The company said that nearly three of every four Googlers, as the company's workers call themselves, remained focused on the business that turned Google into a money-minting Internet powerhouse: search and online advertising.

The Boston Herald called the protest a "hissy fit" by "Internet powerhouses" saying, "within hours of the online protest, political supporters of the bill... began dropping like flies, thus proving how very powerful these cyber-bullies can be."

Industry executives said the filing probably doomed the deal, which was agreed to last year and would have created an Internet powerhouse and the nation's second-largest long-distance phone company after AT&T.

The deal is notable because Mr. Gore has been an adviser to Google, another Internet powerhouse.

"This is about creating an Internet powerhouse in Asia, with its roots in Hong Kong," said a senior Pacific Century executive, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Two years ago, when America Online, the cheeky Internet powerhouse, announced that it was buying Time Warner, the paragon of offline publishing and entertainment, it was seen as confirmation that new media had officially overpowered the old.

And in June 2000, Mr. Bronfman entered into a disastrous deal to sell Seagram for shares in Vivendi, a water utility that Jean-Marie Messier, then the chief executive, was trying to remake as an Internet powerhouse.

This is not the first time that Microsoft, the biggest winner of the personal computer era, and Google, the emerging Internet powerhouse, have been on opposite sides of an anticompetitive claim.

Having seen how South Korea has turned itself into an Internet powerhouse, broadband advocates say that the United States risks losing out by not moving faster.

There's no denying it - Google is an Internet powerhouse.