The Justice Department probe of the Google Books settlement is heating up. On Thursday afternoon, the agency officially opened an investigation into the deal, which would allow the search sovereign to make millions of books available online.

“The United States has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman Act,” wrote William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general. “At this preliminary stage, the United States has reached no conclusions as to the merit of those concerns or more broadly what impact this settlement may have on competition. However, we have determined that the issues raised by the proposed settlement warrant further inquiry.”

The move is the strongest sign yet that the DOJ may block the settlement, which critics claim would grant Google (GOOG) a monopoly on orphaned works–copyrighted texts without an identifiable copyright holder. The notification, included below, is the first time the DOJ has confirmed the investigation publicly and said that it is indeed looking at possible violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Odd that the letter was filed this week inasmuch as the “fairness hearing” that will determine whether final approval is given to the settlement is still months away. Clearly, Google’s recent public relations offensive claiming the company is just as vulnerable to competition as anyone else hasn’t had much effect.

Reached for comment, Google spokesperson Gabriel Stricker offered the following statement:

“The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general have contacted us to learn more about the impact of the settlement, and we are happy to answer their questions.

It’s important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court, stands to expand access to millions of books in the U.S.”

2009.07.02 Order _ DOJ Letter -

“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”

– Palm investor Roger McNamee

Palm (PALM) seems to have satiated pent-up early demand for its new Pre smartphone, constrained supplies be damned. In a pair of investor notes issued today, analysts at Pali Research and JP Morgan say that sales of the Pre have tapered off to a point where supply and demand are roughly in parity.

“We have concluded our 3rd round of channel checks for the Pre,” writes JP Morgan analyst Paul Coster, who notes that demand for the handset is hovering at about 40,000 per week. “The gap between supply and demand has closed at Sprint and BestBuy stores, waitlists are eliminated or down, and most stores now have Pre devices in stock.”

Pali Research analyst Walter Piecyk also surveyed the Pre landscape and reached a similar conclusion, though he sees the slowing of sales as a bit more pronounced. “We believe that Palm Pre sales have slowed over the past week for Sprint to under 40,000 from 50,000-60,000 last week,” he writes. “…We suspect that if sales continue to moderate, Sprint would increase its marketing budget for the product. The marketing budget behind the product has been somewhat limited to date compared to the marketing push that Apple does.”

Indeed. And let’s not forget that Apple (AAPL) has a new handset on the market that’s been selling quite well. Makes you wonder if this ebb in demand for the Pre is somehow related.

Guess it’s looking like Palm investor Roger McNamee’s hyperbolic predictions about iPhone-to-Pre conversion aren’t going to quite pan out.

iLaunch day 2009 was one for the record books, as AT&T customers scrambled to get their hands on the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet.

Here’s a look at some of the milestones we achieved:

• Best-ever sales day in our retail stores
• Second-largest traffic day in our retail stores
• Most transactions processed via our IT systems in a single day
• Most upgrade eligibility checks in a single day
• Largest order day in att.com history
• Largest features sales day in att.com history

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008–all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

[Image credit: Gizmodo]

Impressive growth, though RIM’s still got a way to go before it catches up with its rivals. Opera continues to hold the top spot with a share of 25.4 percent, followed by Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone at 20.8 percent, Nokia’s (NOK) 19.3 percent and 14 percent for the iPod touch. Note as well that Android continues to flat-line, though presumably that will change with the release of new devices using the OS.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sirius XM said it will raise Karmazin’s base salary to $1.5 million from $1.25 million beginning on Jan. 1, 2010, and grant him an option to purchase 120 million shares at an exercise price of 43 cents a share. His reward for steering the company clear of bankruptcy after driving it right up to its very edge, I suppose.

Sirius (SIRI) investors who’ve seen their stock plunge to 46 cents from $2 a share can be forgiven for questioning the wisdom of such a move and wondering if perhaps there wasn’t a better use for a quarter of a million dollars at a time when the company is buried in debt. But there’s nothing much to be done about it now. Suffice it to say, the odds of Karmazin being forced out at this point are likely pretty slim.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Fee Increase Coming for Sirius XM Subscribers [Internal Doc]
• Sirius Founder: You’re 10 Years Too Late, Karmazin
• Call Me Mel “Save-My-Own-Keister” Karmazin
• Sirius-EchoStar-Liberty: Ménage-à-Blah
• Sirius: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Ergen
• A Bankruptcy Filing, Mel? Surely You Can’t Be Sirius…
• Sirius Rolls Out New 24 Hour Investor Keening Channel
• Sirius Debt Problems? Call EchoStar! No Upfront Fees!
• Sirius XM: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
• Your Report Card Is Your Stock Price? Guess Sirius Is Making Straight $.13’s…
• Trade You 77 shares of SIRI for 1 Month of “Sirius Everything”

“We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of ‘going after’ the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.”

– Twitter co-founder Biz Stone

Now, a one percent increase in market share isn’t a spectacular achievement, but it is meaningful growth. More so since Google posted a slight decline in share in June, its third in as many months.

Google still rules search in the U.S., but Bing appears to be making some modest headway. “Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter.

Which is fine. Particularly when you’re coming from as far behind as Microsoft (MSFT). Of course, as I’ve said before, early successes like these are driven as much by marketing as by technological prowess and positive user experience. And right now, Bing’s got between $80 million and $100 million dollars behind it. But those dollars will only last so long.

And as Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt likes to point out, you really can’t expect to buy your way into the search market. “You don’t just buy it with ads,” Schmidt told Fox Business earlier this week. “You earn it, and you earn it customer by customer, search by search, answer by answer.”

Perhaps that’s exactly what Microsoft is doing here with Bing.

Looks like he was right.

LogMeIn became the fourth venture-backed IPO of 2009 this morning, hitting the markets with an offering that raised $107 million for the remote-services technology provider. Priced at $16 each, the high end of the stock’s IPO price range, LogMeIn (LOGM) shares spiked more than 30 percent to $20.90 shortly after the company made its public debut.

Great news for LogMeIn, which filed to go public in January 2008, only to see its prospects for doing so trashed by the econalypse. Great news as well for venture-backed companies hoping to go public. “The IPO window has cracked open a bit,’’ Emily Mendell, vice president of strategic affairs for the National Venture Capital Association told the Boston Globe. “I think the market has become slightly more stable.’’

It would certainly appear that way. Shares of SolarWinds (SWI), a network-management software outfit, are up 24 percent since their debut, and online restaurant-reservation service OpenTable’s (OPEN) shares have soared 52 percent since they began trading in May.

Clearly, we’re seeing something of an awakening in the moribund IPO market, although whether it will continue is anyone’s guess. “I think this is a temporary market window,” David Liu, a managing director at Jefferies & Co., told Forbes. “The economy is still screwed up….We’re telling our clients, if you can get on file and do something quickly, go ahead and do it now so you’re not caught flat-footed.”

Launched in early June, the plug-in provided a way to run Microsoft Outlook on Google Apps instead of Microsoft Exchange. Sadly for Google, the plug-in didn’t play well with Outlook, most notably making its data inaccessible to Windows Desktop Search. Now, after a few weeks of troubleshooting and some help from Microsoft (that must have made for some interesting conference calls), the company has found a solution to the problem and a fix has been released.

“We worked closely with Microsoft to address two issues that we shared recently, and we appreciate their help,” Google Apps Senior Product Manager Chris Vander Mey said in a company blog post Tuesday. “The Windows Desktop Search feature now works, so you can choose between the native Outlook search, which has been available since launch, and Windows Desktop Search to find information in Outlook.”

With that little snafu resolved, it’s now back to business for Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG), with the former attacking the latter’s search business and the latter steadily encroaching on the former’s software turf. We now return you to our previously scheduled hostilities…

Not much of a surprise here, I suppose, given the level of anticipation that typically accompanies the release of a new iPhone. Nielsen says “anticipatory buzz” for the iPhone 3GS was near-deafening. “The new iPhone 3G S sent blog mentions up 1,226 percent week-over-week on June 8, the day of the announcement. After the initial announcement, buzz dipped but again picked up after the phone became available to consumers on June 19, with blog mentions more than doubling compared to the week prior.” The chart, below (click to enlarge):

“Microsoft recently took steps to address concerns raised by the case, but nothing about this will mean higher prices for Windows 7 in Europe.”

– Bill Veghte, senior vice president for Microsoft’s Windows business group, says the company is not punishing Europeans users for its spat with European antitrust regulators.