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Forget antitrust claims. There’s a world of difference between today’s announcement and Microsoft’s takedown of Netscape in the late 1990s. Microsoft is not the dominant vendor in the antivirus market. It won’t be bundling the product with the Windows operating system. Neither will it force anyone to use the application. There’s just no case to be made.

If past is prologue, I’m sure some commercial antivirus makers will argue that their products remain qualitatively head and shoulders above anything Microsoft could make in the security realm. Even if that were true, it doesn’t matter. The economy’s on all fours and times are getting worse. Some bozos may still be ordering $200 bottles of wine for dinner, but most folks are into saving their dimes.

Credit John Thompson for having impeccable timing. Of course,Louis vuitton Watches, the timing of his resignation announcement as chief executive officer from Symantec was purely coincidental, falling just one day before Microsoft dropped an A-bomb on the antivirus security market. But better lucky than good.

The only real surprise is that it took Microsoft this long to reach this point. But it’s in line with the company’s practice of offering for free the features that other application makers charge for. Let’s remember that back in the Stone Age, companies used to sell things like word processors and spell checkers. Know anybody in their right mind still paying for that functionality today? Those companies–if they still exist–have long moved on because those businesses dried up. You can get that stuff (and a lot more) as part of Windows.

In that budget environment,OMEGA Watches, “free” is going to ring a special bell.

Microsoft’s move to kill its Windows Live OneCare PC care and security suite and replace it with free consumer anti-malware software is a big deal for the likes of Symantec, McAfee, and the other antivirus suppliers (though nobody’s going to say that on the record). Competing against free is always a tough sell, and this is no exception.

McAfee released on Tuesday the results of a monthlong spam experiment. The security company provided 50 people worldwide with a clean laptop armed only with antivirus protection (no anti-spam protection) and a brand new domain for e-mail. McAfee then asked them to surf the Net and blog about their experiences.

Over the course of 30 days, McAfee’s test subjects accumulated 104,000 spam e-mails, or roughly 70 spam messages per day per recipient. Put another way, 87 percent of all the e-mail captured on the test laptops was considered to be spam.

Within the first 24 hours, the individuals received their first spam e-mail in the S.P.A.M. (Spammed Persistently All Month) Experiment.

I spoke with Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications for McAfee Avert Labs, about the experiment and the results. Listen now:

Download today’s podcast

Brian Ussery, a technologist at an interactive marketing agency who moderates a Google forum on SearchEngineWatch.com, wrote a recap of the talk on his blog and has made the presentation available in PDF form.

The gist of the presentation is that Google’s flat management structure fosters innovation and good ideas get percolating faster with Web-based apps that allow engineers to find information and collaborate.

However, the real meat is in the screen shots. Marked “confidential” and “proprietary,” they are so detailed I feel like I’m seeing something I shouldn’t. (In a comment on Google Blogoscoped, which posted some screenshots and other information from the presentation, Ussery explains: “This isn’t a leaked document, the webcast encouraged sharing and provided the pdf.”)

Naveen Viswanatha, lead sales engineer for Google Enterprise

A new Googler has offered a rare glimpse into the process by which the search giant turns ideas into products.

There are screen shots of e-mails dubbed “Product Snippets,” in which engineers tell each other about their weekly activities. The e-mails are then compiled into a searchable database. There’s a “Google Ideas” application where Googlers can read about what other people are working on and offer comments and ratings.

Here are some screen shots:

Another important tool is Google’s intranet search engine, “Moma,” which lets employees search for everything from available conference rooms and lunch recommendations to the employee handbook and time cards. The application is integrated with Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar and Docs.

(Credit:
Google) (Credit:
Google) (Credit:
Google)

(Credit:
Google)
Naveen Viswanatha, lead sales engineer for Google Enterprise, gave a presentation on Tuesday as part of a webinar entitled “Innovation @ Google: a Day in the Life” hosted by KMWorld.

Which was charming of him, so much so that Alina has now chosen to reveal details of how the deal enjoyed closure.

Alina would like to see her benefactor again. And she promises that if he agrees to see her, she won’t make him pay. I think she means “not for the sex, anyway”.

So, perhaps in an attempt to prove how significant computing is in modern life, she auctioned her virginity on a German Web site.

The best bid she managed to secure came in at 8,800 pounds, or just over $13,000.
The bidder, a 45-year-old Italian man, came through at the last minute by doubling the leading price.

However, unlike Natalie Dylan, the American who claims to have secured bids of $3.7 million for the privilege of deflowering her (although no deeds seem either to have been signed or done), Alina did not attract offers in quite the same region.

Alina Percea, 18, needed to pay for a computing degree.

Oh, and for breakfast, Alina had a morning-after pill.

May I leave you with one final twist to a story that neither Danielle Steel nor Mills and Boon nor Stephen King would have dared even to outline?

Isn’t it lovely how the Web can sometimes create the perfect conditions for romance to have a chance?

As for the act itself, well, Alina says they had sex just the once (after all, he was 45) and apparently had breakfast the next morning “just like any other couple.”

The Daily Mail quoted her as describing her first impressions: “At the arrivals lounge, a man came over, smiled, handed me a box of chocolates and said: ‘Welcome to Venice.’ He looked much younger than 45, short, but nicely dressed, with dark hair, green eyes and a kind smile.”

You will be moved to hear that she did, indeed, enjoy it. She was flown to Venice to meet her fairly decent proposal.

Forgive me if I didn’t mention it, unprotected sex was part of the deal. Of course, the gentleman had a certificate to prove that he was STD-free.

(Credit: CC Zoonabar/Flickr)

So it all started, as memorable days should, with a pleasant surprise. Alina admitted she was hoping for something of a “Pretty Woman” scenario.

The man took her site-seeing in Venice and didn’t happen to mention whether he was single, married or just a little odd. He had booked them into a five-star hotel for the consummation of the transaction.

“Ads are important,” Ito said. “It’s always harder to add ads later. So we’re launching with them in Japan.”

(Credit:
Joi Ito)

Digital Garage invested in Twitter as part of the localization arrangement.

He pointed me to a site that aggregates the most frequent location of Twitter posters, and, at least in the 24 hours between April 21 and April 22, there were more Tweets made from Tokyo than from any other city in the world.

In fact, according to the site, there were more than twice as many Tweets from Tokyo (28,874) as from New York (14,367) or San Francisco (14,348). Of course, if you add up all the English-language cities, Japanese is far behind English, but Ito’s point is well taken.

According to Ito, Twitter Japan will have Toyota as one of its first advertisers. The
car giant will have its own Twitter feed, and its ads will direct people to that feed. Users will be able to opt in for the feed.

To launch with ads is an interesting choice for Twitter Japan, especially given that the English version doesn’t have them. However, there have been rumbles in recent days–denied by Twitter, that ads are coming.

I was curious how kanji might affect Twitter’s traditional 140 character limit on the Japanese site, but Ito pointed out that Japanese is already a dominant language on the existing site.

In a conversation Tuesday evening, Joi Ito of Digital Garage, the Japanese company Twitter tasked with some of the Japanese localization, told me that Twitter decided to launch in Japan with ads from day one.

Twitter Japan launched Tuesday night California time. The site included ads from the get-go in a bid to get users to accept ads right away. The English language version doesn’t have ads.

And no wonder: There is no clear path for Twitter to make even a dime off its consumer English-language site. And, as Ito suggested, it is much harder to convince a user base to accept ads after the fact than from the beginning.

In addition to being a co-founder of Digital Garage, Ito is also a venture capitalist, the current CEO of Creative Commons, and, among other things, the founder of a very influential World of Warcraft guild.

“The idea is to get companies to have Twitter feeds,” Ito said.

In the end, then, it will be interesting to see if Japanese Twitter users turn to Twitter Japan and accept the ads, or whether they’ll stay using the main Twitter site.

Twitter Japan launched Tuesday evening California time, and unlike the English-language version of the popular microblogging site, it will feature ads from the get-go.

A joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic EV Energy plans to begin production of lithium ion batteries next year and move to full-scale production in 2010. Using the battery, Toyota plans to introduce a small electric vehicle for mass production.

Toyota disclosed on Wednesday its plug-in hybrid production plans at a company-sponsored environmental forum in Tokyo, where it outlined its greenhouse gas reduction and clean-technology plans.

Toyota’s Prius, numbering a million sold, uses a nickel metal hydride battery. Lithium ion batteries, which are heavily used in consumer electronics, are being built into an upcoming generation of hybrid-electric and plug-in hybrid
cars.

Toyota Motor plans to produce lithium ion batteries next year for a plug-in hybrid vehicle available in 2010.

The company on Wednesday said that the plug-in hybrid will be “geared toward fleet customers in Japan, (the) United States, and Europe.”

The company, which also continues to invest in fuel cell vehicles, recently began a lease program in Japan.

Later in the month, Toyota plans to establish a research-and-development center for next-generation batteries that outperform lithiom ion batteries.

Overstock.com has filed a lawsuit challenging a New York law that expands the state’s requirements for online retailers to collect sales taxes.

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, tax commissioner Robert Menga, and Paterson are named as defendants in the suit filed with the New York State Supreme Court.

CNET News.com’s Anne Broache contributed to this report.

About two weeks ago, Overstock announced it was cutting ties to its New York-based affiliates because of the new law. The discount online retailer said it told its more than 3,400 affiliates that as of Sunday they would no longer be able to provide advertising for the company.

The Utah-based company announced Friday that it is asking the court to issue an injunction and declare the law unconstitutional.

Amazon, which filed a similar suit in April, has said it plans to abide by the law and begin collecting New York state sales taxes.

In April, Gov. David Paterson signed a new law requiring companies that pay New York-based entities for “directly or indirectly referring customers” to their retail business to collect sales taxes from New York-based customers. The new law goes into effect Sunday. It’s an attempt to get around a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Quill v. North Dakota case that says retailers aren’t required to collect sales taxes from customers who live in states where the businesses don’t have a physical presence.

“I am confident of our position in the suit,” said Mark Griffin, Overstock.com general counsel, in a statement. “The applicable United States Supreme Court cases on the question of whether the state can collect taxes under these circumstances make it clear that New York cannot constitutionally require Overstock.com to collect these taxes.”

Also, a new report from security services provider ScanSafe finds that companies are at increasing risk of having employees inadvertently download backdoors and password stealers onto corporate computers from Web sites that have malicious software hidden on them. One company in ScanSafe’s focus group faced a nearly 500 percent greater risk of exposure to those threats in September than in January of this year, according to the report.

It should come as little surprise that the iPhone 3G would help boost profits for AT&T. The phone company’s decision to sell the phone for a subsidized price of $199 has likely helped boost sales. The previous version of the phone was not subsidized, initially costing AT&T customers $499.

Security alert
Microsoft issued a rare out-of-cycle patch for a vulnerability in the Windows Server service that handles remote-procedure calls that allows programmers to run code either locally or remotely. In issuing the patch, Microsoft warned that “it is possible that this vulnerability could be used in the crafting of a wormable exploit.” The vulnerability could result in a remote code execution, in which malicious attackers could take control of a user’s computer to launch code.

Microsoft rates this patch as critical for Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and as important for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It also affects versions of
Windows 7, prebeta in limited release.

Part of Yahoo’s core problem today is the weakening online advertising market–in particular, ads for autos, finance, real estate, and travel. Another part is that Yahoo is more exposed to that trouble than its top rival, Google, whose stronger results afford it some of the breathing room Yahoo lacks.

But not everyone loves the iPhone. Intel executives have decided to start including the iPhone as one of their prime examples of smartphones that don’t run “the full Internet” because they don’t use an Intel chip. This specious argument–that ARM-based chips aren’t man enough to run the Internet–is nothing new from Intel, but the decision to highlight the iPhone as part of that argument is.

There’s more evidence of a direct correlation between the recent stock market declines and increases in targeted cyberattacks, according to a recent PandaLabs report.

However, in a blog posting, the head of Intel’s low-power efforts threw his fellow executives under the bus in admitting that Intel’s current low-power x86 processors don’t even come close to matching the power consumption numbers–a vital design parameter in smartphones–of those made by ARM’s partners, which are used in smartphones like the iPhone and more than 90 percent of all the mobile phones in the world.

The G1 smartphone, also known as the HTC Dream, is now available to consumers at retail outlets in cities where T-Mobile’s 3G service is available, including Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, and Seattle. The company made its first retail sale of the G1 Tuesday evening in San Francisco.

For instance, while the U.S. stock market saw declines between September 1 and October 9, the volume of malware threats grew, doubling to more than 24,000 per day between September 8 and September 10 alone, and to more than 30,000 per day on September 16.

The recent malware spikes could be due to the fact that cybercriminals now have fewer possible targets with the consolidation in the banking industry, and the perception of instability in the financial community could be causing panic, even within the cyberunderground, PandaLabs said.

Call of the smartphone
Apple wasn’t the only company basking in the iPhone’s glory. AT&T’s profits were up 5.5 percent in the third quarter, thanks in large part to the popularity of the iPhone 3G.

Companies in the energy sector are at greater risk from Web-based malware than other industries, the report concludes. The energy sector, worldwide, faces a 189 percent higher risk of exposure from workers visiting sites with malware on them than other industries, followed by the pharmaceutical and chemicals industry, construction and engineering, and media and publishing.

Ten years ago, Apple and Yahoo were in very different financial situations.

Also of note
Sources at an Internet search company have spotted the tracks of an Apple device with a screen larger than an iPhone, but smaller than a MacBook, in their visitor logs…Microsoft said Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will come sometime between February and April of next year…Intel expects a crush of ultrathin laptops from PC makers in 2009 and unveiled cooling technology to make sure these svelte air-flow constrained designs stay cool.

Apple had hit rock bottom and was trading for a few bucks a share, while Yahoo was the Internet darling at the height of the Internet boom. In the past couple of years, they quietly exchanged places, and their earnings calls this week bore that out clearly.

Compounding all this, of course, is the specter of Microsoft’s attempted acquisition. Yahoo rejection of Microsoft’s $33-a-share offer now is more notable, given that Yahoo’s stock has dropped to nearly $12.

While the Apple-Intel love-hate fest was going on, T-Mobile USA made the formal, nationwide launch of its G1, the first phone to run Google’s Android operating system.

Any company has two ways to improve profitability: increase revenue or decrease expenses. With advertisers’ purse strings tightening, the latter option rises to the fore. That 10 percent expense cut is significant, to be sure, and Yang said in an internal memo about the layoffs that “having layoffs is very difficult, particularly in light of all we’ve experienced this year.”

Apple’s fourth-quarter profit soared past expectations on extremely strong sales of the iPhone, but revenue was a little light.
iPhone sales were astonishing during the quarter: Apple sold 6.9 million iPhone 3Gs during the quarter, which was far more than analysts had been anticipating and more than the total number of original iPhones sold in a year.

Meanwhile, the picture at Yahoo is not so rosy. The Internet search pioneer reported a 64 percent drop in net income for the third quarter, issued cautions about a weakening advertising market, and confirmed that the company plans to lay off at least 10 percent of its workforce. With 14,300 employed at the end of last quarter, that means at least 1,430 are losing their jobs in 2008. And CEO Jerry Yang indicated that there could be further cuts in 2009.

The iPhone now accounts for 39 percent of Apple’s business, having generated $4.6 billion in revenue on sales of 6.9 million units during the quarter. Those numbers, however, are not included as part of Apple’s official quarterly results because of the way the company chooses to account for the sale of each iPhone. If Apple treated the iPhone like it does the Mac, it would have recorded an additional $3.8 billion in revenue and an additional $1.3 billion in net income during the company’s fourth fiscal quarter.

Saying Apple’s iPhone business “had become too big to ignore,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a rare appearance on the company’s earnings conference call to explain just how much money the iPhone is dumping into Apple’s coffers. For the first time, the company used supplemental financial details to give some color on the contribution that the iPhone could be making to Apple’s bottom line, if iPhone sales were handled like
Mac sales, and the numbers are astonishing.

You knew this was going to happen eventually–Bill Gates prepares to step away from full-time work at Microsoft and suddenly he is on the slippery slope to the poor house.

Buffett, who runs a holding company whose stock price closed up Wednesday at $139,000 per share, announced in 2006 that he would give away the lion’s share of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At that time his personal fortune was valued at $44 billion. In the past year, Microsoft’s stock price has seen fluctuations but is pretty much in the same place it was 12 months ago, while Berkshire Hathaway’s stock price has increased more than 25 percent.

Gates plans to step away from full-time work at the software giant in July to focus on his charitable foundation.

Google this!

Well, maybe not the poor house, but he has lost his position as the world’s richest man, a title he’d held since 1995. The new world’s richest man is Gates’ friend and investment mogul Warren Buffett, according to Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, which was released Wednesday. The magazine estimated Buffett’s worth at $62 billion, and Gates’ fortune not too far behind at $58 billion. But that doesn’t mean he only slipped one notch: Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecoms tycoon, came in second with an estimated worth of $60 billion.

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

There were rumblings last year that Gates’ hold on the top spot might be slipping when various media reports estimated Slim’s net worth at $67 billion.

Censorship by those folks at NBC who would prefer you to watch what they want you to watch and, most specifically, when they want you to watch it.

Ah, NBC has heard my pleas and an overlay has appeared to tell me that we are watching a men’s road race. The overlay, however, only stays on for a few seconds. Then it disappears again. So now I must rely on the official NBC Olympic online commentary.
Here is the latest:

So this commentator is telling me he has no idea who is winning, no idea who is second, no idea who is third, and no idea of the time differences between the riders.

Free from the tyranny of NBC TV and happy in the otherworldly bosom of NBCOlympics.com.

No, not censorship by the Chinese.

We think? We think? This might be a U.S. assault on Iran. And all they can say is “We think”?

Well, here I am live on a Friday night, freely watching NBCOlympics.com, and witnessing the quite glorious sight of a Chinese cyclist trying to mend his bike.

I continue to ponder these words, watch the struggling bottom of the Iranian cyclist, and listen to the echoing nothingness that accompanies these besottingly shiver-making live images.
It is as if NBC has hired John Carpenter to direct their online Olympic coverage.

Looking beneath the screen, I see that his name is Zhang and he is in 135th place. Who knew there would be that many riders in this, um, race over some sort of distance along misty roads that resemble London at six o’clock in the morning (except that there are no drunks visible)?

They cannot get a handle on the data. They are out of control. We have a situation here, people.

It looks to me as if his back wheel has suffered a case of the bends.

Wait, wait.

Meanwhile, the NBC livestream commentary is now telling me this: “Apologies for the data stream in the play-by-play window. We are trying to remedy the situation.”

No, I don’t think they are four feet, eleven inches down. I think those are minutes and seconds. But all I can hear is the silence of a few rubber tires passing through a tunnel.

Here’s what is strange about NBC’s online coverage: I have no idea what I am watching. Yes, I have clicked on the commentary, which takes the form of a live blog stream–except that the writer is endearingly honest about his predicament.

“The leading pursuit has shed some riders as they press towards the finish line 4′11″ down on Patricio Almonacid.”

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

This is how he has just spoken to me in writing: “The first time up the major climb of the finish circuit has substantially damaged the peloton, but we are still waiting on names and time gaps.”

No voice is there to lead me through my bewilderment. No words of wisdom help to create excitement. Just the vague whistle of a spoke in the wildnerness. This is the live NBC Olympics.com experience.

And I can barely wait to see what he will do with the Romania versus Kazakhstan women’s handball game.

I am sure that you were fearing censorship at these Beijing Olympics.

If this commentary had appeared on NBC TV, the commentator in question would have been removed from his post quicker than persons of color and Mongolians have been asked to be removed from the bars of Beijing by the authorities. This commentator would have been sent to televisual Siberia.

The scrolling commentary has political news: “Iran, USA detente at the head of the main peloton as Iran’s climber Hussein Askari takes a flyer and is joined by (we think) USA’s Jason McCartney.”

The riders, however, ride on. To the muted shouts of spectators who bang thunder sticks against the roadside barriers, as if they were praying for Kobe Bryant to miss another free throw.

(Credit: CC Tama Leaver)

I am tired, however. This has been live, uncensored (by NBCTV) online footage from the Olympics. I am comforted to know that I will slide beneath my comforter still a free man.

The Beijing Olympic mascots. One from the right, The Tibetan antelope. Really.

There is a wonderfully eerie quality to the live online footage of this Olympic Some Sort of Cycle Race Along Roads.

The picture quality is quite spectacular. The mist is so real it could not possibly have been photoshopped in there by the Chinese authorities to provide some extra menacing ambience. This makes YouTube seem like student video. (Which I know some would contend it is.)

The Fisker Karma will be a luxury plug-in hybrid sedan the company intends to start selling in the fourth quarter of 2009 to North American customers with an expected price of about $80,000.

In an interview with CNET News earlier this year, Henrik Fisker said that the company intends to follow the Karma with a sedan that will cost about $40,000.

The two companies are also in a legal battle; Tesla has accused Fisker Automotive CEO Henrik Fisker and a colleague of stealing company information when they did design work for Tesla.

In addition to announcing its manufacturing partner, Fisker Automotive revealed a few more specifics on the Karma, which the company started test-driving earlier this year.

The Fisker Karma luxury sedan, a plug-in hybrid with a 50-mile range on battery alone.

(Credit:
Fisker Automotive)

Fisker Automotive on Monday said that Valmet Automotive of Finland, which makes the Porsche Boxster and Cayman, will manufacture the Fisker Karma.

Fisker Automotive projects that sales to European customers will be in 2010 and that annual production will be 15,000
cars.

The Karma will have a range of 50 miles from a custom-built lithium-ion battery. The full range, using both its gasoline tank and battery, will be more than 350 miles. Fuel efficiency will be over 100 miles per gallon for extended drives.

Top speed will be 125 miles per hour, and acceleration will be 0 to 60 in less than six seconds.

The news of a manufacturing partner comes a few days after rival Tesla Motors started production of its all-electric, $100,000 Roadster.