Microsoft wants to be Google. Google wants to be Microsoft.

Well, sort of.

Moon to Google. Standby for liftoff of Google Earth 3D moon mapping. Well, maybe.

The gang at Google is preparing to embark on some new type of mission, and speculation is running rampant that it's going to be a groundbreaking three-dimensional moon-mapping utility. The G-team is keeping quiet for now, but it's not hard to track the signals and see why the moon's on everyone's mind.

Do you trust Google? If you use its multitude of online services on a daily basis you might, but is that assumption wise? For some, Google is a wonderful company with a broad selection of useful online tools that make life easier, but for others Google is a looming, unregulated monster just waiting for the moment to drop the ‘don't' from the company's unofficial motto, "Don't be evil."

Recently, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, WNYC talk show host Brian Lehrer asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt if Google's constantly growing importance to users in the United States and around the world meant that Google needed to be regulated as a utility by the Federal Government. The surprise wasn't in Schmidt's response (which was "no"), but the fact that everyone in the room laughed at Lehrer's suggestion.

LED-backlit HDTVs once were an expensive rarity, but that's changing. Sharp Electronics' new line of Aquos HDTVs offer the premium of LED backlighting. The advantage of LED backlighting: It can boost black levels and minimize power consumption, even while still providing a superior level of brightness.

The new 32- ($1,100), 40- ($1,700), 46- ($2,200) and 52-inch ($2,800) LE700-series Aquos LED TVs use Sharp's UltraBrilliant LED backlighting technology, which features a full array of evenly spaced LEDs behind a diffusing panel. The 120-Hz TVs are rated for 4ms pixel-response rates, and have motion-smoothing dejudder technology. The TVs also have an immpressively wide angle of view, 176-degrees.

Apple may enjoy smugly tooting its own horn, but it is particularly puffed-up today while celebrating a year of the iPhone and iPod Touch App Store.

"Light a candle and cue the music," Apple says on a special iTunes page for the occasion. "Okay, forgive us for sounding like doting parents, but we're just so proud -- having watched the App Store grow from promising newcomer to full-fledged revolutionary."

As usual on the upcoming Patch Tuesday next week, Microsoft will be issuing a series of critical patches to fix security vulnerabilities for its popular Windows computer operating system.

But this time, the company is getting a bit more attention than it's used to for its patch release schedule.

Google Images, formerly Google Image Search, has added new functionality that lets you find photos licensed for third-party use free of charge, and has made explicit image filtering much easier.

Searching the Commons

Amazon has already taken the book world by storm with the Kindle. Now the e-retailer is taking on the wireless market with its new Web site, AmazonWireless. AmazonWireless, currently in beta, is a partnership between AT&T, Verizon, and Amazon that offers an inventory of more than 130 models of phones, including the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Storm (sorry, no iPhone) plus a slew of carrier plans, all in the same straightforward shopping style Amazon customers know.

Google is making it easier for you to find out where you are, with the introduction of My Location for the desktop. First introduced in late 2007 as a tool for Google Maps for mobile, My Location offered directions by triangulating your position based on surrounding cell towers. My Location for the desktop uses Wi-Fi access point information instead of cell towers, but just like the mobile version, My Location on the desktop drops a little blue dot onto your approximate location in Google Maps.

As Google pointed out in its blog post, My Location for the desktop can be a great tool when you arrive in an unfamiliar town and want to get an idea of where you are. Just click on the dot in the upper left-hand side of the map between the zoom and pan tools, and, after you authorize Google to continue, your location will appear on the map. Google says it takes your privacy very seriously and will never use your location information without your permission.

This week on the PC World Podcast, editors Robert Strohmeyer, Tim Moynihan, and Ginny Mies try to figure out what the just-announced Google Chrome OS might look like... and how it will be different from Android. Plus, what does Google's new Web-centric operating system mean for the future of installed software and gaming? Only time (and more information about Google Chrome OS) will tell.

There's a brand-new BlackBerry on the scene, and it's called the BlackBerry Tour. The new smartphone offers a blend of the best features from the BlackBerry Curve and the BlackBerry Bold, but the Verizon version of the phone is missing one key feature. Find out what that mysterious omission is, and hear editor Ginny Mies's take on the new phone. Is it good enough for you to consider an upgrade?

Investigators may not yet know who was behind a series of cyberattacks on the U.S. and South Korea, but analysts are getting a better grasp on where the nations' governments may have gone wrong. Numerous government Web sites in both countries have been hit by distributed denial-of-service attacks, starting on the Fourth of July and continuing into today. Dozens of high-profile sites have been targeted, including those of the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Treasury, and other major federal agencies.

Cyberattack Lessons

The attack apparently used malware to gain control of 50,000 PCs, combining the systems to create a virtual army of sorts. At its peak, the denial of service attack pounded sites' servers with as much as 20 to 40 gigabytes of data per second -- a full 10 times the amount of data typically transmitted in such a scenario.

Even given the massive scope of the attack, though, many observers are left wondering how a government Web site could have been unprepared. After all, federal spokespeople have gone on the record as saying these denial-of-service attacks are attempted on a daily basis year-round. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security, in fact, were among the sites attacked in the recent incident. So why did they remain unaffected, while others buckled under the pressure?

The simple truth is that those sites are likely common targets and consequently well-versed in handling even the most extreme attempts at server overload. More specifically, however, researchers believe one simple piece of missing knowledge may have made the difference between their resilience and the other sites' collapses.

"Too many federal agency security people did not know which network service provider connected their Web sites to the Internet," explains Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a security research organization.

As a result, Paller says, the agencies were unable to reach their providers and have them filter out the bad traffic -- a tactic that could have kept the servers from buckling under the tremendous pressure.

Challenges and Solutions

Of course, other factors were at play as well: The zombie computers used in the attack were located all over the world, the SANS Institute found, including within America. What's more, the active systems shifted from moment to moment, making them even more difficult to identify.

"The attacks have become increasingly sophisticated since the end of last week," Paller says. "It started as a flood that was easy for network service providers to filter, and then went through at least two increases in sophistication so that the flood look[ed] more and more like legitimate traffic."

Still, the fact that certain Web sites were able to withstand the pressure suggests that others could have done the same. Paller and his team believe federal security officials will now move to set up a private database of government Web sites and their network providers. That way, should a similar attack happen again, the sites' administrators could act quickly to block as much of the malicious traffic as possible -- before any servers are knocked offline.

Connect with JR Raphael on Twitter (@jr_raphael) or via his Web site, .

Apple has them. Microsoft too. And Linux is just teeming with them. But now Google has created its own brand of Borg that is willing to spread the gospel of Chrome OS just at the mere hint of its existence.