Multilingual Search moves and seeks new contributors

Multilingual Search has moved house - to www.multilingual-search.com.

Explains managing editor, Andy Atkins-Krüger, "We've received a great deal of encouragement from readers who say we're providing a useful service. Now we've made Multilingual Search easier to use for marketers who are researching particular projects. It's now possible to view only posts from the country in which you're interested."

And we're looking for new contributors to extend our reach right around the globe!

Do give us your feedback and comments - they're much appreciated.

Yahoo! Invests $1 Billion in China's Alibaba

Seems the battleground between the major search engines has shifted to China. Following Google's interest in Baidu - that recently went public and whose stock is performing well - Yahoo has announced a billion dollar investment in Alibaba - a Chinese ecommerce site.

The billion dollar's gets Yahoo! a 40% stake in the company.

A recent MarketWatch article gives a good overview of the recent increase in activity of search engine and tech stock in the Asian continent.

AOL targeting Latino Market

Seems AOL is joining the popular push to attract more Latin traffic. They have announced a new TV and radio campaign whose goal is to draw more Latinos to AOL.

The Spanish speaking market seems to very popular right now.

Google Buys Brazilian Tech Company

Google annouced it purchased Akwan Information Technologies, a Brazilian search company. Google plans on establishing a Research and Development division there and to use it as a base to spearhead their Latin American efforts.

IP tv

Telecom Italia and Tiscali announced the launch of IP tv starting at a T.B.D. date some time between September and November of this year.

Telecom Italia is now broadcasting Video On Demand via Rosso Alice 4 Mbit ADSL which they are planning to use for the newly announced IP tv service. The service will initially be available in 21 cities reaching an estimated 4 million families.

Source: Corriere della Sera

Google China Hire Starts MSN Lawsuit

Seems a new hire at Google, formerly of Microsoft, has created a stir and has been served with a lawsuit by MSN.

ZDNet reports that Kai-Fu Lee is being sued by Microsoft for "the confidentiality and non-competition agreements he signed when he began working" and was now disregarding.

Canada May Outlaw Google

Interesting article about the impact of new laws in Canada. Search engines in Canada will have to be very aware of copyright laws, though the international nature of the web may make it hard to enforce.

The only possibility is that the engines create different submitting procedures for the .ca version of the business.

Chinese search engine - Baidu - to float its shares

Baidu is reportedly about to float increasing the speculation about Google's position in China. Baidu is the leading Chinese search engine - and one which Google bought a 4% stake in during 2004.

It is known that Google CEO - Eric Schmidt - flew to China last week and there are rumours that Google will attempt to buy Baidu as Google's own site does not have the leading position the company's become accustomed to!




Google facing search engine China quandary - Yahoo! News

Yahoo makes first moves on Poland

Yahoo is heading towards a Polish launch - at least that's the conclusion of the Warsaw Business Journal which reports that Yahoo has launched Polish-language email accounts with 1 GB capacity.

Currently, the Yahoo domain for Poland - pl.yahoo.com redirects to Yahoo's UK site.

Yahoo currently operates native-language portals in Europe as shown by the map on their world.yahoo.com portal - but despite having a Russian language portal - Yahoo has little eastern European presence. In fact, they include the Russian language site as part of their presence in the US - targeting Russian speakers in north America.


Source - Warsaw Business Journal Online