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Back in 2009, Google began an industry discussion about a prospective upgrade to HTTP protocol - the application that enables the Web over the Internet. The concept is called SPDY, and to date, conventional wisdom held that while some are skeptical of Google's motives, as a concept, SPDY was running unopposed.

Maybe not any more. This week, Microsoft is embarking on a curious strategy that sounds a lot like its old "embrace + extend" approach to world domination. Advancing just the introductory paragraphs of an IETF technical proposal that has yet to be released, Microsoft is calling for the next version of HTTP to include multiplexing for multiple components (like SPDY) and full-time encryption of the session layer (like SPDY, but without relying solely on SSL or TLS). The "extend" part comes by way of an allusion to WebSocket (which has recently been considered a part of HTML5) - a provision for full-duplex communications critical to the next generation of Web apps.

The kerfuffle over employers asking for the passwords to workers' and candidates' private social media accounts just won't go away. While it's not clear exactly how widespread this practice is, lawmakers around the country are already drafting bills that would outlaw requiring facebook logins. Many people clearly find the very idea intensely creepy and invasive.

I certainly do. Or did. As my initial knee-jerk horror fades a bit, I'm starting to see at least some situations where employers might have a legitimate right to that information.

Rush Limbaugh's statements against Sandra Fluke are causing Limbaugh no end of controversy and producing some blow-back for advertisers as well. There's just one problem: Some of the companies being fingered as supporters aren't signed on as sponsors for his show. Case in point, Netflix.

The problem is like the old saying: A lie can be halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on. Look on Twitter, and you can see plenty of people taking Netflix to task without actually researching to see if the company does support Limbaugh.

Since last August's move by the U.S. Justice Dept. to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of competing wireless carrier T-Mobile from parent Deutsche Telekom (DT), there has been renewed debate in Congress and in the public discourse over the role of government in regulating the affairs of private enterprise. Last month, policy analysts -- evidently just learning to use these search engine things you read so much about -- appeared to strike a gold mine: a report from the Economic Policy Institute (PDF available here) that appeared to not only confirm but bolster AT&T's claim that the merger would lead to net jobs creation.

Usually when something is repeated enough times over the Web, it becomes the truth -- or at least gets added to Wikipedia, which for many is the same thing. But in the wake of criticism of what appeared to be the authors' jobs creation claims, the EPI responded that it never made such claims to begin with. That led the Federal Communications Commission last Thursday to begin probing how those claims were invented, by whom, and why.

If we're going to have an Internet full of things so that we can friend our Coke machines and our refrigerators on Facebook, wireless carriers say there needs to be more wireless spectrum available to LTE and fourth-generation technologies than there currently is. Nonsense, said a group of Citi investment analysts last month, who provided explicit, mathematically detailed analysis that appeared to prove that, even by 2015, fully deployed LTE would only consume 52% of the available space.

That depends on which numbers you choose to believe, according to a report released this morning by independent telecommunications researcher Peter Rysavy (PDF available here). If you've heard the name before, Rysavy was the fellow who told the Mobile World Congress last year that the first impact of spectrum shortage would hit in 2013, in analysis sponsored by Research In Motion.

The then-newly installed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said in October 2009, "We are fast entering a world where mass-market mobile devices consume thousands of megabytes each month. So we must ask: What happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a BlackBerry Tour or whatever the next device is? What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks? The short answer: We will need a lot more spectrum."

Yesterday, a systematic and mathematical analysis of U.S. spectrum allocation blatantly called Genachowski's statement to the 2009 CTIA Wireless conference flat wrong.

Tim Berners-Lee, to his credit, did not invent the Internet. He did have one good idea. He was not the first person or even the twelfth with the same idea, but he did make it work. Yet most of the underlying work - the bringing together of dozens of communications systems with slightly or wildly varying protocols - was done before him. He just plugged it in, and for that, he gets most of the credit.

What made the Internet, and thus the Web, possible - the thing that, without which, Tim Berners-Lee would still be watching reruns of "Eastenders" - was a decision. The major carriers of electronic mail, whose business it had become to route messages to each other's members, collectively reached a truce. They decided that the long, endless fight over who has the biggest volume, the longest distance, the fastest network, so that one could charge the others more postage than it was being charged, was too expensive and was stifling progress. They decided to call off the war. I know. I was on the phone with them the moment it happened.

If the proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility (MMI) by Google announced on Monday truly is about the value of MMI's patent portfolio, then mitigating circumstances over just the past few days may make the $12.5 billion bid seem a bit steep. The problem stems from an ongoing U.S. International Trade Commission investigation brought by Microsoft against MMI, which - up until Monday - had only incidentally involved Google.

At issue is an expert witness for Microsoft, Dr. Robert Stevenson. On August 10, Google filed a non-party motion with the USITC claiming Microsoft disclosed highly confidential source code to Dr. Stevenson without his having been cleared with Google first - which Google claimed was a violation of protocol. That disclosure was played to the press as a "leak," for which Google sought sanctions against Microsoft, but more importantly, to bar Dr. Stevenson from testifying before the Commission.

There are lots of free or inexpensive Web conferencing services available, but how about this interesting twist from AnyMeeting.com where you can sell tickets to your participants? It seems like a nifty idea, especially if you run your own speaking business. As we wrote about them last month AnyMeeting is an otherwise free Web service that has a lot of the features found in the higher-priced spreads: polls, invitations, text chat, and recorded sessions for later playback.

Remember when phones were used for, you know, phone calls? Janet Hall, senior consultant for TMNG, does. What's more, Hall says that voice communications will rise again away from a commodity to a growth market.