The long-standing and persistent accusation that Google unfairly uses its search engine to promote its other online services is once again in the spotlight, triggered by new social search functionality the company is rolling out this week that more tightly links its search engine with its Google+ social networking site.

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The complaints have come from different quarters, including competitors and industry experts, and have focused on various arguments, but at bottom all charge Google with using its dominant search engine to deliberately boost Google+’s popularity, by giving Google+ pages and profiles an artificially prominent position in result pages.

One of the strongest arguments made so far comes from search engine expert Danny Sullivan, who described on Wednesday in his technology news site Search Engine Land how Google is now suggesting Google+ business pages that companies and public figures have set up on the site in a way that makes the Google+ pages much more prominent than similar pages these public figures and organizations have set up on competing social media sites.

Sullivan shows a variety of examples in which Google, via new query auto-complete suggestions for Google+ profiles and via the new Google+ People and Pages sidebar suggestions column, favors Google+ business pages over alternative ones that have more “fans” on Facebook and Twitter.

Sullivan ran his queries without being logged into his Google Account, and even using the Chrome browser’s “incognito” mode, to make sure that the Google search engine treated his queries as coming from a fairly generic user, and not tailored to him specifically.

“Is there anyone out there who still wants to say that being on Google+ doesn’t matter? Anyone? Because when being on Google+ means that you potentially can have your Google+ page leap to the top in those sidebar results, Google+ matters. It matters more than ever before,” he wrote, adding that Google is clearly “taking its weight in search and leveraging it to boost Google+ in a big way.”

Google, after many missteps in the social networking market, launched Google+ in mid-2011, and has made it clear, from CEO Larry Page on down, that Google+ will be a key, unifying product for the company, providing social sharing features and an identity layer across most Google online services.

However, there has been skepticism regarding the adoption and engagement level for Google+, especially when compared with social networking leader Facebook, which has more than 850 million active members who spend a lot of time on the site.

Google+ is also a rival to Twitter because Google+ can be used in similar ways as the microblogging phenomenon.

In fact, among the first to cry foul this week was Twitter. Its General Counsel Alex Macgillivray, who previously worked at Google, posted on his Twitter account that Tuesday was “a bad day for the Internet” after Google announced the new search functionality.

“Having been there, I can imagine the dissension @Google to search being warped this way,” he wrote. Twitter later followed Macgillivray’s post with a more formal statement, in which it reiterated and expanded on his complaint.

Meanwhile, Google answered back with a post on its main Google+ page, saying it was “a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments” because Twitter “chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer,” a reference to the now lapsed two-year deal which gave Google special access to Twitter’s “firehose” of real-time tweets.

However, as Sullivan and others have pointed out, Google has continued indexing Twitter posts and has a massive collection of them in its index, including links to the official accounts of public figures, celebrities and organizations.

Throughout the two-day flap, Facebook officials have remained mum. Facebook has its own special search arrangement with its partner Microsoft, which gives the Bing search engine access to certain data that is out of Google’s reach. While Facebook keeps most personal profile content off limits to search engines, its business profiles are public, as well as some other content, and thus available to Google. In fact, for a while Facebook has let individuals tag status updates as “public” and made those available to search engines — a good example of this is the site Your OpenBook, devoted exclusively to this type of personal, public status update.

In its announcement on Tuesday of the new social search features, described by the company as “Search, Plus Your World,” Google focused on new things its search users will be able to do when signed into their Google accounts: find Google+ posts and Picasa Web photos they and their contacts on those social media sites have shared not only publicly on the Web but also privately with each other.

This new functionality builds on the existing Google social search features, which let users logged into their Google Accounts see links in search results that their specific social media contacts tagged with the Google +1 button or shared publicly using a social media service.

Google didn’t respond to a request for comment about the controversy surrounding the new social search functionality.

With a glut of “ultrabook” announcements slated at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Apple watchers have one question: How will the Cupertino, Calif. company respond?

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Backed by Intel, the big PC manufacturers are expected to launch or show ultrabooks, the chipmaker’s term for thin, lightweight notebooks that rely on solid-state storage (SSD) in lieu of a traditional platter-based hard disk drive and forgo an optical drive, at CES this week.

According to Intel, more than 75 different ultrabooks will appear during 2012.

But as two analysts who cover Apple noted today, the category isn’t new. In fact, Apple was the company that kicked it off.

“They started the ultrabook trend four years ago with the MacBook Air,” noted Brian Marshall, an analyst with International Strategy & Investment Group (ISI ), in an interview Monday.

“Apple set the form factor and the bar,” agreed Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research.

Both experts were referring to the MacBook Air, which Apple introduced in 2008. Sales of the Air, however, took off only after October 2010, when Apple dropped the price and revamped the line to include not only a 13-in. model, but also a lower-priced 11-in. laptop. Four months ago, Apple refreshed the MacBook Air line, equipping the notebooks with faster processors and Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion.

But Apple’s lead in the thin-light laptop class — last year, it owned an estimated 89% of that market, said Marshall — is threatened by an expected wave of ultrabooks from big-name PC makers, including Acer, which trotted out its Aspire S5 Monday.

Late last year, Marshall forecast a significant drop during 2012 for Apple’s share because of the new competition from Windows-based ultrabooks.

“There will definitely be a lot more attention paid to ultrabooks this week,” said Marshall. “And that points out that Apple could be vulnerable here.”

So what’s Cupertino to do?

Tweak the MacBook Air, said Marshall and Gottheil.

“They can add a little bit more functionality and some more features,” said Marshall, ticking off such natural evolutions as higher resolution screens, faster processors and more ports, the latter of which the Air lacks in large numbers.

“Apple can proliferate the Air concept into larger [screen] sizes,” said Gottheil, echoing his take last November when rumors of an impending 15-in. MacBook Air began circulating.

“Frankly, it’s tough to see how Apple can make the Air all that much better,” said Marshall, who called that laptop his favorite Apple product of all time.

Another possible move by Apple, agreed both analysts, would be to reframe the iPad, or at least a version of it, as an ultrabook rival by designing a keyboard and case integrated with the tablet and its iOS operating system.

Third-party vendors, notably Zagg — which also designed the $99 Bluetooth-based keyboard and case sold by Logitech — have had limited success with such an accessory.

But Apple should be able to do those designs one better, thought Gottheil.

“Apple hasn’t filled the gap that others may exploit with a tablet that also offers a keyboard,” said Gottheil, referring to expectations that later this year PC makers will launch devices that function as either a tablet or as a lightweight notebook. “Their little [wireless] keyboard doesn’t have a nice carrying case, but I think they will find a way to fill [that gap].”

Gottheil sees Apple tackling the tablet-plus-keyboard issue not as a discrete package but as an add-on, along the lines of the approach it took last year when it launched the Smart Cover accessory for the iPad 2.

But although Apple will face increased competition from ultrabooks this year or next, analysts highlighted the enviable position the company finds itself in.

“It’s kind of ironic that it’s taken PC OEMs four years to come up with a viable alternative to the MacBook Air,” said Marshall.

“If ultrabooks are only thin, light MacBook Air knockoffs, they won’t be very successful,” chimed in Jack Gold or J. Gold Associates, in an email last week. “They need to be more.”