Hamburg, Germany based Qype, a Yelp-like site that’s focused on European markets, has recently had long acquisition looks from both Google and Nokia, we’ve heard from multiple sources. A deal with Nokia in particular was looking extremely likely until recently.

The site was first launched in 2005 and today attracts 9 million monthly worldwide visitors, according to Comscore, just a little less than Yelp’s 11 million. Both likely have far more actual visitors, but Comscore is good for comparision – in December, for example, Qype told us they had 17.7 million unique visitors. A year ago the company brought in a new CEO and have been expanding rapidly across Europe.

One of the most potentially disruptive startups of the last ten years is emerging into the light this week. And I honestly don’t say that lightly.

Christian Lanng, a former builder of deep e-commerce and security services for the Danish government is co-founder of TradeShift along with a very hard-core team which includes John Bosak who created XML, who is on the board.

But what is perhaps most startling is the re-emergence of early Skype investor Morten Lund on the project. Lund was made famous in tech circles both for his early Skype investment but also for going personally bankrupt two years ago.

TradeShift, which has been operating under the stealth name of Porta till now, is aiming at a very, very big target.

It wants to disrupt how banks and credit card companies process payments between any kind of business, and use the Internet to do it.

LBi International, the global marketing and technology agency, is to merge with SEO and Internet marketing specialist bigmouthmedia, creating “Europe’s largest digital agency”.

The deal is deal worth around £100m (roughly $150 million), reports Econsultancy, with the two companies combining “to offer clients digital marketing, consulting and technology services wherever they operate, all under one roof.”

[Berlin] Germany’s leading online private shopping club, Brands4friends, has appointed ex-VC Olivier Schuepbach as Director of International & Corporate Development where he’ll be spearheading the Berlin-based startup’s international expansion.

Schuepbach, a native Swiss, joins from Wellington Partners, a leading pan-European venture capital firm where he was responsible for new investments in leading European startups.

As part of his new role, Schuepbach will be focusing on Brands4friends’ M&A business, suggesting that the company’s recent investment in UK-based Secretsales, which he led, could just be the start of a spending spree to expand into markets other than Germany.

[UK] It’s probably tricky to time these things to perfection, since Apple pulls the strings.

The UK Spotify competitor, We7, has had its iPhone app approved and is now available to download from the iTunes App Store. The problem is that the associated premium music subscription service, needed to run the app, doesn’t seemed to have launched yet.

Or at least that’s how it looks.

Smarkets, a startup which launched into private beta soon after presenting at our annual GeeknRolla event last year, has today launched publically.

Smarkets is a ‘social betting exchange’ which is launching initially with football/soccer bets covering UK football, the Champions League and the World Cup, but has plans to offer bets on the UK general election shortly. The idea is to bring a social and hightech mentality to the traditionally slow-paced industry of gambling. Better late than never I guess. It had planned to launch in late 2008.

The main competition Betfair is worth $3billion and there are other betting exchanges including intrade, tradesports, and betdaq. None are built around social elements.

[Ireland] It’s the type of scenario that keeps even the most seasoned entrepreneurs up at night. Your startup toils away for months on a new product or feature and – boom – a giant like Google comes along and walks all over it.

That appears to be the case for Dublin-based music video site, Muzu TV (see previous TCEU coverage), which today launched its new music video jukebox feature. A sort of Spotify-for-video, it’s not too dissimilar from Google-owned YouTube’s recent disco beta or ‘Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool’ to give it its full name.

The Muzu video jukebox offers up a search box in which users can type in an artist or track name, and instantly create music video playlists based on the results. Playlists can be edited and re-ordered in real-time, without interrupting the music, and there’s related artist recommendations built-in too, providing an element of discovery.

[UK] A new website launches in the UK today that uses “the power of group-buying to save consumers up to 90% off the best things to do, see, eat and buy.”

Sounds familiar? Yep, it’s yet another Groupon clone.

Only this time, Groupola.com is already making claims to be the biggest group buying site in the country. That’s because it’s launching simultaneously in 8 of the largest cities across the UK, including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

This makes it immediately standout from rivals such as Berlin-based MyCityDeal and Groupon itself, both of which have a UK reach currently limited to London.

Sometimes I despair of Europe, even though I’m proud of what can be achieved here. But really, guys, can we get it together?

At the same time the European Union is investigating a pretty flimsy anti-trust complaint against Google, it’s conspiciously ignoring a case in Italy where three Google executives have been found guilty on a ridiculous charge. Here is the bizarre story.

An Italian court yesterday convicted two current and one former Google exec in a trial over a video showing a teenager being bullied. The Google Italy employees were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing the video of bullying of a teenager with autism to be posted on YouTube Google Video in late 2006.

Despite the fact that Google removed the video within hours of being notified of its existence, Judge Oscar Magi (pictured) absolved the three of defamation but convicted them of privacy violations. The three executives have received a suspended six-month sentence, while a fourth defendant was acquitted. Google is appealing the sentences on their behalf.

Google has responded in a justifiably vociferous blog post calling this a “serious threat to the web in Italy”. Frankly they are right.

Mobile streaming video startup Qik has landed a significant distribution deal in the UK.

Vodafone UK customers will now be able to record and share videos from their mobile phone via Qik by texting ‘Qik’ to 97886 (free) to receive a link to the relevant app for their handset (standard data charges apply). Vodafone is the number two mobile network in the UK, behind O2 and ahead of Orange.

Once loaded, videos generated on Qik can be posted to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and users will be able to send video messages privately via SMS and email, or upload videos to blogging platforms like Wordpress, Tumblr and Blogger.

It remains to be seen how many customers will actually take up Qik however. However, live streaming video from a mobile has yet to take off here and it may well a deal like this to kick off mainstream take-up.

Is Spartoo beginning to look more and more like Zappos? The France-based company has just announced that they have acquired Sacby.com for €1 million – in order to further develop its online shoe retail business into the domain of handbags and feminine accessories.

With over 4 million monthly unique visitors, Spartoo has become one of the European leaders in online shoe retail. The site currently offers over 150 shoe brands and all purchases include free shipping and returns.

Recently a war has broken out in Europe about who will power online video for media owners. The two main players tussling it out are both from the US: Ooyala and Brightcove.

Last month Ooyala, a provider of video platform applications and services, and the UK’s Telegraph Media Group signed an agreement for Ooyala to power online video on the publisher’s websites and co-develop new technologies.

Today Ooyala is partnering with Middle East based social media platform developer H2O New Media, giving it distribution rights to Ooyala’s video platform, Backlot. It wil be used to stream video content from the growing Middle East television and media sector.

But (also today) Brightcove is fighting back.

In theory there would be a huge advantage to having a bookstore that was not locked to one device. Historically the music industry was caught on the hop when Apple launched the iPod. Because it could play non-DRM MP3s the iPod was the perfect companion to the Napsters/Kazaas of this world. That was a business for Apple, but not for the music industry, which later found itself locked into the the Apple store. Eventually online stores started offering DRM-free MP3s for sale, but the slow-to react music industry has not recovered since.

The same is true of books. Why lock down books to one device? But of course Amazon is trying to do exactly this with the Kindle. So it makes sense then to disrupt this again, with a service which syncs across platforms and devices. Step forward Kobo Books.

Kobo is a cloud-based book store, previously only available in the US but now launching in the UK.

[UK] Vouchercloud, a new iPhone app, hopes to make paper discount vouchers a thing of the past. The free app enables users to find the best offers local to them and have the associated ‘digital voucher’ delivered to and redeemable from their phone – off-line in brick ‘n’ mortar outlets as well as online via a traditional discount code.

Along with location (using GPS), vouchers can be browsed by category, such as restaurants, casual dining, shopping, entertainment or days out and so on, and ranked by distance.

Perhaps controversially, while the app is free with 100’s of vouchers that are also fee to use, Vouchercloud is offering a small selection of high-value premium offers, which users actually have to pay for. That’s right, you’re expected to purchase select vouchers that will in turn save you money – this is how Vouchercloud plans to get paid too.

The UK government plans to invest £200m into digital, biotech and advanced manufacturing businesses. It’s put in £100m into the pot, but the other £100m will come from the European Investment Fund. The money will be invested in technology businesses “where there are significant growth opportunities”.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the UKTI-organised Global Investment Conference today: “The fund, seeded by the government, is bringing private venture capital to growing enterprises. It is already providing £125m of funding to high-tech, low-carbon businesses. From today, a further £200m will be available for life sciences, digital and advanced manufacturing.” Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson said: “Private funds have matched the Government’s investment and money can now flow into promising technology companies.”

Technically speaking that brings the total UKIIF investment to £325m. The UK Innovation Investment Fund was announced last June.

TechCrunch Europe is plotting the next series of events we’re planning this year.

But we’re going to need your help.

We’re looking for speakers and startups to appear at our events, and we’re especially interested in new startups planning to launch (read on about why).

Meanwhile we’ve set up ticketing sites for you now so you can actually go and get early bird ticket prices right now. See below for details.

So far this year we’ve partnered with or created events in Istanbul and Barcelona for tech startups. The next series of events require YOU to get as involved as you can.

These take us to the Summer, after which we’ll be hitting other cities.

In all cases, here’s what we want:

[France] Only 3 months after its official launch and Leetchi has already scored funds from Kima Ventures and 360 Capital Partners.

The announcement is one of the first investments of Kima Ventures, the new seed fund of Jeremie Berrebi and Xavier Niel, which we covered last week. The investment will be used to develop Leetchi’s activities and reinforce the current 5-person team in France.

[Denmark] LBi International, the global marketing and technology agency, is to acquire TRIPLE Copenhagen, a 28-person strong digital agency based in Denmark whose clients include Rezidor Hotel Group, IKEA, Hotel Missoni, and DONG Energy.

The total purchase price will be determined on an earn-out arrangement. LBi expects this acquisition to be EBITDA and earnings accretive with immediate effect.

[Austria] Setlist.fm, a popular music service striving from Austria but operating from Liechtenstein, have released an API that enables developers to gain access to more than 96,000 concert setlists and a host of other concert-related data.

The site itself comes as a wiki-style free repository of a wide range of setlists, which are made shareable with a nifty and well-designed widget that keeps the spirit of a seemingly handwritten setlist.

[UK] Finding a parking space in major cities across the UK can be a nightmare. Now a new iPhone app from Manchester-based digital agency Stardotstar hopes to make things a little easier.

Nosey Parker enables users of Apple’s smartphone to find the nearest car park to their current position and the cheapest too.