U.S. Justice Department

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer intends to keep the regulatory heat on Google as his company strives to lessen its rival's dominance of Internet search.

In an appearance Tuesday at a search engine conference, Ballmer said Microsoft believes Google Inc. has done things to gain an unfair advantage in the Internet's lucrative search advertising market. He didn't specify the alleged misconduct.

"We are expressing some of the issues and frustrations we see" with antitrust regulators, Ballmer said. "Sometimes (it's) unsolicited, sometimes because we have been asked."

The Google Books settlement is back. On Friday, Google and the author and publisher groups that originally sued over the search engine's massive scanning operations offered a revised version of the settlement.

Back in September, Google pulled the proposed settlement on the eve of a federal district court's decision on whether to approve the deal. While the deal faced blistering attacks from Google competitors, consumer and privacy groups, and the Open Books Alliance, it was serious concerns voiced by European governments and the U.S. Justice Department that forced reworking of the deal.

A judge has given Google Inc. more time to revise a legal settlement that has drawn government scrutiny because it would give the Internet search leader the digital rights to millions of out-of-print books.

Under a change approved Monday, Google and groups representing U.S. authors and publishers now have until Friday to change an agreement reached more than a year ago. It marked the latest twist in a copyright lawsuit that the authors and publishers filed against Google's digital book project four years ago.

Google Inc.'s quarterly lobbying expenses eclipsed $1 million for the first time during the summer as the company tried to build on its dominance of Internet search and expand into other markets.

The Mountain View, California-based company spent nearly $1.1 million trying to influence lawmakers and regulators in the third quarter, a 50 percent increase from the July-September period last year, according to a recent disclosure statement.

A federal judge set a Nov. 9 deadline Wednesday for submitting a revised agreement in the battle over Google Inc.'s effort to get digital rights to millions of out-of-print books.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin set the deadline after a lawyer for authors told the judge that Google and lawyers for authors and publishers were working around the clock to reach a new deal by early November.

The 10-year search-engine deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is under scrutiny. The July 29 deal between the two behemoths is being closely monitored by U.S. antitrust regulators, and both companies are in talks with officials in the European Union.

With the fate of its proposed $7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc. uncertain amid antitrust scrutiny, Oracle Corp. is moving ahead with a new product incorporating both companies' technology, and snubbing Hewlett-Packard Co. in the process.

Sun and Oracle unveiled a new database machine Tuesday built from Sun hardware and Oracle software.

After a flurry of last-minute filings, an American judge must now begin untangling the mountain of competing claims about how a legal settlement granting Google the right to create the world's largest digital library and bookstore would affect competition, authors' rights and readers' privacy.

A resort developer has obtained a court order requiring Google Inc. to help uncover the identities of anonymous contributors to an online newspaper that posted articles linking him to government corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Developer Cem Kinay of Miami accuses TCI Journal of causing "reputational damage and lost profits," according to a civil complaint filed in California. A court order tells Google to turn over data that may help identify users of the newspaper's account with Gmail, the Internet search company's e-email service.

Online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. is warning a federal judge that Internet search leader Google Inc. will be able to gouge consumers and stifle competition if it wins court approval to add millions more titles to its already vast digital library.

The harsh critique of Google's 10-month-old settlement with U.S. authors and publishers emerged this week in a 41-page brief that Amazon filed in an attempt to persuade U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to block the agreement from taking effect.