The "Windows Vista Capable" lawsuit took another step toward trial—or settlement—Tuesday when US District Court Judge Marsha Pechman denied Microsoft's request for dismissal. The suit was filed in March by a pair of miffed PC buyers.

Google was set to launch late on Wednesday a beta version of Google Desktop search for Linux in a sign of encouragement by the search giant for Linux on the desktop. [...] Although Google has released other projects as open-source software, where it can be freely modified and redistributed by anyone, Google Desktop for Linux is proprietary.

The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into Google's business activities after complaints from three European companies. The companies, which offer services similar to Google's, believe that Google actively demotes their rankings in its search results because they are competitors.

1. Google can be your phone book. Type the person's name, city and state directly into the search box, Google will deliver phone and address at the top of the results. This feature works for business listing too.

Google can also work as the reverse directory; if you have phone number, type in the search box, and google will deliver the results that matches the phone number.

Google has finally released a long-awaited native Linux application: Google Desktop for Linux. As with the already shipping OS X and Windows versions, Google Desktop enables Linux users to search for text inside documents, local email messages, their Web history, and their Gmail accounts. [...] Google Desktop for Linux is based on Google's own desktop search algorithms.

Most Firefox users don't realize that Firefox's current existence is owed almost exclusively to its search partnership with Google wherein Mozilla Corp receives a portion of ad revenue from Google queries initiated from Firefox's search bar. This revenue amounts to tens of millions of dollars.

Google has been slowly, but surely, displacing Microsoft as the number one PC technology company. Google has done it by misdirection. Instead of taking Microsoft head-on in desktops, Google first consolidated their hold on Web search and only then started moving into Web-based desktop applications.

This week Google announced a “forecast” feature in Google Insights for Search. Essentially it’s a new function that looks at the search history (popularity) of a term and tries to predict what the future trend for that term will look like.

Considering its market share in search and advertising, how and why Google is able to avoid more severe antitrust scrutiny, considering IBM's and Microsoft's run-ins with anti-monopoly commissions around the world, is unknown.