Elizabeth Montalbano

Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates shared his company

A firm that holds patents for technology used in Internet voice calling is suing search giant Google Inc. for US$5 billion over its Google Talk instant-messaging client, according to court papers. In an e-mailed statement from Google spokesman Steve Langdon, the company said it believes the lawsuit is "without merit" and plans to fight it.

Microsoft Corp. may be cooking up a major Internet partnership to rival Google Inc.'s newly bolstered relationship with American Online Inc. (AOL), according to a blog posting by a Microsoft manager.

There will be an increase in mobile malware in 2006, which could cause extensive damage to mobile devices because only a small per centage of mobile users run security software, according to McAfee Inc.'s security research lab.

Several of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows platform products have achieved a Common Criteria certification of 4+, a rating that bolsters their profile among government and other vertical-market customers that have high-security needs for IT products, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

The wait is over for the Firefox faithful, as the Mozilla Foundation released the new version of the browser as planned Tuesday. Firefox 1.5 is available now at www.getfirefox.com and www.mozilla.com.

A California Superior Court judge has approved a settlement in which Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison will pay US$22 million in legal fees to end a four-year-old insider trading lawsuit, according to one of the lawyers who brought the original case against Ellison.

Microsoft Corp. next month will begin shipping the first major update of its Great Plains enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite since the software was rebranded under the Dynamics moniker. The new software, called Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0, will be generally available in English-language versions on Dec. 19, with versions in other languages to be released in the first quarter of 2006, a Microsoft executive said.