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Google has launched Google Health, a long-anticipated medical records service letting US users store and manage their health care information online.

The offering draws yet another battle line between Internet search king Google and global software giant Microsoft, which began offering a similar HealthVault service in October.

"It isn’t surprising both sides are going after it," Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle told AFP, who said the service was likely to strongly appeal to baby boomers – the generation of Americans born between the late 1940s and early 1960s.

"Health care is not just lucrative; you are solving a problem critical to an aging group of boomers. There are public relations and business benefits to it."

Rob Shilkin, a spokesman for Google Australia, said that while there was a strong recognition in Australia of the significant benefits to patients of this type of service, the was "no current timetable" on a rollout of the service for local users.

Microsoft has launched a new "cashback" search service that pays users a rebate for buying products they found through the company’s Windows Live search engine.

Live Search cashback is the latest attempt by the world’s largest software maker to draw users to its online search engine, which is a distant third behind market leader Google and Yahoo.

"This is giving you a reason why you should use a particular search engine," Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said at the company’s Advance 08 advertising conference.

(The service is only able to be used by people who are residents of the United Stars and can provide a local – US - address.)

Microsoft sees online search as a critical component to establishing an online advertising powerhouse. By placing text-based ads next to results from its ubiquitous search engine, Google has become the leader in web advertising.

Google has surpassed Yahoo to become the most popular website in the United States, according to comScore’s rankings by the number of unique monthly visitors.

Google has long been the internet’s leader in search, but its audience has trailed Yahoo’s when counting other services such as email and photo sharing.

April’s numbers, which internet tracking firm comScore plans to formally release on Thursday, show Google on top for the first time.

The lead is tiny – 466,000 visitors out of about 141 million apiece. And while such measures are good as a gauge, they aren’t known for precision. In fact, rival rankings from Nielsen Online already had Google as the top web brand.

Still, comScore’s finding is one more hint of Google’s dominance over internet pioneer Yahoo.

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