Gregg Keizer

Google yesterday countered Microsoft's contention that it's skirting Internet Explorer's privacy protection, saying it's "impractical" to comply with IE's rules.

One privacy researcher said there was enough blame to apportion to both Google and Microsoft.

Renewed rumors that Microsoft will publish iPad editions of some of its Office applications surfaced today.

One analyst said Microsoft's call on porting Office to rival Apple's tablet would be "a tough decision," what with its recent Windows on ARM pitch.

This year is shaping up as a repeat of 2009, when Microsoft and Apple last faced off with rival operating system upgrades, analysts said today.

Three years ago, Microsoft rolled out Windows 7, it's last operating system upgrade, and Apple launched Snow Leopard, or Mac OS X 10.6.

Apple's move to update Mac OS X this summer shows that the company sees its software ecosystem, especially its iCloud service, as more important than any one product line, analysts said today.

In a move that surprised many, Apple announced it was seeding developers with a preview of Mac OS X 10.8, dubbed "Mountain Lion," today and would offer the upgrade to customers late this summer.

Adobe on Wednesday patched seven critical vulnerabilities in Flash Player, including one reported by Google researchers that hackers are using in "active targeted attacks." The bug attackers have been exploiting is a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in the Flash Player plug-in used by Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE).

"This update resolves a universal cross-site scripting vulnerability that could be used to take actions on a user's behalf on any website or Web mail provider, if the user visits a malicious website," read the Adobe security advisory that accompanied yesterday's Flash update. "There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in active targeted attacks designed to trick the user into clicking on a malicious link delivered in an email message."

Shortly after two U.S. Congressmen asked Apple to answer questions about iPhone and iPad apps that snatch users' contact lists without permission, the Cupertino, Calif. company promised it will address the issue with a future software update.

Earlier today, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking him about iOS apps that have harvested users' address book information without permission.

Microsoft's announcement last week that it will "include" four Office apps with Windows on ARM has analysts parsing the news like intelligence agencies that once tried to figure out what went on inside the Kremlin by poring over photos of who stood where on the Red Square reviewing stand.

Some analysts say that Office will be bundled along with Windows on ARM (WOA) sans a separate price tag. Others believe Microsoft would never give away one of its most precious possessions.

For the third consecutive release of Firefox, Mozilla has pushed users a patch shortly after launching a new version of the browser.

On Friday, Mozilla updated Firefox to 10.0.1 to patch a crash bug that "may be potentially exploitable" by attackers. The company rated the vulnerability as "critical," its highest threat ranking.

Microsoft has kicked off a "technical preview" of the next version of its Office suite and promised that a public beta will ship this summer.

The move is a repeat of the route Microsoft took with Office 2010, which was distributed to a select group of testers as a technical preview in July 2010.

Chrome for Android will not run Flash Player, the popular software that Apple has famously banned, Adobe confirmed last week.

The acknowledgment was no surprise: Last November, Adobe announced it was abandoning development of Flash for mobile browsers. In other words, Google missed the Flash boat by several months.

Apple will introduce a new iPad the first full week of March, and will start selling it the following week, according to reports and industry analyst expectations.

The March debut of the iPad 3, as some have called it, was first reported today by AllThingsD , the blog owned by Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed sources, the blog said Apple will host a launch event the first week of March, likely at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a regular venue for the company's press announcements.

Symantec today confirmed that the pcAnywhere source code published on the Web Monday by hackers who tried to extort $50,000 from the company was legitimate.

A company spokesman also said that Symantec expects that the rest of the source code stolen from its network in 2006 will also be made public.