Never mind that, at their closest tips, Canada and Europe are over 1,500 miles apart; in Yahoo’s mind, they’re pretty much one and the same.

It’s Friday, and odds are that you wish it was Saturday.  Or that you weren’t at work – it usually amounts to the same thing.  And although the powers of time travel and transportation are beyond me, there are some Google-approved maps that focus on faraway places.

The Accoona search engine first launched in 2004 with a proprietary artificial intelligence technology backing its query engine.

Business is booming for Baidu – the Chinese search engine has reported its second-quarter revenue and net profit, and both figures have doubled (and then some) since last year.  Unlike Google’s earnings, this beats analysts’ forecasts; Baidu’s stock price shot up as a result.

It seems the European Union is all too quick to question Google’s dominance and probe its acquisitions, but is there a huge conflict of interest to consider?

Though Firefox usage has reached only 18 percent of the US market (quite the rise, actually), the browser is gaining much more ground in Europe, and the latest version is outpacing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7.

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.

I’ve often wondered about the members of Google’s legal team.  How many are there?  What sort of people are they?  And do they work 168 hours per week to keep up with the avalanche of lawsuits?   I still don’t know the answers to all those questions, but in regards to the first one, a new report indicates that many more specialists will soon join up.

Well, it’s (more or less) official: should Google ever decide to take over the world, most of us will be willing to aid it.  The results of a new study confirm that, in certain European circles, the search engine giant is regarded as an ideal employer.

LG’s recent Google phone (the KU580) received a small amount of buzz – perhaps proportional to the area in which it was launched.  Now there’s word that a YouTube phone is on the way, yet it may be a while before the device reaches American shores.

A Google phone will soon arrive.  Unfortunately for many WebProNews readers, it will not (yet) arrive in America.  And unfortunately for everybody, it doesn’t incorporate any breakthrough features or technology.

I think pretty much everyone is aware of Britain’s BBC, but France Televisions, a public national television broadcaster, may not be as well-known in America.  Now France Televisions is in talks to join the European version of YouTube, though, so perhaps its profile will rise.

Rumor had it that Baidu would expand into Europe.  Now the Chinese search engine company has announced that it will not, and this reversal has caught more than a few people by surprise.

Just a few days ago, Baidu announced its intentions to expand into Europe.  Now its stock price is up, and its reputation is going down; things could be worse, but this isn’t exactly an ideal state of being for the Chinese search engine.

Google’s Street View has met with mixed reactions; some people like it, while others worry about matters of privacy.  Still, while Street View is completely legal in the U.S., a recent discussion indicates that the service might not go unchallenged in Europe.

Baidu owns a huge share of the Chinese search market, despite attacks from Google and Yahoo.  That success is likely due to its home field advantage.  We may soon find out how Baidu will fare outside the Great Firewall, however, as reports indicate that the company may expand into Europe.

Online payments company Paypal has received a banking license in Luxembourg and will move its European operations there.

The popularity of Second Life continues to see solid growth and has established a major global presence. The virtual world game has now become more popular in Europe than it is in the U.S. according to a study released by comScore.

This past week, The Today Show has been running its annual “Where in the World is Matt Lauer?” segment.  Matt traveled to five different countries (including the U.S., which seems like cheating), but Yahoo’s got him beat: Yahoo oneSearch just went “live in beta” in six.

Lobbyists, on the whole, have a pretty bad reputation.  They’re regarded as a rather shady group of people; one of the main headings in a Wikipedia article is “corruption concerns.”  Draw your own conclusions, then, about this bit of news: Google wants to hire lobbyists throughout Europe.

Google hasn’t had much luck in Europe holding on to its Gmail trademark, but we haven’t heard much in the way of a challenge in the US. A petition for cancellation filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office shows that it certainly hasn’t gone unchallenged.