In many technological aspects, Japan’s got America beat.  Hands-down, where-is-my-robot-butler beat.  Which makes me wonder about the implications of Yahoo’s continued success in that country.

For a while, it seemed like Google China was doing better – the company had partnered with Sina, bought a stake in Tianya, and received the Chinese government’s permission to provide content.  Now things don’t look so great – Baidu’s market share is up, and Google’s has gone down.

In what appears to be a very beneficial deal for both sides, Yahoo UK & Ireland will now sell the majority of Bebo’s display advertising.

It’s a safe bet that Google’s employees aren’t too happy; Yahoo has, for the first time ever, beaten them in the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey.

Over the past week or so, Britain has been hit by some really nasty flooding – the worst in 60 years.  Fortunately, no deaths or serious injuries have been reported, and it’s possible that Google helped bring about this positive outcome.

I once dealt with a stock photo site, and I had a pretty poor experience – its search engine returned either no results or a bunch of useless ones, depending on the query.  The site I visited was not BigStockPhoto.com, but BigStockPhoto’s new search engine nonetheless represents a huge improvement.

We all knew that online ad spending would rise, but according to a new report from Forrester Research, European budgets for this sort of advertising will double over the next five years.

When it comes to saving money, small amounts matter – spending a mere five bucks on lunch, five days a week, amounts to $1,300 per year.  In terms of saving energy, the same idea applies, and so Blackle – a dark version of Google – was born.

Yahoo has released the prototype of new service called Zurfer, and the oddly named creation is being touted as a location-based photo browser that works with Flickr.  But beware: “Yahoo! has warned users to beware of roaming coats, as Zurfer sends many of the photos over a phone’s internet connection.”

As Google UK moves to extend a preexisting ban, it would seem that the company’s not much for middle ground these days.  The ban will now involve advertising for all gambling-related sites, including those that don’t involve any real money.

In some markets, Google is getting trounced.  Take China and South Korea, for instance: the big guy just can’t win.  In other regions, Google continues to reign supreme, and the latest numbers from comScore confirm that Britain is willing to crown Google as king of the search engines.  Social networks also fared well in the UK.

Ah . . . the wonderful world of maps.  Only Yahoo’s making it more of “a world” (as opposed to just “an America”), and is also making some other improvements – 34 European countries, a pinch of accuracy, and a dash of speed have been added to Yahoo Maps.

UK SEO agency, Big Mouth Media announced over the weekend that they have merged with Euro online marketing firm Global Media, creating a company which is estimated in value between £100 and £200 million (reports vary depending where you read!).