from usatoday.com: Microsoft Corp., which has skewered rival Google Inc. for going through customer e-mails to deliver ads, acknowledged it had searched e-mails in a blogger’s Hotmail account to track down who was leaking company secrets. John Frank, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, said in a statement Thursday that the software company “took extraordinary actions in this case.” In the future, he said, Microsoft would consult an outside attorney who is a former judge to determine if a court order would have allowed such a search.