Yahoo!News reports that “Quaero, a European consortium developing new search engine technologies, is ramping up recruitment of researchers.  Although some of the consortium’s research activities have already begun, the starting signal for much of the work came on March 11, when the European Commission said it had no objections to the French government giving Quaero €99 million (US$157 million) in state aid.  Until that contribution, representing about half the project’s budget, received approval, some labs were unable to recruit needed staff, said Quaero project leader Pieter Van Der Linden.   ‘There was no certainty. The publicly funded research labs weren’t allowed to take on anyone at all. Now, the different organizations and companies are building up their staff and preparing a big kick-off for the team at a meeting in mid-May,’ he said.”

CNet News reveals that “

[a] prominent Senate Democrat on Wednesday said federal and local police should use custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity, and he wants to spend $1 billion in tax dollars to help make that happen.  At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it’s ‘pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation’ simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders.  The software, dubbed ‘Operation Fairplay,’ was developed two years ago by Special Agent Flint Waters in the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office, who, by Biden’s description, is considered an expert in the field. The application is currently being used by all of the regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces nationwide and internationally, Waters told the panel.”

Internetnews.com points out that “[o]nline auction powerhouse eBay today showed impressive first-quarter results, evidently proving successful in shrugging off a series of changes that some industry watchers had feared would cut into the company’s growth.   eBay posted first quarter revenue of $2.19 billion, a 24 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. The quarter’s take led to a net income of $460 million, or $0.34 per share — above previous guidance on both accounts.  Minus one-time charges, the company’s quarterly income would have totaled $0.42 per share, it said — topping analysts’ $0.39 per-share estimates, according to Thomson Financial.  Company executives credited the strong performance to 19 percent growth in net revenues from eBay’s Marketplaces unit, which alone accounted for $1.5 billion in revenue.”

BusinessWeek has a good article today entitled “Something’s Fishy About This Yahoo-Google Deal.”  The publication doubts that a two-week test of outsourcing Yahoo’s search to Google will lead to a wider deal between the two companies, saying that Yahoo’s “moves are getting so transparent that you have to wonder how effective they are.”

The International Herald Tribune writes that “[o]fficials defended China’s efforts to stop rampant copying of movies and other goods, saying Thursday that 4,322 people had been convicted of product piracy last year and promising special efforts to protect Olympics-related trademarks.  ‘The Chinese government has taken concrete steps and its success is there for all to see,’ Yin Xintian, a spokesman for the State Intellectual Property Office, said at a news conference. In an annual report, the agency said the authorities had seized nearly 76 million pirated movies, software discs and other goods last year and shut down 13,170 piracy-oriented businesses.  Yin said courts had convicted 4,322 people of product piracy, though he said he did not know what penalties they had received.  Officials said they were making special efforts to prevent unlicensed use of Olympics-related logos and other property ahead of the Beijing Summer Games in August.”