Internet search

In a loss for Google, Verizon Wireless on Wednesday selected Microsoft to provide portal, local and Internet search as well as mobile advertising services. The five-year agreement will begin in the first half of the year, with Microsoft Live Search available on new Verizon Wireless feature phones and smartphones.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said mobile search and mobile advertising offer tremendous opportunities for innovation and growth. As he sees it, Microsoft is in a unique position to deliver a fully integrated, voice-enabled solution for Verizon's customers.

Todd Pierce recently put his job on the line.

To meet the computing needs of 16,300 employees and contractors at Genentech Inc., Pierce took a chance and decided not to rely entirely on business software from Microsoft, IBM or another long-established supplier that would have let Genentech own the technology. Instead, Pierce decided to rent these indispensable products from Google Inc.

Conversations about innovation typically begin and end with megatrends: the invention of the microprocessor, the discovery of carbon nanotubes, Google's algorithms for Internet search. But some of the most important advances are born deep inside the manufacturing supply chain and are never seen by consumers, even though they transform products we use every day.

Can Googling delay the onset of dementia?

A new UCLA study, part of the growing research into the effects of technology on the brain, shows that searching the Internet may keep older brains agile -- it's like taking your brain for a walk.

It's too early to conclude that technology will help vanquish Alzheimer's disease, but "our study shows that when your brain is on Google, your neural circuitry changes extensively," said psychiatrist Gary Small, director of UCLA's Memory & Aging Research Center.

Microsoft Corp. is no longer interested in buying all of Yahoo Inc., CEO Steve Ballmer said Wednesday, though he told shareholders that the company would still be "very open" to a collaboration on Internet search. His comments sent Yahoo shares diving more than 20 percent.

"Let me be clear," Ballmer said at Microsoft's annual shareholder meeting. "We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo."

The anything-but-average Mark Cuban is in the spotlight -- again. But this time, it's not for his vocal behavior during basketball games.

The serial entrepreneur and business tycoon, who currently owns the Dallas Mavericks and is one of the finalists to buy the Chicago Cubs, is in hot water for insider trading, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has filed a civil lawsuit against Cuban.

Perhaps the biggest threat to Google Inc.'s increasing dominance of Internet search and advertising is the rising fear, justified or not, that Google's broadening reach is giving it unchecked power.

This scrutiny goes deeper than the skeptical eye that lawmakers and the Justice Department have given to Google's proposed ad partnership with Yahoo Inc. Many objections to that deal are financial, and surround whether Google and Yahoo could unfairly drive up online ad prices.

Credit card companies know what you've bought. Phone companies know whom you've called. Electronic toll services know where you've gone. Internet search companies know what you've sought.

It might be reassuring, then, that companies have largely pledged to safeguard these repositories of data about you.

But a recent federal court ruling ordering the disclosure of YouTube viewership records underscores the reality that even the most benevolent company can only do so much to guard your digital life: All their protections can vanish with one stroke of a judge's pen.

Google Inc. backs Yahoo in its effort to stave off an unsolicited takeover by Microsoft Corp. because an independent Yahoo will increase competition in the Internet search and advertising markets, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said here Thursday.

"We absolutely support the decision that Yahoo made" in rejecting the Microsoft overture, Schmidt said at the annual Allen & Co. media summit at this Idaho resort. He made the comments during an hourlong interview with reporters. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were also present.

Bill Gates, who walked away from full-time work at Microsoft last month, was perhaps the foremost applied economist of the second half of the 20th century.

Gates and Microsoft fundamentally shaped how people think about the behavior of modern markets in which technology plays a central role.

Under Gates, who co-founded the company, Microsoft also challenged the conventional wisdom about competition, business strategy and even antitrust law.

Now, in the early years of the 21st century, Google is the company prompting a rethinking of assumptions.