Further alienate book publishers: Google has begun operating local-language sites in eight European countries for its Google Print program, its closely watched effort to make all of the world's books searchable online, expanding into territories where it has drawn fierce criticism.

The Google Print sites - for France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Spain - enable users to search books provided by publishers in each country as well as English-language books in the Google library for which the company has secured local rights.

President says free mapping program could help terrorists
Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has joined the list of government officials charging that the geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging program pose a security risk.

At a meeting of top police officials in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, Kalam said he worried that "developing countries, which are already in danger of terrorist attacks, have been singularly chosen" for providing high resolution images of their sites.

Internet search engine behemoth Google has declared war on Microsoft, announcing plans to launch free spreadsheet and word-processing software online. Joining forces with US-based technology giant Sun Microsystems to allow web users to access Sun's OpenOffice from any personal computer.

Sun Microsystems Australia spokesman Paul O'Connor said the deal was "huge". Worldwide, Google gets 80 million visitors a day, he said.

Sun will offer Google's search toolbar with downloads of its free Java software, which now powers more than 2.5 billion gadgets around the globe, including 700 million PCs.

Google Inc. has released in beta a newsreader for staying up-to-date on Web site content.
Google Reader enables consumers to search for content on Web sites and then subscribe to RSS and other news feeds. RSS is a standard for distributing content over the Web to newsreaders, which gather and organize content.

Reader also enables consumers to email or blog content from within the newsreader, and to label items that they want to save. The software tracks what consumers have read, and automatically removes those items when consumers refresh.