Google unhappy over MSN Search

Google is upset with Microsoft for using MSN Search as the default search engine integrated search bar for Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7), reports The New York Times.

Google says the move is similar to Microsoft`s embedding Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player into the Windows operating system in the 1990s, which landed Microsoft in hot water.

Google fears that by making MSN Search as the default search engine inside IE 7, Microsoft will take away search volume and ad revenue from Google. However, Daily Tech says it should be noted that Firefox and Opera both use Google as their default search engine and that Microsoft has made it as easy as three clicks to set Google as the default search engine within IE 7.

The digital music player market is expected to double in size by the end of the decade with Apple continuing to dominate, according to research firm In-Stat.

According to an In-Stat report, shipments of players will jump from 140 million units last year to 286 million units by 2010, driven by falling prices, growth in online music stores, enhanced functionality and increasing flash memory capacities.

Beta News reports that despite the falling prices, Apple still leads the pack. In-Stat says Apple continues to dominate the market for MP3 players and competitors continue to face significant challenges such as device and software integration, and the `cool factor` associated with Apple`s iPod line of products.

The eBay VOIP unit has announced a USB speakerphone and a PC-less WiFi phone for Skype in a bid to push the free service deeper into business markets, reports Information Week.

The USB speakerphone is the first of a planned series of Skype-approved devices to be developed by Polycom and Skype. Netgear`s Skype WiFi phone is a wireless device, also developed jointly with Skype, that enables Skype users to use the VOIP service wherever they have secured or open access to WiFi networks.

Skype estimates that only 30 million of its 100 million subscribers are business customers.

Sun Microsystems is expected to announce today that the next version of its Solaris 10 operating system due in June will include the long-awaited 128-bit ZFS file system as well as several bug fixes and other new features, reports eWeek.

Sun says users will not have to automatically change all of their file systems to be ZFS. Instead, the company says most customers will probably have a mixture of the existing UFS (Unix File System), some ZFS and some Veritas File Systems.

Solaris ZFS 1.0 brings a number of advances on current file systems, including end-to-end data integrity where a combination of "checksum" and transactional copy-on-write mechanisms are used to make sure data is correct.