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That's the question asked by New York Times scribe Miguel Helft in a recent blog post. Helft noticed that the online mortgage loan company Lending Tree was busy suing Mortech, one of the companies that provides its Web technology.

For quite some time now, Google Maps has offered commuters a chance to check out traffic congestion on highways leading to their destinations. Just click on the traffic function, and Google Maps will color-code the big freeways according to how smooth the sailing is; the spectrum varies from green, for "floor-it-down-the-road," to red/black, for "if this were your carotid artery, you'd already be dead." Now, for certain select cities, Google (GOOG) has decided to do the same for major surface streets as well.

When an anonymous and unpleasant gossip-monger set up a Blogger account and dedicated it to calling New York City model Liskula Cohen a psychotic, whoring skank, Google (GOOG) just wanted the whole thing to go away. It didn't, of course; Cohen sued Google to get the name of the defamer. Once again, Google tried to stay out the fray, neither offering up the name nor opposing the suit but merely promising to abide by the court's decision. That didn't work, either, as the smear artist hired a lawyer and fought the decision in court.

Looks like Google's (GOOG) plan to digitally archive the entire body of human knowledge has hit yet another snag. Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO), and Amazon (AMZN) are all set to oppose the Google Books project, adding considerable firepower to the growing army of critics who want the Justice Department to scuttle the deal Google cut with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

In the last 20 minutes, Facebook has gone silent, leaving avatars and life-deficient netizens everywhere gnashing their teeth; just read your Twitter accounts to see the frustration. This is the second time this month that Facebook has been disrupted. A few weeks ago, a horde of Russian nationalists allegedly mounted massive denial-of-service attacks against a Georgian blogger, which had the ancillary effect of blacking out Facebook around the world.

While Google's (GOOG) epic battles with Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), the federal government, and librarians around the world may change the course of human history, we know you really just want to know more about people who use Google to call models nymphomaniacal prostitutes. And today we are proud to say we can deliver!

First Google (GOOG) rolled out Caffeine, a new amped-up experiment in real-time search. Now Google has introduced another gizmo that has the tech world chatting. Two days ago, the company began adding social gadgets to its iGoogle customized search page, and the gadgets have become available gradually all this week.

Yes, we know: Google's (GOOG) already about as fast and accurate as you need it to be. That's what all the customer surveys show. But Larry, Sergey, and the rest of the GooglePlex geeks will never stop until they've built the perfect search engine. And two days ago, they unveiled a beta version of their latest creation: Caffeine.

When some less-than-brilliant folks decided to cruise Air Force One around lower Manhattan last April, New Yorkers promptly flipped out like clockwork. And the Air Force was watching their every move, at least on the Web. According to the Associated Press, Air Force officials monitored Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube posts, in order to assess the public reaction to the Air Force One debacle.

So far, the smart money has said that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt's resignation from the Apple (AAPL) board of directors has all been about the Justice Department's antitrust inquiries. But the Financial Times has a new theory, one that looks more promising the more you think about it: The two companies may genuinely dislike each other now.

If Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt thought resigning from the Apple (AAPL) board of directors would stop the federal investigation into both companies, a Federal Trade Commission spokesman has just stepped forward to tell him how wrong he is. According to ZDnet, FTC flack Richard Feinstein said, "We will continue to investigate interlocking directorates between the companies." So smoke on your pipe and put that in, buddy.