Twitter co-founder and CEO Biz Stone said Thursday that Rupert Murdoch's potential plan to block Google from searching New Corp.'s (NWS) websites is doomed to fail. Murdoch has accused Google (GOOG) of stealing content from his publications, which include The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in the U.S., and The Times and The Sun in the United Kingdom. The cantankerous tycoon said last week that blocking Google could be part of his strategy to get more people to pay for content online.

Here's a young man, all of 35, who runs a company that makes no money, telling an old man, 78, who runs companies that have made billions, that he is wrong. But while it's easy to dismiss Stone's comments as youthful bravado, I think he's giving Murdoch some valuable advice.

Two weeks ago, in a post about AT&T's spotty third generation wireless coverage, I posed a simple question: "How about an announcement telling customers how AT&T has been working with Apple to help boost the quality of its iPhone service?"

Now, that seems to be exactly what is happening. AT&T (T) reported on Tuesday that it had spent $65 million upgrading its wireless network in San Francisco since 2008. The phone company said it upgraded about 850 cell sites because of the rising demand put on its network since the iPhone started selling two years ago. That's good news to many iPhone users, whose phone has become synonymous with "dropped calls."

EBay (EBAY) is a Web pioneer, having built a multibillion dollar business out of allowing people to essentially put garage sales on the Internet. That simple idea led to fast growth more than a decade ago and helped define what was possible online for other companies that followed. The company's IPO in 1998 turned founder Pierre Omidyar and eBay President Jeffrey Skoll into instant billionaires.

Fast-forward to 2009, and the 1990s Internet darling is steering through turbulence. EBay seems to be want to be more an online retailer and less an online auction site. If it makes such a move, if will have to fight online retailers such as Amazon.com (AMZN) and Zappos and their impeccable customer service. It will also have to take on formidable brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart (WMT) and Target (TGT), which are focusing more on online sales. Why does eBay want to join a battle it's not likely to win?

Anyone who has ever gone on a Big Mac binge in hopes of winning the $1 million prize in the McDonald's Monopoly game may be feeling a little more hopeful. Brandi Futch, of White House, Tenn., collected both Boardwalk and Park Place (the two pieces needed to win) after she ordered a McChicken sandwich, fries and a sweet tea. The big prize came on that sweet cup of tea.

Futch, 23, who couldn't be immediately reached by DailyFinance, works in customer service for the Grand Ole Opry and will receive $50,000 a year for the next 20 years. It may not be enough to retire on, especially after taxes, but it's enough to take care of most of her needs.

"I'm still in shock," Futch was quoted saying in a McDonald's (MCD) press release. "I haven't decided what I'll do with the money I've won, but I know that a new house and car are on my list." Even with her $1 million prize, Futch said she plans to keep playing the game.

This summer, for the first time in five years, I used Priceline.com (PCLN) to book a hotel room and rental car. Turns out, I am part of a trend. The online travel agency saw an increase in bookings over the summer. Now it forecasts sales in the current quarter rising 28 percent from last year's fourth quarter.

The stock closed 18 percent higher Tuesday, rising $30.49 to $202.22, the highest close in nine years. Count Priceline.com among the Internet companies that rallied in 2009. In the past year, Priceline has outperformed Amazon.com (AMZN) shares, which are up 168 percent and shares of Google (GOOG), which has gained 78 percent in the past 12 months. I decided to find out what's going on at the company, which is known for its business model of letting customers name their price for travel services and then seeing what they get at the price.

There is a lot of buzz these days over a new product called Google (GOOG) Wave. Some are under the false impression that it's the next Twitter, but this new tool from Google is very different. Think of it as a real-time collaboration tool that includes, among its many features, email on steroids.

Greg Dalesandre, Google Wave product manager, in an online video, describes Wave as a "shared space," where users can communicate using text, videos, photos and maps. So you can have a conversation while working on a document with a group of people in another city -- or in another part of the planet. You can both work together in real time using richly formatted text, photos, videos and more. The wave is the shared experience that you are involved with. So you could be working with 10 people and everything you do -- from the conversations you have to the changes you make to a document, will be inside a wave. What's really cool about this is that the wave allows you to rewind, allowing you to see who said what when. Since everything is in real-time -- it's fast.

Bears who warn the U.S. stock market has gone too far too fast -- the broad Standard & Poor's 500 index is up 18 percent year to date -- may not get much vindication anytime soon. Investors should see stocks continue to rally as long as corporate profits keep recovering, says market expert Joseph Mezrich (pictured), Nomura Securities International's head of quantitative research.

And the signs look good. The estimated earnings growth rate for the Standard & Poor's 500 during the fourth quarter is 216 percent, according to Thomson Reuters. Even stripping out the volatile financial sector, the other eight out of nine sectors are expected to show a blended growth rate of 7 percent. But that's still double the 3.5 percent economic growth of the U.S. economy in the third quarter. And Mezrich says it's the fact that profit growth is outpacing the U.S. economy that stocks have rallied ahead of an economic recovery.

AT&T (T) is suing Verizon Wireless for misleading advertising. But its actions could do the company more harm than good. The reason for the lawsuit: Verizon (VZ) has been mocking Apple's (AAPL) iPhone "There's an App for That" ads. Verizon TV ads show off a coverage map depicting its larger, third-generation (3G) wireless coverage next to AT&T's smaller 3G coverage map. In its advertisements Verizon quips: "There's a Map for That."

That may irk AT&T, but the company does not dispute Verizon's larger 3G coverage. But it is suing Verizon for highlighting its spotty coverage in a misleading manner. In Verizon's ads, the maps display blank space in AT&T's coverage area. The intent, according to Verizon, is to show where AT&T lacks 3G coverage. But AT&T claims the ads imply that AT&T provides no coverage at all in those areas.

Facebook's plan to memorialize its dead users is certainly well-intentioned. The idea got underway after a Facebook employee was tragically killed in a bicycle accident. As his co-workers struggled to come to grips with the tragedy, they also came up with an idea: Why not offer Facebook memorials for users who pass on? Last week, that is exactly what Facebook did. Now, you can memorialize a dead Facebook user.

But the decision could open the door to a litany of problems. Among the potential issues: Who has the right to determine if a site is memorialized? What if the husband memorializes his wife on Facebook but the wife's parents think that such a move is in poor taste -- can the page then be taken down?

For more than a decade, some smart, successful investors have been saying that Amazon.com (AMZN) wouldn't succeed, because its business plan was flawed. Meanwhile, the company built its reputation as an online bookseller, added more products, and boosted sales.

During that time, Amazon's stock was volatile, racing higher through price targets set by the likes of former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget, and then reeling through declines of more than 50 percent as investors and analysts doubted its ability to grow. Last week, the stock reached a record-high after reporting earnings. Has Amazon finally convinced naysayers it's here to stay?