Google has announced a new search engine service specifically tailored towards Korean users.

According to Korea Times, the new look service will abandon Google’s celebrated simplistic design in favour of a more graphic-rich, categorized format that meets Korean tastes.

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China has promised to take tougher action over the problem of Internet music piracy.

Representatives from China’s Ministry of Culture met the IFPI, an international music body, in Cannes on Sunday to discuss how to improve the “grave situation” of Chinese music piracy.

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Google’s $3.1 billion purchase of online advertising firm DoubleClick seems certain to be approved by European regulators.

Despite fears over the move restricting competition, observers are reporting that the European Commission are extremely likely to pass the takeover when it makes its April 2 2008 decision.

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Chinese search provider Baidu today relaunched their Japanese service.

The search engine, which has a market share of around 70% in China, hopes the expanded service will help them crack a market currently dominated by Yahoo and Google.

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A contest has been launched by a Singapore research agency to design a next-generation search engine capable of organising multimedia content.

The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) is offering a $100,000 USD reward for engineers who can create a search engine able to identify keywords not only within text, but also hidden inside audio and video content.

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Britain and China have announced plans for a significant boost in trade levels between the two countries.

Speaking to reporters after talks in Beijing, UK prime minister Gordon Brown revealed that he and Chinese premier Wen Jiabo have jointly agreed a target of a 50% rise in trade by 2010.

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Ask.com, sued over its failure to prevent click-fraud, is to reach settlement with plaintiffs.

Advertisers who used the search engine’s sponsored listings service after August 2005 have now been invited by email to register their claim in a class action lawsuit.

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A newly published report has revealed that almost 90% of the time Internet users pay no attention to search engine Pay-per-Click (PPC) adverts.

The study from Advertising Age appears to back up existing data suggesting that PPC ads are one of the less effective forms of online marketing.

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Microsoft are to buy search technology company Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) in a $1.2 billion deal.

Fast Search, based in Norway, are leaders in the field of ‘enterprise search’ - search technology that enables corporations to quickly search for information held in vast databases.

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China has signalled its intent to impose even tighter controls on video-sharing websites such as YouTube.

New rules coming into force at the end of January will force all such websites to be operated under licence by state-controlled companies.

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