In addition to today’s Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for August 28, 2007:

Register non-English domain names with Webmaster Tools [Official Google Webmaster Central Blog]

By adding support for Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), Google now allows domains that do not use English characters to be registered with Webmaster Tools. Previously, non-English characters would return error messages. Workarounds that let website owners convert their non-English domains into Punycode are no longer needed. In addition, Google is automatically converting all domains registered in Punycode to their correct non-English characters.

Yahoo Asks Court in U.S. to Dismiss Suit Over China [The Washington Post]

Ya know… I keep going back and forth on this issue. On one hand I can see why people are upset. But on the other hand I see Yahoo!’s argument. If you do business in another country you have to follow their laws, right? I mean… we wouldn’t let international companies come into the U.S. and break our laws would we? I think the statement made by Yahoo! at the end of this article pretty much sums things up: “The real issue here is the plaintiffs’ outrage at the behavior and laws of the Chinese government. The U.S. court system is not the forum for addressing these political concerns.” What do you think? Did Yahoo! do something punishable by U.S. law… or are they simply caught up in the middle of a bigger, global issue?

Reminder: U.S. release of Microsoft Content Ads Beta on 8/29 [adCenter Blog]

A week ago Microsoft announced that adCenter users would be able to bid for ads on the MSN Network of sites. Tomorrow, August 29, every adCenter account will be upgraded to include the option. Hybrid ads will run on both Live Search and select sites in the Microsoft Network: MSN Tech & Gadgets, MSN Money, MSN Real Estate, and the Windows Marketplace. Redmond promises to roll out additional MSN pages and Microsoft sites over time. adCenter users who do not want their ads displayed on the Microsoft Network should log in to their accounts after tomorrow’s upgrade and opt out of “Content” ads.

Google Facebook App [Google Operating System]

One of the things I like about Facebook is the fact that my content is pretty safe from the prying eyes of search engine crawlers. But now someone has decided that we need to bring the search engines inside the Facebook wall… in a way. The Google Facebook App lets you do searches and share the results with your friends via the mini-feed. It also lets you browse other popular searches done by Facebook users. How many people outside of the search nerd community would use something like this? And I’m sorry… I just don’t feel comfortable inviting Google into my private Facebook space, regardless of the intentions.

Have a great night, all!  We’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning…