Everyone knows Google. The name is so common it has become a verb, meaning to search the internet for information. But today Google means money beyond the dreams of Croesus, and that has launched a bitter war among the internet giants. As the world turns ever more rapidly towards e-commerce on an internet now flooded with billions of pages, search engines have become vital in delivering advertising that connects directly and personally with buyers. Getting a customer to click on to an advertiser's website is now worth anything from US5¢ to US45¢ a click, and the clicks are a machinegun fire of millions a day. This torrent of gold, yet to reach full spate, has brought Microsoft, the 800-pound gorilla of popular technology, head-to-head with Google, Yahoo! and AOL, for revenue that is now doubling annually and will in 2005 in the US alone hit more than $US5 billion ($A6.6 billion).