Google on Wednesday said it was moving into new Microsoft territory, launching a new Web-based software program that offers Web site collaboration tools called Google Sites, which will compete with Microsoft's SharePoint software. Sites will become part of Google's applications suite, which includes email, word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software, and a daily calendar. Like these other products, Sites will be free and requires no installation, maintenance or upgrades. Microsoft's CFO Christopher Liddell said SharePoint has become a $1 billion per year product. Small potatoes for a company the size of Google and Microsoft, right? As part …

The latest version of Microsoft's Windows Server operating system, released Wednesday, incorporates features that launch Microsoft into the virtualization market, territory belonging to market leader VMware. Virtualization is one of the fastest-growing segments of the software industry because it breaks up the traditional computer of one piece of operating software per machine. With virtualization, one computer can run several operating systems, allowing one machine to conduct two to three times as many operations as a machine running one OS. Instead of offering virtualization as a separate product, Microsoft is building the technology into its core operating system, …

The launch of Qtrax became a byword for "fiasco" when the company announced itself to the world as a free ad-supported music file-sharing service with the blessing (i.e. licensing) of all the major music labels. It turned out that Qtrax hadn't officially licensed anything from Big Music, and so the music pretender's launch turned into a disaster. Allan Klepfisz, the company's CEO spoke about "the launch that wasn't" at the Digital Forum East in New York City. It's hard to imagine how a company could launch saying that key licenses were in place when they were not, …

Microsoft was handed another hefty fine by the European Commission on Wednesday for failing to comply with EU court's 2004 antitrust ruling. The software giant will now have to pay $1.35 billion for charging "unreasonable prices" through Oct. 22, 2007 for access to technical specifications software writers need to develop programs for Windows and other Microsoft products. The Commission deemed this to be a monopolistic practice, and fines were handed out for 488 days of noncompliance with the EU ruling. This is the highest amount the Commission has ever charged for an antitrust case. Microsoft was found …

Sony yesterday said it was opening up its in-game advertising platform in an attempt to boost ad spending in video games. The move creates an open, competitive marketplace for third-party ad sellers like Double Fusion, IGA and Google's AdScape to sell ads in games running on Sony's PlayStation 3 video game console. < Ad network providers like IGA strike deals with third-party publishers like Electronic Arts, Activision and Ubisoft to deliver dynamic ads to run inside their games. Sony and Microsoft both have internal sales forces to sell ads in games they produce in-house. The move to ramp …

CNET provides one explanation for the presumed drop-off in ad spending on Google.com, as indicated by yesterday's comScore report: Financial services firms cut back on search spending in January as a result of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates. LendingTree, one of the Web's biggest advertisers said it reigned in spending because the rate cuts were driving record traffic to its Web site. Feeling the heat of the consumer credit crunch, lenders were happy to scale back on their marketing spend as they drove greater natural traffic. Indeed, signs of slowing growth in financial services spending hasn't appeared …

Google's stock plunged 5 percent yesterday following comScore's report that paid clicks in January were flat year-over-year, an alarming drop-off when you consider that paid clicks were up 37 percent in October. The comScore data is a stark reminder that search is not immune to a recession. Instead, comScore says Yahoo posted a 15 percent year-over-year increase in paid clicks. Meanwhile, Hitwise General Manager Bill Tancer says that in a recession, search engines would be sending less traffic to retail sites, but according to Hitwise data, the percentage of traffic sent to retail sites from Google …

There are a number of ways to interpret comScore's Google data, and not all of them are bad. Click fraud and a growing number of advertisers sending users to pages that contain nothing but AdWords links have caused the search giant to filter out more clicks that don't lead to conversions for advertisers. Meanwhile, the comScore data itself points out that the total number of Google queries in the U.S. rose 53 percent in January from a year ago, compared with a 49 percent rise in December. Google has become more concerned with increasing the effectiveness of …