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.

The founder of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s Hotmail web-based email service seems to be at it again. Sabeer Bhatia, Hotmail's founder, sold his company last decade to Microsoft for a cool $400 million. Hotmail went on to become the software giant's premiere web-based email service, which competes with Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO)'s market-leading Yahoo! Mail and with Google, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail product.

Bhatia apparently wants another swipe at Ole' Softie, and he's launching a company named InstaColl that is aimed at Microsoft's lucrative Office productivity software franchise. Outside of the Windows operating system franchise, Microsoft's Office product line is the company's second-largest producer of revenue. Google's Docs & Spreadsheets program that came to prominence this year was originally thought of as a direct threat to Microsoft's Office business, but it's lukewarm capabilities so far have proven to be anything but that.

Will InstaColl change the competitive landscape, then? Basically, InstaColl is a suite of online office productivity tools, which sounds an awfully lot like Google's Docs & Spreadsheets. InstaColl's "Live Documents" was designed to give customers the complete functionality offered by Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint software. And, the great news -- it's offered for free (just like Google's office applications). Live Documents offers offline access to documents (something Google is working on as well), which has been the Achille's Heel of the web-based Microsoft Office competition thus far. For InstaColl business users, the cost if $5 per month per user.

Not sure if Microsoft is worried here, but online document tools sure seem to be a hot area now -- and it will only become hotter with time.

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.

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.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) thinks it has come up with a way to out-Google Google, Inc. (NASDAG:GOOG): target display ads by consumer behavior.

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the big software company is going to track the interests of its 263 million Hotmail users and searches on Microsoft Live.

The company says that the personal data being used will be kept confidential. Promises, promises.

Microsoft claims it has signed up 100 advertisers for the program.

It does not seem like much of a winner. Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:TWX) AOL has plenty of e-mail users. So does Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). So, duplicating the service should not be hard for competitors.

Microsoft needs something to help its online ad revenue. In the third quarter it rose only 5% over last year. Rival Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) ad revenue rose 70% for the same period.

Sort of like hunting an elephant with a sling-shot.

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