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While AJAX-based Web sites are popular with users, search engines traditionally are not able to access any of the content on them.

That could change under a new proposal by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). "Today we're excited to propose a new standard for making AJAX-based Web sites crawlable. This will benefit Webmasters and users by making content from rich and interactive AJAX-based Web sites universally accessible through search results on any search engine that chooses to take part. We believe that making this content available for crawling and indexing could significantly improve the Web," writes John Mueller, Webmaster trends analyst, at the Google Webmaster blog.

IBM has launched LotusLive iNotes, an on-demand e-mail, calendaring and contact management system meant to compete with the likes of Google and Microsoft, the company said today.

Pricing starts at $3 per user per month, undercutting Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 per user per year.

The Data Liberation Front

Signaling an intent to compete with giants in the collaboration software space, Google unveiled an API to extend the Google Sites collaborative content development tool, featuring a capability to migrate files from workspace applications such as Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Notes to Sites.

One application already built using the Google Sites API is SharePoint Move for Google Apps, developed by LTech for migrating data and content from SharePoint to Sites. Google Sites is a free application for building and sharing websites; it is described by Google as a collaborative content creation tool to upload file attachments, information other Google applications such as Google Docs, and free-form content.

Yahoo! may be shedding more mojo.

According to All Things Digital, the web giant is looking to offload Zimbra, the open-source email and collaboration outfit it acquired just two years ago for $350m. Sources tell ATD that Comcast and Google are potential buyers.

According to the company, it's now powering more than 50 million paid mailboxes worldwide.

Zimbra tech is also part of Yahoo!'s web-based Mail and Calendar tools for consumer Yahooligans. And by Yahoo!'s count, the Zimbra open source community is now 30,000-developers strong, driving more than 50,000 open source downloads a month.

The FCC chairman sent “inquiry letters” to Apple and AT&T on Saturday in order to get answers as to why the companies disapproved of a voice application developed by Google for the iPhone.

"The Federal Communications Commission has a mission to foster a competitive wireless marketplace, protect and empower consumers, and promote innovation and investment," said FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.

The letters involve Apple and AT&T’s latest decision to deny a Google Voice application from being offered on Apple’s App Store for the iPhone.

One industry source closer to Microsoft believes the software giant has lost its will to fight in its long-running antitrust battle in Europe.

"They don't have the appetite to fight anymore. Now their aim is to settle up and make sure that other technology firms, like Google and IBM, are held to the same antitrust standards," said a person familiar with Microsoft's thinking who asked not to be named.

Maybe Google will be able to rescue something from its Docs misadventure, but it better do something quick. Microsoft says it can solve big customers' big complaint about Google Docs and will do so at a price Google understands: Free.

Here's the gripe: Corporate IT doesn't think Google Docs are a secure place for important information. Microsoft will deal with this by offering something Google doesn't, the ability to host Office Web on the customer's own servers.

And Microsoft will include this capability--for free--as part of all Office 2010 volume-licensing agreements. OK, that isn’t totally free, but for customers who will upgrade to Office 2010 it's a nice value add. It is also something Microsoft could easily package with other deals, such as server operating systems and even Windows 7, as an incentive to upgrade.

Microsoft might be hesitating on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) in Internet Explorer 8, but Google's pressing on.

The search giant's engineers are building a JavaScript library to render static and dynamic SVG in Microsoft's browser. Google promised that the library, a Javascript shim, will simply drop into IE.

The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether some of the nation's largest technology companies violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to two sources with knowledge of the review.

Without a doubt, the product that has the entire web buzzing right now is Google Wave (), the search giant’s newly announced communication platform. Earlier this week, we brought you detailed information on the new Google () product in our article Google Wave: A Complete Guide, but now we want to explore exactly why everyone is so excited about Google Wave.

You’ve probably heard people talk about Google Wave being a game-changer, a disruptive product, or maybe even as an email killer. But while keywords and phrases like these grab people’s attention, they don’t explain why or how Google Wave could be a paradigm-shifter. In this article, we explore these questions by highlighting some of Google Wave’s most unique and promising features. By exploring these features, we can better understand the potential of this new technology.

Operational Transformation

This is the crucial part of Wave’s technology. Google Wave makes extensive use of Operational Transformations (OT) which are executed on the server. When an user edits a collaborative document opened by several users, the client program provides an Optimistic UI by immediately displaying what he/she types but it also sends the editing operation to the server to be ratified hoping that it will be accepted by the server. The client waits for the server to evaluate the operation and will cache any other operations until the server replies. After the server replies, all cached operations are sent from client to server in bulk. The server, considering operations received from other clients, will transform the operation accordingly and will inform all clients about the transformation, and the clients will update their UI accordingly. Operations are sent to the server and propagated to each client on a character by character basis, unless it is a bulk operation. The server is the keeper of the document and its version is considered the “correct” version. In the end, each client will be updated with the final version received from the server, which is the result of possibly many operational transformations. There are recovery means provided for communication failure or server/client crash. All XML documents exchanged between the client and the server carry a checksum for rapid identification of miscommunications.