Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:

From Search Engine Land:

• Baidu Launches Blog Search Engine In China
  People’s Daily Online reports Baidu has launched a blog search engine in China yesterday. The blog search engine is the first of its kind in China. Yu Jun, a senior executive with Baidu, said the service was based on a database of billions of websites, including all the blogs supported by Chinese blog service providers and individual blog websites.
• Google China’s Co-President, Johnny Chou, To Resign
  The Pacific Epoch reports that Google’s vice president has officially announced his resignation on December 8th. He will be stepping down on December 31st as the Google China’s co-president, a position he held since October 2005. There is speculation that he is leaving because "Google did not support his localization plan."
• New England Patriots, Tom Brady, Sues Yahoo For Using His Image In Ad
  The Smoking Gun broke a story that New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, has sued Yahoo for using his "likeness, image and identity in its advertisements and promotions." You can see the ad from a Sports Illustrated September 2006 issue over here, promoting Yahoo Sports Fantasy Football.
• Terry Semel Knocks Blogs While Downplaying Yahoo Reorganization
  The other day, Danny reported Yahoo COO Rosenweig Resigns; Company Reorganization Announced, Techcrunch now updates us that Yahoo’s Semel Says No Layoffs, Sort Of. Check out this video interview.
• Google Begins Testing Audio Ads Within AdWords
  The Google AdWords blog announced yesterday that they have begun inviting advertisers to test out Google Audio Ads. There is a US based test going on, since the "integration is now complete." If you want to be part of this test, you can apply over here. After you get accepted, make sure to read the Guidelines for Audio Ads, describing you can use MP3 or WAV files, both 30 seconds long, no long periods of silence and only containing one ad (no sharing). More details on how this is working at the Google Help section of the audio site.
• Goodbye Chicago SES, Day 4
  The final day of the conference saw blog posts about the conference’s last three sets of sessions; some video interviews conducted by Lee Odden with Neil Patel and Cameron Olthius, Joshua Stylman and Peter Hershberg, Stephan Spencer, Gord Hotchkiss; and a retrospective of Day three, from the comforts of home, by Kim Krause Berg.

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere:

• Google sales force to move into larger building in Ann Arbor, Detroit Free Press
• Picasa now supports Vista, Googling Google
• Diggers Are Getting Paid – But Not By Kevin Rose, Deep Jive Interests
• Google Ready to Reshape Russia’s Market, Kommersant Moscow
• Yahoo’s Semel: The Press Is Full Of Sh*t, SeekingAlpha
• Google Cold Calling via Auto Dialer for AdWords Customers?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Refinements Applied to Site Command Search, Search Engine Roundtable
• Updated and Enhanced Web Research Tutorials Now Available from Intute’s Virtual Training Suite, ResourceShelf
• Possible Google Update Before Holiday Season?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Fire in Microsoft’s adCenter Data Center Brings Down Search Ads For Several Days?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Peeking Inside the Google Engineers’ Toolbox , SEOmoz Blog
• Could Google Maps Have Led Kim Astray?, Inside Google
• Viagra Spam hits US Colleges, SEO Montréal
• Trends in Search Related Patents, SEO By The Sea
• Japanese Address and Placename Support Added to the Geocoding API, Google Maps API Blog
• New Attribute Recommender for single items posts, Google Base Blog
• Israel’s Metacafe nears $300-mln takeover-report, Reuters.com
• Windows Live Custom Domains gets update, LiveSide
• How to Succeed in 2007 | Sergey Brin, Business 2.0
• Birds Eye Coverage update: Italy, UK, and US coverage expanded, Windows Live Local / Virtual Earth
• The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine Now Home to 85 Million Archived Web Pages, ResourceShelf
• AOL News and Broadcast Center, AOL
• Google advertising on AdWords?, Google AdWords Blog
• Google Online Assessments?, Google Blogoscoped
• Clusty Unveils Dynamic Clustering Search Tool for Iraq Study Group Report, ResourceShelf
• SES Chicago Day 3 Ends on a Surprise Note, Cre8pc
• Exclusive: Metacafe to be sold for USD 200 million, YNetNews
• Search Engine Strategies Chicago ’06 SER Coverage Recap, Search Engine Roundtable
• GrayWolf and Shoemoney on Arbing, Threadwatch
• Some SES Chicago Swag, Online Marketing Blog

Related Topics: SearchCap

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz