

They will then have two further warm-up fixtures before the opening Test at Lord's on 27 May.

It will be only the second time they have played Test cricket in England, having lost 2-0 in 2005, when neither match lasted beyond the third day.

To avoid a similar fate on what are likely to be seamer-friendly pitches, they will need their batsmen to show far greater discipline than they have in the past.

And the selectors are hoping that Ashraful can finally live up to the potential he first showed in 2001 when he became the then youngest player to hit a Test century.

He has managed four more since then but only averages 22 overall.

---

Bangladesh squad: Shakib Al Hasan (capt), Tamim Iqbal, Imrul Kayes, Mohammad Ashraful, Zunaed Siddique, Jahirul Islam, Mahmudullah, Mushfiqur Rahim, Naeem Islam, Abdur Razzak, Shahadat Hossain, Rubel Hossain, Shafiul Islam, Mahbubul Alam, Robiul Islam.