Search engines step up European ops

[NFFC]

California-based Google, whose search engine has stomped all over the opposition, is to open an Amsterdam office, while AltaVista has won new contracts across Europe, as internet technology companies look for new pastures.

Article here [netimperative.com]

[rencke]

Very, very interesting. Thanks NFFC - WebmasterWorld's surfmaster par excellence.

“We aim to offer services in 25 languages,” explained Brin. “A Russian version is coming next,” he added. The company also plans to tailor Google services to East European and Baltic languages.

The battle to capitalise on new European markets has also just seen AltaVista win three new clients, licencing its 3.0 Search Engine to Turkish ISP Superonline.com, Polish portal Gazeta.pl and Icelandic directory service Torg.is.

I wonder if there is a complete list somewhere of European search engines licensing from Google, Altavista and others. Just the other day, we found out that a Hungarian portal has licensed Google and Altavista pops up in all sorts of places. This would be useful knowledge.

[NFFC]

A more indepth look at AltaVista's plans here [europe.thestandard.com]

"...the technology certainly appears to be keeping the cost of the expansion low, whether the firm gets traffic or not. AltaVista has 35 employees in Europe. Swedish competitor Scandinavia Online has a staff of 400"

Some more great stuff here [europe.thestandard.com]

"The Baltic, Benelux and the Iberian peninsula may have more to offer the US than Europe's Big Three...by looking at Europe as a patchwork of economic regions, rather than as a group of individual countries, an interesting map of digital development emerges"

[rencke]

Again, very very interesting. Can you mail me your bookmark file? How much do you want for it?
Hey, all Europeans. I know you are there. Read NFFC's links.

But: "At present, though, Yahoo and MSN lead in most markets."
Hmmmm.... I don't think that is true. From what we have gathered here so far it seems that a purely local engine, oftentimes tied to the nation's leading phone company and/or ISP is the leader.

>AltaVista has 35 employees in Europe. Swedish competitor Scandinavia Online has a staff of 400"
I wonder if AV isn't making it a bit too easy for themselves. I have business dealings with SOL and have been to their offices. Lots of people to be sure. But I doubt if their search engines have much more staff than AV. SOL also runs leading portals with news and content and God knows what. Like this one:
[passagen.se...]

[louponne]

Entirely OT:
<http://www.passagen.se>
wow that's a really nicely designed portal!! Could you give us the SOL homepage and any other portals they run?

[rencke]

Sure:
[sol.dk...] in Denmark with Kvasir.dk as SE
[sol.no...] in Norway with Kvasir.no as SE
[suomi24.fi...] in Finland with Evreka.fi as SE and the one you liked:
[passagen.se...] in Sweden with Evreka.com as SE

SoL is by far the biggest single player in the Nordic area as far as search engines and portals are concerned. Very few of the current 10 million Nordic online population (50% of total pop.) has not visited these sites at least once.

The present Scandinavia Online is the result of a merger of Internet interests between Schipsted (a huge media company in Norway) and Swedish phone giant Telia's Infomedia Interactive division in Sweden. It is a fairly big operation with 400 employees. I take this from memory. One of their top managers is a frequent contributor at WebmasterWorld under the nick "Mikkel". If you see this Mikkel and if any of the above is wrong, please feel free to correct me.

The corporate homepage is in English and is found at
[scandinaviaonline.com...]

Evreka.se wrong. Changed to Evreka.com

Edited by: rencke

[louponne]

thanks, rencke!