The attorney general’s office has asked Google for information regarding Foundem, SourceTool/TradeComet and myTriggers, each of which have complained in the past that Google pushed them down its search rankings or reduced their appeal to advertisers.

As it did during the initiation of the European Commission antitrust investigation, Google on Friday highlighted connections between the complainants and Microsoft. Foundem, Google notes, is backed by the Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplace, an organization funded in part by Microsoft. MyTriggers and SourceTool/TradeComment are represented by Microsoft antitrust attorneys, Google said.

Microsoft has responded in the past that antitrust complaints usually do come from competitors.

In its blog post, Google said it recognizes that as it grows, it will face more questions about how its business works. “Given that not every website can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it’s unsurprising that some less relevant, lower quality websites will be unhappy with their ranking,” Don Harrison, deputy general counsel at Google, wrote in the post.

Google is cooperating with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, he said.

Foundem’s Complaint

Foundem, one of the companies that complained to the European Commission, has said that it believes it was essentially blacklisted from Google’s search results for a while because Google sees it as a competitor.

In a suit filed last year, SourceTool alleged that Google raised the prices it had to bid for advertisements by 10,000 percent. Its suit was dismissed because the New York court it was filed in said the suit should have been filed in California.

MyTriggers filed an antitrust suit against Google earlier this year after Google sued it for failing to pay a US$335,000 AdWords bill. MyTriggers says Google inflated the rate it paid for ads after it decided MyTriggers was becoming a competitive threat. Ohio’s attorney general has joined the suit against Google.

In addition to complaints referred to in Texas, earlier this year, consumer group Consumer Watchdog urged the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Google for antitrust practices.

While it’s difficult to know exactly what happened with each of the companies, the complaints seem to point to a couple of issues. “The theme, I think, running through this is the lack of transparency,” said Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence.

Google does make an effort to explain to companies how it ranks search results and it has a clear motivation to make its results useful, but it doesn’t reveal how its algorithms work. That means Google has sometimes made changes to its algorithms that have hurt some companies’ rankings, Sterling noted. Without being able to know how the algorithms work, those companies may struggle to recapture their previous rankings and could find their revenues significantly impacted.

But from Google’s point of view, “it’s a cat and mouse game,” he said. That’s because if Google reveals too much about how its algorithms work, sites will be able to game the system with the result that some sites with very little value will rise to the top of the rankings, he said.

Google’s Milestone

The lawsuits are an indication of how important Google has become. “It shows you how high the stakes are and how many people rely on Google as a fundamental marketing vehicle or as a driver of their revenue,” Sterling said. Even though the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal gives Bing nearly 30 percent of the market, that leaves Google with essentially the remainder. “Google’s importance and centrality to the whole ‘Net experience has created this enormous industry around ranking and placement and so everybody is trying to compete for position on Google,” he said.

The legal system is now tasked with examining this complicated network of interests. “Do the courts say, ‘Well, Google needs to disclose how it ranks things and give everybody access because Google is really a utility and needs to be regulated,’ or do they say, ‘Google has a right to protect the quality of its own users’ experience versus the spam or quasi-spam sites?’” he said. “It’s a difficult problem.”

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy’s e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

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Investigators with Ultrascan, a company that investigates credit card fraud and other kinds of online crime, were doing research on forums and systems used to sell credit card numbers, said Frank Engelsman of Ultrascan.

Catalog of Stolen Data

One analyst was using the ICQ instant messaging system where cybercriminals had set up an automated account to sell credit card numbers. Their ICQ user name was run by a bot, which automatically responds to certain commands.

Artwork: Diego AguirreA potential buyer for stolen credit card details sees a greeting: “Hello welcome to ICQ bot. Press ‘1′ for Russian. Press ‘2′ for English.” After pressing “2,” users get three selections: “1. Buy CVV, 2. Checker 3. Account,” according to a screen shot supplied by Ultrascan.

When CVV is selected, the buyer sees how many credit card details are available, sorted by country. From the screen shot, it was possible to see that some 19,046 U.S. card numbers are for sale, 7,843 from the U.K. and more from other countries such as France, Italy and the Netherlands.

After picking the Netherlands, the bot offered up the truncated details for four cards and the names of those cardholders, one of which was named “Armin Van Buuren.”

The Ultrascan researchers immediate recognized Van Buuren’s name. They bought his card details, and the bot returned the DJs full credit card number, the three-digit security code on the back of the card and the name of his bank.

Ultrascan contacted Van Buuren’s management agency in the Netherlands. An official at the management agency on Friday confirmed they had been contacted.

Saved from Scam

It’s not known if his credit card details were ever used, but Engelsman said cybercriminals typically do not “double sell” details. The details cost US$6, Engelsman said. UItrascan does not normally buy stolen credit card details but did in that case to prevent Van Buuren’s from being used, he said.

From the format of the data, it appears that a database of credit card numbers was hacked, Engelsman said. Credit card companies, retailers and other data processors have taken steps in recent years to shore up the security of their processing systems to prevent such attacks, but data breaches still occur.

Englesman said Van Buuren’s credit card company called Ultrascan on the DJ’s instruction, and Ultrascan informed the company of the problem. (See also “Identity-Theft Protection: What Services Can You Trust?”)

Van Buuren’s situation is hardly unique. Computer security analyst for years have warned how cybercrime has turned into an underground economy, with hackers stealing credit card numbers and offering them for sale in forums where other fraudsters that specialize in abusing financial details.

“Everybody can be a victim,” Engelsman said. “It doesn’t matter who you are.”

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com

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The service — called “Grace for Gadgets” — was thought up by the Rev. Lisa Vaughn, pastor of the Anglican Parish of St. Timothy in Hatchet Lake, south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She hopes it can help the church combat dwindling numbers in its parish by attracting a few nonbelievers and faithful techies.

Vaughn doesn’t claim she’ll be able to fix any problems will annoying apps, proximity sensors or overheating laptops. She’s blessing the person behind the technology.

She told The Globe and Mail, “It’s not just about ‘please don’t let my cellphone drop calls today.’ It’s about, you know, help me to be the best Christian, the best person I can be in my conversations, in my communication.”

In the past, some churches would bless tools for agricultural workers. Vaughn got the idea for “Grace for Gadgets” when reading about this old English tradition. The church’s event listing reads:

“The old-fashioned tradition of blessing working implements like plows, farm animals and other tools is less relevant to us today who live in the city. However, on Labour Day weekend … we’re going to have a blessing of high-tech electronic tools - things like cell phones, BlackBerries, netbooks, iPads, eReaders and laptops.”

Pastor Lisa Vaughn Photo Credit: St. Timothy’sVaughn seems to be a bit of a technology person herself. She told The Chronicle Herald that she has three laptops and three desktops in her house and plans to buy a smartphone soon, but isn’t sure which kind yet.

She uses Facebook, has a blog and plans to create a Twitter account for St. Timothy’s.

Christians need to embrace the Internet, although it presents challenges, she said.

“That’s where a lot of our folks are — they’re e-mailing, they’re texting. And if that’s where they are, that’s where we should be,” Vaughn told The Chronicle Herald.

The Vatican agrees. Earlier this year the pope asked priests worldwide to use social media as a way to spread the word of God.

Gadget blessings will occur during three worship services on Sunday.

I’m not sure the promise of a blessed gadget will attract many atheists. It could bring in a few people who aren’t regular church-goers or those who make only the biannual visits for Easter and Christmas. But the pastor is correct that the idea of blessing the tools of one’s trade does have a history in spiritual care.

Check out the full story and a video of an iPhone blessing at The Globe and Mail.

This is, apparently, what remains of Lala.com, a cool and innovative music-based social network Apple snapped up last December and quietly shuttered in May.

Ping is barely out two days the door, and already it’s already beset with controversy. First, there was that embarrassing public spat between Apple and Facebook prior to the announcement.

[ See also: How to murder a Flash cookie zombie ]

For whatever reason, Steve Jobs would not agree to the “onerous terms” demanded by Facebook (which he declined to enumerate), so Ping went out the door without any integration with the world’s largest social network whatsoever. But not before Apple had created press materials boasting about how you could log into Ping via Facebook Connect or find fellow Pingers on Facebook.

I guess Steve and Mark Zuckerberg aren’t Facebook friends anymore.

Now the problem is more practical: Turns out that Ping is a spammer-scammer’s heaven. By all reports, Ping users are getting dinged with the same kinds of URL-baiting comment spam we’ve grown so fond of elsewhere on the blogosphere.

Sophos Security blogger Chester Wisniewski asks quite rightly why Apple couldn’t see this coming:

“Most of the security industry has been pointing out the migration of spam from an email-only venture to blog/forum comments, Facebook, Twitter and other Web 2.0 platforms. But apparently Apple didn’t consider this when designing Ping, as the service implements no spam or URL filtering. It is no big shock that less than 24 hours after launch, Ping is drowning in scams and spams.”

What’s odd, says Wisniewski, is that Apple is filtering Ping for other offensive material (such as nude profile photos), but it forgot about spam. Or maybe Apple believes its users truly are the Chosen People and that, like malware, spam simply doesn’t touch them. It’s probably just those Windows iTunes Untouchables that are having the problems.

(Full Disclosure: I moved out of the Apple ecosphere when my iPod Mini gave up the ghost several years ago. I have not been back. The whole notion of living inside a closed box Apple has created (even with DRM-free music) just irks the hell out of me. So iTunes has no allure for me. Your mileage may vary.)

PC World’s Nick Mediati steps through Ping’s limited privacy settings. Unfortunately, there appears to be no easy fix for the comment spam.

Welcome, Apple, to the wild world of social media. We wish you and your Ping users luck — you’re going to need it.

ITworld TY4NS blogger Dan Tynan knows that Apple fanboys will roast him for dissing iTunes, so go ahead AFBs and do your worst. Catch his brand of juvenile snark at eSarcasm (Geek Humor Gone Wild) or follow him on Twitter: @tynan_on_tech .

For more computing news, visit ITworld. Story copyright © 2010 ITworld Inc. All rights reserved.

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The game’s coming to the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC for 2011. Gearbox Software is finishing development, after the demise of originator 3D Realms about a year ago, despite repeated commitments to revive the game. A version for the iPhone shipped last summer.

“I can’t believe it, either,” said Gearbox Software CEO and President Randy Pitchford in the livestream showing off the game. ” You guys [the crowd at PAX] are among the first people in the world to play it.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s totally real. We can’t let the Duke die.”

For more computer gaming news, visit GamePro. Story copyright © 2010 IDG Entertainment. All rights reserved.

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The folks at Quantcast, who measure mobile Web usage, have released some numbers showing platform-by-platform performance for the month of August. Bear in mind that the research doesn’t directly represent the number of devices being sold or activated; Quantcast simply measures mobile Web usage, nothing more and nothing less. One could certainly make the argument that users of some mobile platforms access the Web more often than users of others. Either way, the relative change from month to month gives us valuable insight into the overall trends and how they’re shifting.

So, here’s what Quantcast found:

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While Apple’s iOS is still the dominant player within the U.S. mobile market, you can see that it’s been on a pretty steady roller coaster ride downward in terms of share. Android, on the other hand, has been on a meteoric rise — in fact, August marked the platform’s largest single-month growth since November of 2009, when the original Droid debuted.

From year to year, Quantcast finds Android’s piece of the pie has increased by 17 percent while Apple’s has dropped by 11. RIM, not surprisingly, has also lost a good chunk of its share.

Quantcast’s data does not include iPad-based usage; as I pointed out yesterday, the inclusion of the iPad in a mobile market analysis is atypical and creates a nonparallel comparison. That said, Quantcast does include the iPod Touch in its measurements — also pushing the comparison away from a straight smartphone-based faceoff — but even that added boost hasn’t been enough to help Apple keep up.

(Another study released earlier this week, by the way, did take the somewhat unusual step of lumping the iPad into its mobile market measurements. That may explain some of the differences in its findings; one would certainly imagine iPad users would consume considerably more Web content than their smartphone-holding counterparts. That study also looked at global usage as opposed to U.S.-specific usage.)

Hang on, though: Apple’s share is still twice that of Android’s, right? Some will undoubtedly use that logic to pooh-pooh the stats. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s all about the trends. Month after month, quarter after quarter, we’re seeing the same story: Apple is losing ground while Android is gaining. It’s starting to add up.

Back when we were looking at the same trend in June, some commenters suggested that the debut of Apple’s iPhone 4 would turn things around. True Apple fans were waiting to get their hands on that device, they contended, and once it was released, Apple’s share would skyrocket.

Unfortunately, that just didn’t happen; despite Apple’s best efforts at mudslinging, the iPhone 4 has done little to keep people from gravitating toward Android. Sure, the company has sold lots of units — there’s no denying that — but when it’s primarily the existing customer base buying a new product, the overall share doesn’t shift.

Let me toss in the usual disclaimer: Market positioning doesn’t equal financial success. Apple is still going to be fine. Its legions of fans will continue to snatch up whatever it puts out.

But in terms of relative share — which is obviously something Apple wants to discuss — it’s going to take an awful lot of “magic” to overcome Android’s attack.

Sorry, Steve.

JR Raphael writes about smartphones and other tasty technology. You can find him on Facebook, on Twitter, or at eSarcasm, his geek-humor getaway.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright © 2010 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Huawei IDEOS will carry a SIM-free price tag of between US$100 and $200 depending on where it’s bought. Huawei is currently in active negotiations with a number of carriers keen to offer the Google-branded device. The phone is set for “commercial launch” in mid-October in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

The Huawei IDEOS Android smartphone offers 3G HSDPA connectivity as well as 80.11n Wi-Fi. This, explained Nicola Philbin, Huawei’s director for terminals, UK and Ireland, offers web connection speeds up to six times faster than standard Wi-Fi. The phone also supports 3G tethering, allowing it to act as modem for a laptop to connect to the web where a Wi-Fi or Ethernet broadband connection is not available.

The Huawei IDEOS smartphone sports a 2.8in QVGA capacitative touchscreen, has a 3.2Mp camera, Bluetooth A2DP and 512MB of internal memory. Running a Qualcomm 528MHz processor, the IDEOS handset has its own media player and accepts microSD cards up to 32GB.

The Huawei IDEOS was co-developed by Google and the Chinese hardware manufacturer and is effectively a successor device to the high-end Nexus One smartphone that Google co-developed with HTC. While the Google Nexus One showcased the Android 2.1 clair version of the mobile operating system and was pitched against the likes of the Apple iPhone, the IDEOS is a mass market handset thats natural rivals are the HTC Desire and Legend.

Preinstalled applications include Google Talk, Google Maps and the Android Market app download service. Since the Huawei IDEOS is equipped with the newest version of the Android OS, it will support the ability to run applications stored on a microSD card, deftly getting around the limitations of the handset’s 512MB internal memory.

The HTC Desire handset was the first device on which the Android 2.2 Froyo upgrade was offered, having originally been sold as a 2.1 clair smartphone. HTC and its partners have come under fire for the tricksy upgrade path for the HTC Desire, caused in part by the Vodafone 360 and Samsung TouchWiz user interfaces overlaid on the standard Android interface.

The IDEOS handset will be available in blue, black, purple or yellow versions. The front of the smartphone is black, though largely dominated by its bright, responsive capacitive touchscreen, while the rear has a colourful backplate and is branded ‘with Google’. It is named the IDEOS because of its industrial design, evolutionary status and its innovative operating system. These elements, Huawei believe, fit neatly with its company philisophy of a “simple device; smarter world”.

More PC news and reviews at PC Advisor. Story copyright © 2010, PC Advisor. All rights reserved.

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Chrome 6, which Google released into its “stable” channel — the upgrade mechanism for the production-quality version — also included patches for 16 vulnerabilities and another crack at fixing a Windows kernel bug that affected the browser.

“The last couple of years we’ve been focused on speed,” said Brian Rakowski, Chrome’s director of product management. “A lot of things have changed in the last two years [in browsers], but the one thing we’ve learned is that speed matters. It’s something Google’s always believed in and it resonates with people.”

One analyst isn’t so sure. “Speed is absolutely important,” said Sheri McLeish of Forrester Research. “But it’s really just a horse race, with whoever comes out with the latest release generally the fastest.”

Speedy Development

Google introduced Chrome on Sept. 2, 2008, and set rivals scrambling to match its speed, particularly in JavaScript rendering, and then later, to mimic its minimalist user interface (UI) design.

Chrome 6 is three times faster at parsing JavaScript than the 2008 debut, Rakowski claimed.

“That’s a pretty big deal,” Rakowski said, “but we have a lot more speed improvements to come.”

Hardware acceleration is one performance enhancer that Google is just beginning to show to developers. Rakowski promised end users would see it soon.

Browser hardware acceleration shifts some tasks from a PC’s main processor to its graphics processor to boost performance, especially of graphics-intensive chores like rendering video or complex three-dimensional objects. So far, Google has included it only with developer builds of the open-source Chromium project, but the company will begin feeding the feature to Chrome — first to the browser’s dev channel, then as is its normal practice — to the beta and stable builds.

Chrome for Windows and Mac will both see hardware acceleration, although through different technologies. Rakowski was unsure whether the Linux edition would see the feature as well.

Chrome 6 also sports a minor UI makeover, with some elements shifted — the bookmark icon has been moved to the right of the address bar — and others compressed. Chrome now sports a single menu, down from two earlier, that hides all but the most basic browsing command, such as page forward, page backward and page reload.

“Chrome did up the ante,” agreed McLeish, “and kept others on their toes. They simplified the user experience, changing the browser interface to be consistent with the Google brand.”

Influencing Rivals

Mozilla has redesigned its UI for Firefox 4 to more resemble Chrome’s, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) will likely take the same path .

“We’ve been known for our simplified UI,” said Rakowski. “And we’ll continue to clean up the visuals.”

Chrome 6 also boasts enhanced sync that lets users synchronize extensions and autofill entries between copies of the browser on different machines. Previously, the tool synced bookmarks, passwords, preferences and themes only.

Google plans to pick up the upgrade pace by releasing new versions of Chrome every six weeks or so. “We’ll be updating much more frequently to a more regular and quick cadence,” Rakowski said.

At that pace, Chrome will refresh significantly faster that its rivals. Mozilla’s Firefox, for example, issued just one major update during 2009, and hopes to up that to two releases this year. Microsoft’s IE, meanwhile, refreshes about once every two years.

Chrome 6 included fixes for 16 security vulnerabilities , eight of them rated “high,” four as “medium,” and four “low.” None were ranked “critical,” Google’s highest threat indicator in its four-step scoring system. Google paid out $4,337 in bounties for six of the 16 bugs.

The browser also included a second fix for a Windows kernel problem that was declared solved in mid-August.

Chrome has already met the goal the browser’s engineering director set a year ago when he said Chrome would own 5% of the market by September 2010, and 10% by September 2011. According to the latest statistics from Web metrics company Net Applications, Chrome had a 7.5% share in August.

But McLeish was unimpressed with Chrome’s progress. “I wouldn’t call that an overwhelming success,” she said. “They’ve been aggressive in their expectations, but 7% in two years is rather slow for something the size of Google.”

Not surprisingly, Rakowski saw it differently. “We think the [adoption] pace has been astounding,” he said, adding that Chrome now has some 70 million users worldwide. “We’ve been really happy to be highly regarded by the people in the know. The next challenge is breaking into the mainstream.”

Chrome 6 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from Google’s Web site. Users already running the browser will be updated automatically.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com .

Read more about browsers in Computerworld’s Browsers Topic Center.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright © 2010 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

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When asked if the U.S. military requested this action, AAFES spokesperson Judd Anstey said, “No, sir.” This decision, Anstey said, comes from the AAFES. “No one requested it. It was a determination made by this entity, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service.”

The person ultimately responsible for the decision is Major General Bruce Casella, the commander of the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, who said in a statement that “out of respect to those we serve, we will not be stocking this game. We regret any inconvenience this may cause authorized shoppers, but are optimistic that they will understand the sensitivity to the life and death scenarios this product presents as entertainment. As a military command with a retail mission, we serve a very unique customer base that has, or possibly will, witness combat in real life.”

Preorders from a GameStop at an AAFES will be transferred to the nearest off-base GameStop location. The situation grows a little less clear when it comes to used copies of Medal of Honor once a soldier wants to trade in the game at a GameStop on an AAFES installation.

“Since the game’s not been release yet, we’re still working through those details,” Anstey says. “Certainly, this is exclusive to the newest incarnation of the game.”

We also contacted GameStop and Medal of Honor publisher EA for comment.

Anstey says that the AAEFS is part of the Department of Defense but that it doesn’t receive tax dollars — revenue comes from sales at its exchanges.

The game also drew criticism from the British Secretary of State for Defense, who urged a wholesale ban on the latest edition.

This isn’t the first time questionable material has been made unavailable on military bases. In 1996, Congress passed the Military Honor and Decency Act, which bars the sale of “sexually explicit material.” It was challenged on First Amendment grounds, and the U.S. appeals court upheld the law in 2002.

For more computer gaming news, visit GamePro. Story copyright © 2010 IDG Entertainment. All rights reserved.

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