“In 2008, China’s net-using population has surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest, with 253 million people according to the latest report.’ Robin Li, CEO of Baidu said: “This has brought SEM with greater development opportunities, so I believe that more and more Chinese enterprises will set up departments within the next 5 years to learn and promote SEM.”

Currently, Japanese characters can be used as “郵便局.jp”. There are about 1 million “.jp” domains registered and about 140,000 of them use Japanese characters.

In October, Google had already announced that Google Sites - a tool for creating free sites online - was also available in the Portuguese language.

Accoona launched in 2004 with great fanfare including having former US President Bill Clinton speak at its opening. Accoona claims to list 49,728,000 company profiles on the search engine. In China Accoona has supplied search results to Sina.com and Sohu. Accoona also has an exclusive partnership with the China Daily News, the most widely-read daily newspaper in China.

“We have worked intensely for the last two weeks in order to get all of the legalities and finances in place for the takeover and there is still a great deal of work in front of us to integrate and re-launch the search service,” states Rasmus Refer, founder of the Masterseek Corp.

The study also revealed that Japan recorded the highest penetration of users of Apple iTunes software during the month, when compared with US, UK, France and Germany. 25% of Japanese Internet users accessed iTunes in August.

Yahoo! Music led the category with 7.3 million visitors, followed by Sony Connect with nearly 3 million visitors and Sony BMG Music Entertainment with 2.7 million visitors.

Youa will compete with current C2C marketplace leader Alibaba’s Taobao.com which owns 57% of the marketshare. Alibaba recently announced that it will invest RMB5 billion (US$732 million) over the next five years to further strengthen the Taobao marketplace. Taobao has 80 million registered users and over 1 million sellers. Other C2C marketplaces include Paipai.com, and Eachnet.com. According to Piper Jaffray Youa will make up about 3-5% of Baidu’s estimated revenues in CY09.

Top 10 Properties by Number of Japanese Unique Visitors in August 2008:
Yahoo Sites
Google Sites
Rakuten Inc
Microsoft Sites
FC2 inc.
NTT Group
Wilimedia Foundation Sites
Livedoor
GMO Internet Group
Nifty Corporation

Read more here.

Source: TheNextWeb

Publisher requirements are quite high. Among other factors sites must have an Alexa ranking of 250,000 or better and a minimum of 2,000 pageviews per day. This looks like an interesting option for advertisers targeting the continent or publishers looking to monetize though.

The Electronic Union of Travel Industry EUOTI is launching its FIRST International Congress concerned with the online travel business in Sharm El Sheikh Egypt 15-19/12/08

Appfrica, web portal offering news related to African innovation, education and entrepreneurship in technology, published information and statistics on the current state of Internet penetration in Africa.

In order to avoid duplicated content I’m linking to Sara Holoubek’s post at DM News.

The Complexity and Social Networks Blog presents an interesting paper on mobile phone users and data stored in service provider databases around the world, discussing the different types of data captured and how it can be used to provide insight into human cultures.

Examples are provided from a variety of cultures and hundreds of millions of individuals, illustrating how phones can be used as a cultural lens, improving understanding of a particular cultures pace of life, reactions to outlier events, and social networks.

The paper in PDF format can be downloaded here.

The computers, named “Magalhães” in honour of the Portuguese explorer, will cost between zero € (for underprivileged kids) up to 50€. When they come out of the factory (which by the way is in Portugal), the retail price is near the 180€ mark, the remaining value being subsidized by the government and telecommunication companies.

The computers include wifi capability (as well as broad band Internet access), but the price does not include home Internet connections.

According to the The European Information Technology Observatory (EITO):

• Revenues from Internet access growing by more than 10 percent
• Telephone flat rates and online video sales are stimulating business
• Germany is the largest single market in the EU with a 25 percent share

The increase in revenue (+10,7% in 2008) is attributed to the falling prices of high speed DSL connections. Lower connection costs and higher speed stimulate consumption for online services (Music and Video on Demand).
According to the the latest EITO forecast, by the end of 2008 there will be an estimated 114 million broadband Internet connections in Western Europe, making fast data lines available to 26 percent of the population.

• Download press release (.doc)
• Download data sheet ICT market overview of the EU (.pdf)

Last week, they announced the changes with minimum bidding cost, which is currently 9yen (35yen for some categories). Starting in August, the minimum bidding cost will be adjusted according to the importance & the value of keywords and the quality of keywords & the ads. It means that your current bid amount may not reach the new minimum bid amount, in which case your campaign for that keyword or the ad group may be turned off for not meeting the minimum cost. If you are running a campaign with Overture, keep a close eye on the campaign.

They also announced the plan to introduce “Interest Match” this fall. It serves the ads based on the search user’s interests. The content on viewed pages, page view history, search history, age, gender, etc. will be considered to calculate the interests. They plan to first begin the service with PC site, then to begin the service with mobile about a month later.

• 69% of those interviewed find publicity a violation of their privacy
• 39,8% find it “invasive”

Source: ANSA

Meanwhile, Rambler, the original control owner of Begun, continues to compete with Google as a search engine which is now richer than it was before with having, according to its own press release, a net cash position of $100 million to pursue “further investments and acquisitions in line with Rambler’s stated strategy.” Begun is known to have typically paid lower prices to publishers and cost less for advertisers - no doubt the Google involvement will change that in some way.

The English press release is available here.

The revenue percentage from the UK was $774 million down from $803 million in the first quarter of 2008 but up by 33% from the $600 million against the second quarter of 2007. Seasonally adjusted this still means the UK is on a roll as January is a particularly strong month leading the first quarter to higher revenues.

Meanwhile, checkout this chart from Google’s investor relations information showing the situation in the US compared with their international revenues clearly showing static US growth with international development - including the UK - leading Google’s current growth.

Source: Google Investor Relations Webcast