Once upon a time, Mac users could brag they were much safer from malicious electronic attacks. After all, in the days before Google (GOOG), when Microsoft (MSFT) was the only uber-player in town, Windows was the perpetual malware target. Phishers, however, aren't discriminating; they're just looking for an account to plunge. So, both Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft users are threatened. Virus writers do tend to focus on the Windows operating system, which owns 90% of the OS market, but phishers are platform independent.

Phishing involves attempts to get a user to reveal information about their accounts. Once the soon-to-be victim clicks that link or fills out a form, the "transaction" is complete -- no operating system interaction necessary. As a result, there really isn't any advantage to using a Mac over a PC.

BT Group, which virtually owns the UK telecommunications market, isn't waiting for Google (GOOG) to launch a full attack. The company probably expects to be under assault from the search engine (and advertising and e-mail) giant, so it's taking early action. Google Voice is still being tested, but words like "free" and "powerful" and "internet-based" are bound to inspire fear in even the most established of companies.

To protect itself from the eventual attack from Mountain View, BT picked up Ribbit Mobile, and testing is in progress. Ribbit's technology has some overlap with Google Voice and even beats it with a few capabilities, according to Bloomberg. Ribbit just launched its beta product this month. It allows either the user's current phone number or a new one from Ribbit -- which is no different from Google's alternative. The product suite is generally the same, with phone- and web-based voicemail retrieval and automatic transcriptions that can be sent by text message or e-mail. For an extra fee, BT's Ribbit does provide human transcription, though it is free during testing. And, calls can be taken directly from a computer, using a microphone and speakers.

Your e-mail account is a goldmine. Technology companies push hard to keep your data secure, but there are plenty of scumbags out there who always seem to find a new way to gain an edge over the guys in white hats. Phishers, in particular, are eager to find new ways to profit from your identity and information, and they're getting some new tricks.

Phishing scam activity was quiet at the beginning of this year, according to a report in USA Today, but these attacks surged 200% from May through September, says the X-Force team at IBM (NYSE: IBM). Webmail, social media and gaming accounts are their primary targets. E-mail access, in particular, is highly sought after, since they can be use to push out spam ... while bypassing filters.

These "virgin" e-mail accounts command top dollar: a digital criminal can pick up as much as $2 for a clean account from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Live, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) YahooMail or AOL (NYSE: TWX). This is more than twice the amount typically paid for a stolen credit card account, according to Fred Rica, principal in the security practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Many webmail users actually do half the criminals' job for them, with 33% using just one password online and 48% using only a handful.

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is a name many businesses know very well. The former largest computer company on the planet left the hardware game a long time ago to concentrate on consulting services and business software. But, IBM's next nemesis won't be a company out of Redmond -- but a name on the tongues of millions these days -- Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) continues to poke its head into the location-based marketplace. The internet search leader has made multiple efforts to provide products and services that let users track friends, family and themselves. While these are cool products and rather big-brotherish at the same time, there is an ulterior motive here: data collection.

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) continues to make billions in revenue each quarter on the back of its extensive text advertising network used on various Google properties as well as partner websites. The argument can still be made that the large majority of Google's income rests on the back of those simple ads which can be eerily relevant and lucrative for those who advertise on Google's network. One area, though, that has fallen by the wayside in recent years is the importance of Google ads in its Gmail email service.

Although competitor Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) still has a larger customer base of email users, Google's Gmail product counts tens of millions of global, more affluent users. Although the company gives almost all its products away for free, you won't see advertising inside most of them.

Some people will go out of their way to avoid using Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows operating system. If you look around carefully enough, you can escape the "Microsoft tax" and get a PC for a lower price. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) already sells PCs that don't use Windows, and it's about to add a laptop PC to the mix.

The world's largest retailer will begin selling an ultra-light, two-pound laptop PC in a few weeks. Made by Everex, it comes with gobs of Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) applications and links to online services pre-installed. These services include Google Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google News, Google Maps and YouTube. There are so many links to Google's online content that the laptop is already being referred to as containing the "Google operating system."

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is upgrading its corporate e-mail offering as of this week, and the search company is adding new security tools as well as doubling the online storage capacity. This move probably comes as a response to Yahoo!, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) planned purchase of corporate e-mail provider Zimbra in addition to getting something out the door from the Postini acquisition a few months back.

Now that Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) is still in the fray with its Exchange corporate e-mail solution and Yahoo! has entered into the dance with the Zimbra buy, Google's timing here is impeccable. But, are the Microsoft and Yahoo! solutions better than Google just beefing up security and adding more storage to its existing online corporate e-mail offering? That's up to each customer to decide, although anytime, anywhere, secure and easy access to e-mail is probably at the forefront of each corporate user's mind these days.

Business software is an area relatively new to Google, but with the company having acquired email security firm Postini for over $600 million recently, it must market and tout that technology to every business customer it can, starting now. A simple explanation of "increased corporate security" is not enough, and if Google is serious about challenging both Microsoft and Yahoo! in the business e-mail space, it has to start making large waves. A doubling of e-mail inbox capacity is a great start, but it's just that -- the start.

Yahoo! Inc.'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) purchase of corporate email provider Zimbra this week was one of the more exciting pieces of news I've seen from the Sunnyvale, Ca. company in a few years. Yahoo!'s recent spending spree also includes BlueLithium, a maker of online behavioral marketing services. So, with two large acquisitions, is Yahoo! on the way back to stardom as it tries to more fully complete with Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)? Perhaps. in any case, the Zimbra buy was very wise for Yahoo!, and by all accounts, the price was a bargain compared to the business potential it could bring Yahoo!

The Zimbra buy will beef up Yahoo!'s email services, of course. One of the bright lights these days for Yahoo! is the immense success it has had with gaining and retaining web-based email customers. More people use Yahoo! email than any other email service on the planet, and it handily beats Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Hotmail as well as Google's Gmail. I still find Gmail to best web-based email out there, but it was not there first, having come more than seven years after Yahoo!'s mail arrived on the scene. As usual, first-movers get all the glory -- and users -- which explains why Yahoo! is still at the top (by far) and why online auctioneers have failed to catch up with global online auction leader eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY).

Yahoo! has wisely spent $350 million here, as it will inherit a very robust base of business email clients that it can either fold into a new global email system that is used by customers and businesses, or it can get innovative in the business space and fight with Microsoft's Exchange email system for businesses as well as fight off Google's slow-but-sure entrance into the same market. After all, email has been Yahoo!'s greatest success, but whether it remains at the top or allows the competition to eat its lunch won't be known for a while.

Some long-awaited changes to Yahoo!, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) most-used product, Yahoo! Mail, are now available. The company has had its flagship product in "Beta" for almost a year now, and the company is publicly rolling out a few new enhancements to the world's most popular web-based email service this week. But, will those changes help the company regain some former luster?

My guess is that a majority of Yahoo! Mail users will keep their accounts active since notifying hundreds (or thousands) of contacts of an email address changes is a huge pain. I used Yahoo! Mail for more than seven years, but changed to Google, Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail service back in 2005. After using Google's product, I was won over. For me, it's light years ahead of Yahoo!'s offering just based on threaded email conversations alone. Your mileage may vary, of course. But, Yahoo! must be doing something right, as it enjoys a huge lead over Google in this space (it has been around quite a bit longer, though).

Will the ads Yahoo! continues to display drive its customers away? It sure hasn't yet, and the company admits that Yahoo! Mail is central to growing its ad revenue. It's no surprise -- Yahoo!'s free email is stuffed with ads. It's another reason I abandoned it since when you're using email for work purposes, ads affect productivity, big time. Yahoo! Mail improvements include an enhancement in performance and speed along with a more refined version of the message search feature.

Add that to the capability to chat with Yahoo! Messenger users from right within Yahoo! Mail and text messaging directly from within Yahoo! Mail (wireless carrier email address not needed) makes for some neat additions. Are they enough to steal customers from Microsoft Inc.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Live Hotmail or Google's Gmail? At this time, I doubt it. It just needs to keep current customers happy.POP access, e-mail forwarding and no graphical ads.

This week, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced that it was bumping the amount of storage for its freely available Windows Live Mail from two gigabytes to four gigabytes. Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) bumped its free email storage limits from two gigabytes to unlimited storage earlier this year. What has Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) done in response? Well, the internet search giant has kept its free email storage level at 2.8 gigabytes, but it wants customers to pony up some cash for an upgrade.

Google will give its Gmail email users another six gigabytes of online storage for an additional $20 per year when its competitors are giving away more gigabytes for free. For a company known for giving away almost everything and making up revenues with highly successful advertising, this is sort of a surprise. Want even more storage from Google? The company will charge you $75 a year for 25 additional gigabytes and even let you have 250 gigabytes for $500 per year. At Yahoo! mail, by comparison, unlimited storage is still free. However, Yahoo! has checks built into its system to ensure that space is for large emails, not simply online file storage.

Is Google not making enough from ads automatically inserted into its Gmail offering and therefore wants to now charge customers who are heavy users of its email service? It sure appears that way, but maybe the company is just trying to get paying subscribers in its ranks instead of giving away everything for free and hoping that its advertising model doesn't ever slow down in terms of revenue growth. Even though it sounds like I am down on Google here, I applaud the company for making an effort to glean revenue from more than just one source -- those text ads that appear next to Google searches and Gmail email messages.

Another week, another deal. Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) M&A team has been busy this year. The latest deal: $625 million for Postini.

For a company the size of Google, the price tag isn't big. But the deal is certainly significant. Basically, Postini develops security for email systems. So as Google tries to get more traction from its Gmail service, a top-notch security layer is a must-have. It will also be key in getting a piece of Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) email franchise.

I had a chance to interview Nick Selby, who is the Enterprise Security Analyst with The 451 Group. According to him, "This is Google's biggest security acquisition to date and confirms that it is increasingly targeting the enterprise. The Postini buy also gives Google 35,000 enterprise customers. Postini has been dual tracking for a private sale and IPO. We would have thought it would go for a bit more for an acquisition. So perhaps Google has got itself a good deal as well as a strategic fit."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

How many phone numbers do you have? Too many? A rumor currently circulating has Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) shopping for an e-company, GrandCentral, that can help you with that problem.

GrandCentral is a very cool, free service, accessed via the internet, that provides you one phone number that consolidates all of your phone numbers and routes calls to the device of your choice. With this number, you can block nuisance callers, listen in on their messages as they leave them (sneaky, eh?), and receive e-mail or text message notification that you've received a message.

It can automatically route Grandma's calls to your home phone, client calls to your cell, and calls from your good-for-nothing nephew to your fax machine. It also provides a voice mail box that will store messages in perpetuity and allow you to post them to your blog. (That could provide some interesting listening.)

This app seems like a perfect fit for Google, with its cross-platform features. As a one-stop shop for telecommunications, it would integrate beautifully into Gmail and Google's version of Instant Messenger. And since the company has been cruising Silicon Valley looking for investors, the time seems ripe for such a deal.

If you are interested in signing up for a GrandCentral account, you might want to run the available numbers through Phonespell to find one that produces an easily-remembered word or word combination.

Hitwise was good enough to do a survey of traffic to the major e-mail sites. While the traffic to Google's Gmail (NASDAQ: GOOG) seems to be growing faster than it is to Yahoo! Mail (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft's Hotmail (NASDAQ: MSFT), the lead of the two older products may be insurmountable.

Champions of Google's ability to dominate most markets that it enters will likely grab on to the 17% increase in traffic from February to April 2007. But, Gmail only opened access to all interested users in February. Before that, users had to be invited by other users. Also, as the stat people like to say, the big increase in traffic was from a small base.

Visits to Yahoo! Mail are still thirteen times greater than Gmail visits. Although Gmail users tend to be younger, their income is not much different from users of the other two services.

Hitwise points out that Gmail users are more likely to use Facebook, but why anyone would care about that seems beyond easy analysis.

The survey shows one thing, and one thing only. Gmail is well behind its two major competitors.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Microsoft Corp.'s (NYSE: MSFT) finalizing touch of the re-launch of its "Windows Love Hotmail" seems like a study in what not to do when prepping a product for mass consumption. The world's largest software company bought Hotmail in 1998 in an effort to compete with Yahoo! Mail at the time. In 2004, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) released Gmail to set the bar even higher, and in 2005 Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) upgraded its mail with technology bought from a company called Oddpost.

Fast forward to 2007 and Microsoft has again released its Hotmail product (it went back to that name after the "Live Mail" name was dropped). Funny thing, though, it looks almost identical to what the old Hotmail looked like. Reasoning? Microsoft created a completely new version that was more technologically adept and looked like a desktop email client, but the changes were too drastic for existing Hotmail customers. People don't like changes when they're comfortable, and Microsoft found this out soon enough. So, out with all the new "look and feel" features (for now) and in with the "old look" to please old customers. Thing is, you can't "innovate" unless you somewhat force customers to change (slowly, over time).

Both Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail have more customers than the newer Google Gmail, but that may not be the case in a few years. I would bet that most of the Yahoo! and Hotmail customers don't want to let go of those email addresses, hence they stay with the provider they've been with for a long time. Every customer has different needs for email, so the choice each makes is all relative. One thing is for sure for Microsoft: it needs to fine-tune its understanding of how to serve existing customers and recruit new ones before spending time and effort into new products that end up being somewhat reversed. That, my friends, is not a wise investment for any company that serves customers.