Microsoft's latest assault on the Web search business is just getting under way, but already a familiar elephant may be ambling toward the doorway. The software giant's announced intention to dominate search — its third such quest in recent years — is being depicted as a crusade against Google, the default Web search leader. Although Microsoft has stopped short of threatening to cut off Google's air supply, Google's prominence has led Silicon Valley partisans to cast this as an updated version of the mid-1990s Netscape-Microsoft "browser wars."
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