The free service to be offered on Android smartphones is likely to be seen as a challenge to yet another industry.

Last night, it was revealed that Google is working on a micropayment system for newspapers. The plan sounds like it might just save the dying industry while accelerating the death of many publications. But, it's okay. That's probably a good thing.

Yahoo! may have thrown in the towel on the business of searching for information online. But the company is doubling down on a technology where it already has the lead over search king Google: in free e-mail service offered over the Web.

During an event at its Sunnyvale (Calif.) headquarters on Aug. 24, Yahoo (YHOO) unveiled a new design for its Yahoo Mail service. The updated version of the e-mail service lets users merge their in-boxes with other Internet services so they can send invitations using Evite or organize photos with Xoopit without having to leave Yahoo's familiar e-mail environs.

Social networking features such as Twitter-like status updates have also gained new prominence on the upgraded site, now available to U.S. users and scheduled for a worldwide rollout in coming weeks. The idea is to keep users coming back for more Yahoo services due to the frequency with which they check their e-mail.

By Peter Burrows & Robert D. Hof / In a long-awaited pairing aimed at taking on Google, Yahoo will handle ad sales while Microsoft gets the real prize: data on who's doing what online