In the long browser wars, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been the leader. But the sentimental favorite was Mozilla's Firefox, mostly because it was faster, hewed better to Internet standards and offered an unmatched array of third-party add-ons that enhanced its functionality.

In recent years, however, Firefox has slipped. It lost its speed dominance to Google's upstart Chrome browser and to Apple's Safari. And as its rivals stripped down their interfaces to make more room for Web content, Firefox remained saddled with lots of toolbars and menus.

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A new memoir by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen is rewriting the history of one of the most storied partnerships in modern business, making clear that Bill Gates and Mr. Allen had a far more fractious and difficult relationship than is publicly known.

The book, written without Mr. Gates's support, also raises questions of who deserves credit for some early ideas key to Microsoft's successes. Its portrayal of events that happened decades ago, at the birth of Microsoft and the software industry, has created a major rift today between the two billionaires, whose relationship dates back to high school. Their friendship "is probably at very serious risk right now," said a person who knows both men.

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CareTech Solutions, an information technology and Web products and services provider for more than 150 U.S. hospitals, announced today at the Sixteenth National Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit, that Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, one of the largest integrated regional health care delivery systems in Wisconsin, selected the company to provide search engine optimization (SEO) services for its website www.mywheaton.org. This turn-key organic SEO approach improves Internet search results in search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo through the modification of code, design and navigation structure.

"Consumers' first stop for medical and health information is an online Internet search," said Ann Saqr, vice president, Marketing, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare. "Ensuring Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare appears at the top of specific Internet search results related to our organization and offerings, is critical when connecting with our patient community. By choosing CareTech Solutions, a leader in healthcare Web and Internet services, to manage our SEO, we guarantee our search engine dynamics are managed by industry experts in a real time manner."

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Google Inc.'s six-year struggle to bring all the world's books to the Internet suffered another big setback at the hands of a federal judge.

Judge Denny Chin, in a ruling filed in U.S. district court in Manhattan, rejected a 2008 settlement that Google forged with author and publisher groups to make millions of books available online. The 48-page decision concludes that the $125 million deal would give the Internet giant the ability to "exploit" books without the permission of copyright owners, echoing the U.S. Justice Department's concerns about the deal.

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Investor clamor around Web companies such as Facebook Inc. and Zynga Inc. is continuing to heat up.

Institutional investors have been competing to get into Facebook by purchasing shares of the company from Facebook employees, with the firm's blessing, according to people familiar with the matter. At least one large institutional investor has recently been turned away, said one of these people.

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Sen. John Kerry, a senior Democrat, and technology giant Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday backed the Obama administration's call for broad privacy legislation at a Senate hearing that also exposed hurdles to passing such a law.

"Modern technology allows private entities to observe the activity of Americans on a scale that is unimaginable, and there is no general law" governing the collection and use of that data, Sen. Kerry told the Senate Commerce Committee.

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Google Inc. plans to start testing a mobile-payment service at stores in New York and San Francisco within four months, letting shoppers use their phones to ring up purchases, three people familiar with the project said.

The company will pay to install thousands of special cash- register systems from VeriFone Systems Inc. at merchant locations, said one of the people, who requested anonymity because Google's plans haven't been made public. ViVOtech Inc., a provider of mobile-payment technology, will also play a role in the tests, which will include Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., one of the people said.

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EBay Inc., owner of the world's largest e-commerce market, lowered fees for the second time in a year to attract more sellers to its main site and boost a three- year turnaround.

Users may list for free as many as 50 auction items a month on the site beginning in April, the San Jose, California-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. EBay also will charge a smaller commission on items sold, beginning in July.

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BEIJING - Asia's major telecom operators scrambled Monday to eliminate the impact on their operations from damage to several submarine cables following the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Many operators were reporting some disruptions in Internet access, though the partial restoration of service was accomplished by rerouting traffic over undamaged cables and via satellites.

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Microsoft's long journey to revitalize Internet Explorer, and make it a competitive web browser against speedy upstarts like Google Chrome, finally reached its end tonight. A few hours ago, Microsoft made the final version of Internet Explorer 9 available on its Beauty of the Web site.

The official launch tonight marks the end to months of testing for IE9, which started with the beta release of the browser last September and continued with the launch of the first IE9 Release Candidate (the final step before a program's final release) in February.

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When it comes to social networks, Google has not managed to garland itself in too much glory. Critics suggest Google doesn't quite understand what makes people buzz.

And yet an interesting report has emerged that says Google might be using an event at SXSW this evening to launch--or, at least, preview--a new social network.

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Google Inc. (GOOG)'s share of searches in the U.S. market declined in February while that of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s Bing increased, according to research firm ComScore Inc.

Google had 65.4 percent of searches last month, down from 65.6 percent in January, Reston, Virginia-based ComScore said. Microsoft's Bing search engine had 13.6 percent, up about a half percentage point. Yahoo! Inc.'s share was unchanged at 16.1 percent.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Google's recent change to its search algorithm has dramatically shaken up the businesses of websites that moved up or down its search rankings. Sites whose rankings rose to the top found that their traffic and revenue soared -- but the adjustment had an equally devastating effect on those that were dropped.

The Online Publishers Association, a group of content producers comprising many of the Internet's largest properties (including CNN.com), estimates that the algorithm change shifted $1 billion in annual revenue.

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