CNN is reporting that Google is not changing anything until it gets an official order from the court.

“The common denominator on these sites is the incitement of hate and the call to violence,” DAIA is quoted as saying. “In none of these cases are there discussions or criticisms from the academic, technological, political or philosophical perspectives.”

Google says:

“If you recently used Google to search for the word ‘Jew,’ you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google.”

…

“Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the comprehensiveness of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it.”

According to CNN’s report, Argentina has the largest Jewish population in Latin America. A report from comScore came out earlier this week looking at Google’s search market share in Latin America. Of the six markets the firm measured, Argentina had the lowest percentage of Google users at 89.4% (still pretty high).

This is certainly not the first time Google’s search suggestions have generated some controversy. One example that comes to mind was about a year and a half ago when Alex Wilhelm at TheNextWeb discovered an interesting behavior in Google Suggest involving religion. With most major religions, you would get suggestions from Google when you typed queries like “christianity is” or “judaism is”. Google was not, however, showing any suggestions for “Islam is”.

Not long after the story made the rounds, Google started showing suggestions for the query. The top suggestions were then “islam is bullshit,” “islam is false,” “islam is not a religion,” and “islam is a lie”.

Testing it today, the top one is “islam is” followed by “islam is evil”.

Testing the query “jew” from here, I am seeing “jewish,” “jewel,” and “jewish hospital”. It’s worth noting that suggestions (at least here in the U.S.) take location into account too.

"This means that Argentines will be able to more easily discover local talent like GuadalajaraMan, UESiglo21, farolatino, casiangeles or yoteloexplico, as well as view the most popular and most viewed videos in their country," says YouTube. 

"We’re also teaming up with local broadcasters to ensure that YouTube viewers, wherever you may be, can watch some of the best news, sports and public television videos being made in Argentina today," the company says. "Such partners include Encuentro, America TV, Boca Juniors and TV Pública."

Of course Argentine content providers can apply to become YouTube partners here. 

You can check out the Argentina version of YouTube by going to the bottom of YouTube and clicking the "location" tab, and selecting the country. 

A quick look at a Google Earth screenshot confirms the mistake – Villa O’Higgins, named after Bernardo O’Higgins, is shown as being located within Argentina’s borders.  But, according to everyone except Google, Villa O’Higgins is actually a Chilean town.  And that kind of makes sense, since Bernardo O’Higgins was a hero in the Chilean War of Independence.

Chile’s Foreign Ministry has, according to USA Today, asked Google if it could please have its village back.  The search engine company claims to be looking into the matter.

“We have received the request and are working with our partners to get more precise data for the region,” stated Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn.  “We’re constantly working to improve the quality and accuracy of our maps.  This is an ongoing process as we receive new information from third party data providers.”

So it looks as if Argentina may get to hold onto Villa O’Higgins for a while yet.  One interesting issue in all of this is the fact that Google recently opened its regional headquarters in Argentina.  Google also, as it so happens, appears to have selected Argentina over Chile.  But to be honest, this matter is, while interesting, probably entirely unrelated.

The Bank is claiming that expropriatory and discriminatory actions taken by the Argentine authorities caused the total loss of its investment in its subsidiary Scotiabank Quilmes, whose licence was revoked in August 2002.

The Bank filed a Notice of Arbitration today after the Argentine government failed to respond to three written requests from Scotiabank during the past 18 months to negotiate an amicable settlement. Scotiabank is now referring the dispute to arbitration under the terms of the Promotion and Protection of Investments Treaty signed by the Republic of Argentina and Canada in 1991. The arbitration panel will be comprised of one nominee from the Bank, one from the Government of the Republic of Argentina, and a third person agreed to by both sides.

This is the first time in the Bank’s 173-year history that it has made a claim of this nature, but a series of expropriatory and discriminatory actions taken by the Argentine government directly caused the loss of its investment and violated its treaty rights of fair treatment. As a result, the Bank and its shareholders experienced significant damages and as such it intends to vigorously pursue the right to compensation under the treaty.

Although full details of the claim are not a matter of public record, Scotiabank alleges that the Argentine actions violated the treaty protection against expropriation of investments without compensation and the protection against discriminatory treatment.

The expropriatory actions include:

– The mandatory conversion of U.S. dollar denominated deposits and loans into pesos at different exchange rates. Although the government promised compensation in the form of government bonds, Scotiabank Quilmes has never received the bonds.

Scotiabank also alleges the Argentine Central Bank discriminated against Scotiabank Quilmes by:

– Not permitting Scotiabank Quilmes to pay a medium-term note which came due, although it had the funds to do so. As a result, confidence in SBQ’s ability to meet its obligations was severely impaired.

– Not granting Scotiabank Quilmes financial assistance on the same basis as domestically-owned banks so as to make up for liquidity lost as a result of government actions and the economic crisis.

– Obstructing Scotiabank Quilmes’ attempts to restructure and reopen.

Scotiabank is seeking damages as compensation for the loss of its investment, the cost to it of winding-up Scotiabank Quilmes, and harm to its reputation.

WebProNews | Breaking eBusiness News
Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.

This deal makes the largest debt swap in history.

According to a Miami Herald article:

“Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna announced that 76 percent of all bondholders participated in the restructuring offer launched three years after Argentina’s record default — the largest by any sovereign nation.

The offer called for investors to be repaid around a third of their original investment, leaving them with some of the biggest losses by any bondholders in recent history. Argentina halted payment on the debt in December 2001 as the country descended into financial chaos.”

WebProNews | Breaking eBusiness News
Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.

“There will be no improvement, there will be no new swap,” stated Finance Secretary Guillermo Nielsen.

The International Monetary Fund would not comment on any details of Argentina’s debt offer, other than the fact that they would only consider it after review.

“Our view is that completion of a comprehensive and sustainable debt restructuring agreement with the creditors is critical for Argentina’s economic prospects,” said IMF spokesman, Thomas Dawson.

The country’s economy fell apart in 2001, and the government froze bank accounts which caused widespread rioting and ultimately caused the country’s then-president to resign.

According to a Reuters article,

“After three years in default with its private foreign creditors, Argentina is offering to swap $102.6 billion of bad debt held worldwide for up to $41.8 billion in new bonds.

In Rome, Italian Economy Minister Domenico Siniscalco said on Thursday that, if creditors did not accept the offer, it would ‘open an unprecedented scenario with international lawsuits’.”

WebProNews | Breaking eBusiness News
Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.

The news sites all have a similar appearance, but they are in seven different languages. They also are focused on the geographic region they serve.

It is a logical move on the part of Google and I expect literally a hundred or more geo-focused versions of Google News to launch over the next few years. This would include new english language versions, but serving countries such as the U.K. and Australia.

Here are the new versions just launched:

- Argentina
- Chile
- Canada Franais
- Mxico
- sterreich
- Schweiz
- Suisse

It’s obvious that Google sees much of their future revenue growth coming from expanding their existing search services to the rest of the world.

One interesting note, Michael Krantz of the Google Blog Team who announced the expansions used the phrase, “franchise operations”. Does this mean they are partnerships with others? Probably not, but I’m interested in finding this out.

Rich Ord is the CEO of iEntry, Inc. which publishes over 200 websites and email newsletters.

Rich also publishes his blog WebProBlog which focuses on internet business and marketing trends.

The rather attractive lady sitting next to me was typing away furiously and, when she had finished, I asked her what she was writing – I’m interested in learning how other people use the Internet… some people call that being nosey!

It turns out she was a “Blogger” and she was updating her web site through a web browser. She was really interested in vegetarian cookery and she was adding a new restaurant review to her blog.

If you spend any time at all online these days you simply can’t avoid reading something about blogs, they are becoming increasingly more popular; and they are a great way of building an online presence without the need for any technical knowledge. A blog is an abbreviation of the term ‘web log’ which is a relatively simple content management system.

Quite a few years ago, web surfers began collecting information and interesting links that they encountered during their online travels. As time passed they started to create logs of the information that they collected and they soon started to develop their own web logs. These web logs enabled them to update the information and links as often as they wished.

Blogs are more permanent than posts to an online forum or to a discussion list, they are much more dynamic than the traditional style home pages. They are also more personal than standard journaling, and definitely more public than diaries. A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person’s life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary site. So, there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

There are a few common characteristics of a blog, but there may be slight variations within the classification. Some blogs provide succinct descriptions of links within the chosen theme of the blog. Some others contain commentary and links to the news of the day. A few are endless stream of blurts about the writer’s day. Others are – political blogs, intellectual blogs, some are hilarious and some topic driven. They are all – Weblogs.

As mentioned earlier, blogs are posts that are short, informal and sometimes deeply personal no matter what the topic of discussion is. They can be characterized by their conversational tone.

If a person has a web presence but is disappointed with static homepage – if an elegant treatment of posts on a global platform is what they want, then blogging’ provides an ideal platform. They may also consider blogging if they are seeking feedback from their chosen audience.

Weblogs are definitely the mavericks of the online world. Two of their greatest strengths are their ability to filter and disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience, and their position outside the mainstream of mass media.

There are many different options available to the new and seasoned blogger alike. Some blog scripts are available for you to install on your own domain and these require at least a basic understanding of FTP and HTML. There are many hosted blog services available some free and some paid. If you are serious about blogging then I would strongly recommend that you use the best system that you can afford and that meets your needs.

I personally have used the “Moveable Type” stand-alone script and although quite complex to install, I found it very easy to use. My recommended choice of hosted blogging service would have to be the Blog4Cash.com system that includes a wide variety of high quality features and has a built in two tier affiliate scheme that enables you to generate a recurring income from all your referrals!

To learn more information about Link Building
& Link Popularity I strongly recommend that you visit

http://www.Link-Advantage.com