24 European states go borderless under Schengen
The Schengen agreement has been extended from 15 countries to 24 giving a wider borderless Europe with no internal border controls or checks and an open market of over 400 million people. Coming into force on the 21st December, the Schengen agreement makes physical inter-trade between bordering countries easier to manage for marketers. As Europe […]
EURid suspends 10,000 .EU names squatted in China
The .EU domain registrar management organisation, EURid has suspended 10,000 EU domain names which have been apparently legally registered by a Chinese woman – reports out-law. EURid has the power to remove the domain names from the woman – but has said that it would prefer a court to do it. According to reports, the […]
Google webmaster tools starts to think international
At least two major new features are arriving in Google’s webmaster tools console according to information from the SES San Jose conference and the official Google webmaster tools blog. The latter has announced support for the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) and a series of further enhancements are expected. IDNA enables webmasters to use […]
Google to open data centre in French-speaking Belgium
Belgium newspaper – Le Soir – has revealed that Google is to open a new 120-person data centre in the French-speaking part of Belgium (known as Wallonie in Belgium) near a town called Ghlin-Baudour (See map) covering a site of 85 hectares or 210 acres of land. The 120 people are required for management, data management, maintenance and security according to Google, says Le Soir.
European telecoms operators threaten US search hegemony
Europe’s largest telecoms operators – with one American firm – are planning to launch a mobile phone search engine to rival Google and Yahoo. The companies concerned include Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and US firm Cingular. Combined, they have a user base of 600 million people – with some 20% in the UK expected to have broadband speed mobile phone access by the end of 2007.
Blogs influence European consumers
A recent
Belgian court tells Google to drop newspaper excerpts
NYT: A court ordered Google to remove on Monday all links to French- and German-language newspaper reports published in Belgium after an association of local publishers won a case that accused the company of violating the country’s copyright laws. The legal action is the most recent example of the news media’s challenging the growing power […]
Acoona launches European version of its search engine
Accoona has launched its search engine into the European zone – in fact western Europe. The search engine – which is on a .eu at www.accoona.eu searches by language – rather than country. Currently, the EU version runs in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. Following the search you have the option to […]
Europe studies the Web 2.0 phenomenon with TAGora
TAGora is a Research Project funded by the European Union. The TAGora project aims at exploiting the unique opportunities offered by the increasing popularity of computer-mediated social interaction and social networks. The project will develop along several lines: A systematic and rigorous data collection campaign that will produce reference datasets and make them available to […]
France announces that 'Quaero' is behind schedule – due to launch in 2011
Abondance tells us that the Agence pour l’innovation industrielle (Industrial Innovation Agency) gave an update this week on progress with regard to 6 of its projects including the European search engine project ‘Quaero’. The project has a budget of 250 million Euros through 5 years and the AII’s press conference gave no new information of […]