O (b LOG N)

In a case that could set limits on Internet search engines, the French news agency AFP is suing Google Inc. for pulling together photos and story excerpts from thousands of news Web sites.

Agence France-Presse said the “Google News” service infringes on AFP’s copyrights by reproducing information from the Web sites of subscribers of the Paris-based news wholesaler.

The issues raised by the case have profound implications for the Internet, where anyone can be a publisher and Web journals, or blogs, are becoming more frequent destinations for seekers of news.

Ben Goodger the lead programmer of the Mozilla Firefox Web browser announced Monday on his blog that he took a job with Google, Inc. of Mountain View, California on Jan. 10, adding more oil to the burning rumor mill of Google’s plan to launch a browser. Google’s recent acquisition of the gbrowser.com domain, hiring of key programmers, and sponsorship of a Mozilla programmer meeting fueled speculation that a web browser is in the works, in direct competition with Microsoft. Goodger’s title at Google will be software engineer, he will continue work on the Firefox Web browser continuing with the goals of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases of the Firefox browser.