What does the Microsoft-Yahoo deal mean?

Posted by Tom Krazit on 30 July 2009

With a few strokes of a giant purple pen, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Yahoo's Carol Bartz finally signed a deal Wednesday that will turn Microsoft into the second-largest search company in the world, and turn Yahoo into a media-driven advertising broker.

Here's a breakdown of the deal from the perspectives of the key players:

Yahoo

What it gets: Yahoo is paying below market rate for an outsourced search engine: Microsoft will pay Yahoo 88 percent of future search revenue, a better ongoing deal than had been expected, according to IDC.

It gets a guaranteed stream of search revenue for 18 months, and it gets to sell all the search ads on both Yahoo and Microsoft properties. And it gets to save money, one of the highest priorities for Bartz and new Yahoo CFO Tim Morse: the company estimated it will save $200 million in capital expenditures and see an overall benefit of $500 million in operating income.

What it loses: The ability to control its own destiny when it comes to search, still the most profitable sector of online advertising by a large margin. Yahoo's search revenue is now tied to the performance of Bing for 10 years, an eternity in the Internet world, and 88 percent of something is less than 100 percent of something.

What's next: Probably another reorganization, and another wave of departures as talented search engineers weigh their options among Microsoft, Google, Ask.com, and start-ups.

Expect rosier earnings calls where Bartz can point to the cost savings from the deal, and the evolution of a long-term plan for the company that doesn't involve dumping businesses.

Microsoft

What it gets: Far more search market share in one day than it could have hoped to obtain from organic Bing growth -- no matter how much people may like it -- over several years. All of Yahoo's search technology is now available to Microsoft to pick and choose what it might want to use on Bing.

And Microsoft also avoided having to make an upfront payment to take control of Yahoo search, as had been rumored for months leading up to the deal and hinted at by Bartz herself, claiming "boatloads of money" would be needed to pry Yahoo search away from the company.

What it loses: Relationships with advertisers on search ads, although it preserves its display ad sales operation...for now. Otherwise, Microsoft seems to have emerged from this deal pretty clean.

What's next: Heated search competition with Google, which only means the two companies have even more reason to detest each other.

Google

What it gets: Time. This deal will take months, if not years, to complete, and it will be a messy integration process. Google sales representatives likely called up all of their major clients this morning to remind those clients of the uncertainty that will accompany the integration process, and the notion that their ad dollars might be better spent with the more stable operation.

Google also gets to deflect some of the antitrust scrutiny that has been directed its way by pointing out that a combined Yahoo-Microsoft search property has a very healthy share of the market.

What it loses: The ability to play Yahoo and Microsoft search off one another: fractured competition meant it would have been much harder for either company to make serious inroads against Google on their own. It also turns Microsoft into a credible technology threat with Microsoft's right to pick and choose the best of Yahoo's search technology developments and match them with the well-received Bing.

What's next: Business as usual, for now. Google never had any intention of ceding its search lead before this deal was announced, and while there's arguably more pressure now to live up to that promise over the next several years, it's not anything that wasn't expected in Mountain View.

Advertisers

What they get: A credible second option for their ad spending, assuming ad spending ever becomes trendy again amidst the current economic backdrop. They're also in store for a renewed pitch on the benefits of Internet display advertising, which probably still doesn't resonate on Madison Avenue but may one day start to make sense for the Internet advertiser.

What they lose: The relationships between advertisers and the two companies will likely grow very complicated over the next several months as those used to working with certain representatives transfer their business to new faces. Those problems aren't insurmountable, but they can be annoying.

What's next: If the ad market ever comes back, renewed competition in search advertising for keywords, placement, and reach.

Consumers

What they get: "Powered by Bing" search results on Yahoo pages.

What they lose: Usually, consolidation is seen as bad for consumers--take banks as an example -- because it reduces choice.

What's next: The consumer impact of this deal is not obvious, especially not at this point with so many details left to be hammered out. One could argue that if Yahoo wasn't really committed to search, consumers would see better search results over time on Bing-powered Yahoo pages. And there are indirect benefits to consumers that come along with having advertisers that aren't chained to one search engine.

But this is really about freeing up Yahoo to focus more on its other businesses, and giving Microsoft more market share to force Google into playing defense on search, which could alleviate some of the pressure Google is putting on Microsoft with things like Google Apps and Android.

It will take some time for the impact of these decisions to filter down to the consumer: assuming the government gives the deal its blessing.

Resources: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/biztech/07/30/cnet.microsoft.yahoo.deal/index.html

Microsoft-Yahoo: A Rival for Google?

"The deal, if approved by antitrust regulators, could give the Internet search giant a viable competitor. Advertisers are optimistic"

So Microsoft (MSFT) got its wish. Thanks to a long-awaited deal with Yahoo! (YHOO), the software giant is poised to become the clear No. 2 in the most lucrative Internet market of them all: search. Under the agreement, Yahoo will use Microsoft technology to respond to searches made on Yahoo sites and to serve up the ads that appear alongside the results. If the deal is cleared by antitrust regulators, which is no sure thing, Microsoft will triple its search market share to nearly 30% and become the only meaningful alternative to Google, which holds 65% of the market.

The deal casts Microsoft in an unfamiliar role. The software maker that drew fire for years for its allegedly anticompetitive behavior now must prove itself an effective force for competition against Google (GOOG). Advertisers and online publishers want a viable alternative to the search titan. But analysts question whether Microsoft can avoid losing ground as it implements the complex Yahoo partnership, which could take two years, and afterward come up with real innovations in the business. "We can't afford a hiccup on this," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an interview.

There is cause for optimism. Microsoft's Bing, the search engine it launched two months ago, is a hit, having begun to gain market share. And by combining Bing's search with Yahoo's, Microsoft will get more data about Web surfers' behavior to refine its technology.

A Much Larger Audience

Just as important as answering Web surfers' queries is delivering the ads that appear next to them. That, after all, is where Microsoft will make its money. Although the company's adCenter technology works reasonably well, many advertisers haven't bothered to use it, because it couldn't deliver as many eyeballs as Google could. Since all ads on Yahoo sites now will run though adCenter, advertisers using the system will be able to reach a much larger audience than in the past. "If you're an advertiser, you're going to be able to triple your reach overnight," says Robert Murray, chief executive of digital ad agency iProspect.

Advertisers are willing to give Microsoft a chance. Some complain Google's dominance has led to a lack of innovation and excessive costs for advertisers. "We think a formidable competitor is going to put some pressure on Google's model," says Chris Paradysz, CEO of ad agency PM Digital.

Ballmer negotiated tough terms with Yahoo. While analysts had expected he would have to spend $1�billion or more to get Yahoo to throw in the towel on search, Ballmer won't pay anything up front and will only have to cover the expenses of taking over Yahoo's search operations, an amount he says is "a few hundred million." That's a bargain, especially since Microsoft once offered $48 billion for all of Yahoo.

Microsoft has long struggled against Google. Now Ballmer is gaining substantial ground in his pursuit. "Microsoft doesn't necessarily get it right the first time," says Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. "But by God, you can't beat 'em on persistence."

Resources: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_32/b4142000198919.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

Microsoft Forges 3 New Security Tools

Posted by Richard Adhikari on 28 July 2009

"Organized crime, disorganized crime, petty theft, fraud -- the Web has it all, and combating it requires and ever-evolving set of tools. Microsoft offered some details on three new security projects at the Black Hat security conference. It also unveiled the progress it's made with some of the projects it announced at last year's event."

Despite the best efforts of the computer security industry, hackers are launching more attacks than ever. In turn, members of the industry are working together to combat the threat. In line with this, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) on Monday unveiled some new tools at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Nev.

These include Microsoft Security Update Guide, Project Quant, and Microsoft Office Visualization Tool.

All are available for free download.

Microsoft also issued a report on how several programs to combat hackers, announced at Black Hat last year, are shaping up.

The Growing Threat

Spam is surging to unprecedented levels, and only last week hackers launched a massive campaign to co-opt free online storage and services to their ends.

This campaign was tracked by security vendor AppRiver. Spammers were creating accounts on Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) , LiverJournal and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Groups through an automated process that broke these sites' CAPTCHA defense, according to AppRiver security analyst Troy Gill.

CAPTCHA is a test which requires anyone trying to create an account to key letters and numbers shown in a box on the page into a capture field. Up until recently, this would screen out software that automatically created accounts on public sites, because the software could not read and key in the letters and numbers, but that barrier seems to have been overcome.

Spammers want to automate the creation of accounts on public Web sites, as that speeds things up and lets them hit more people in less time.

"We're in a dire situation where 15 to 20 percent of all packets on the Internet are bad stuff," David Perry, global director of education at security firm Trend Micro, told TechNewsWorld.

"We don't just have organized cybercrime, we have every kind of crime, panoply of crime."

Microsoft's New Tools

To fight that crime, newer and more sophisticated tools are needed. One of these is Microsoft Security Update Guide, one of the three tools Microsoft released today. It outlines Microsoft's resources, processes and practices surrounding its security release process.

The second one is Project Quant. This is an open community project that lets IT develop a cost baseline for updates.

The third is Microsoft Office Visualization Tool, which helps customers better understand and deconstruct Microsoft Office-based attacks.

All three are necessary, according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group. "Most of the market is being managed almost part-time, and the Security Update Guide would be very helpful," he said.

Qant lets users figure out what it costs to deal with a security threat and the cost of the alternatives, which may include upgrading to a newer technology. While it could lead them to select a non-Microsoft alternative, that's the risk Microsoft has to take, Enderle said.

Coping With the Problem

A paper titled "Building a Safer, More Trusted Internet Through Information Sharing," released at Black Hat, outlined Microsoft's views on security.

"Cybercrime continues to grow ... but a safer online experience can only be realized when customers, the industry and the security and privacy community work together," the paper stated.

Microsoft's Active Protections Program supplies Microsoft vulnerability information to security software customers, and a total of 45 companies around the world have joined up so far.

Microsoft Vulnerability Research, another program, shares security expertise with third-party software vendors.

However, these efforts represent only bandages, and more needs to be done, Trend Micro's (Nasdaq: TMIC) Perry said.

"Eventually, we'll have to jack up the Internet and replace it or build something over it or under it," he explained. "Every time we knock out the supports from under a structure that supports the majority of criminals, we force them to evolve. We call that civilization. My hope is that the bad guys become so civilized that they can't be the bad guys any more and become the good guys."

Resources: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Microsoft-Forges-3-New-Security-Tools-67705.html

Whatever happened to the Conficker worm?

Posted by John D. Sutter on 27 July 2009

The hugely talked-about computer worm seemed poised to wreak havoc on the world's machines on April Fool's Day.

And then ... nothing much happened.

But while the doom and gloom forecast for the massive botnet -- a remotely controlled network that security experts say infected about 5 million computers -- never came to pass, Conficker is still making some worm hunters nervous.

Phillip Porras, program director at SRI International, a nonprofit research group, said Conficker infects millions of machines around the world. And the malware's author or authors could use that infected network to steal information or make money off of the compromised computer users.

"Conficker does stand out as one of those bots that is very large and has been able to sustain itself on the Web," which is rare, said Porras, who also is a member of the international group tracking Conficker.

Still, computer users, even those infected with Conficker, haven't seen much in the way of terrifying results.

After the botnet relaunched April 1, it gained further access to an army of computers that the program's author or authors could control.

The only thing the author or authors have done with that power, though, is to try to sell fake computer-security software to a relatively small segment of Conficker-stricken computers, Porras said.

The lack of a major attack has led some people in the security community to assume that the worm is basically dead.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer with F-Secure, an Internet security company, says the people who created Conficker would have launched a major offensive by now if they were going to.

Hypponen, who is scheduled to speak about the Conficker botnet next week at Black Hat, a major computer security conference, said he thinks whoever made Conficker didn't mean for the worm to get so large, as the size of the botnet drew widespread attention from the security community and the media.

"This gang, they knew their stuff. They used cutting-edge technology that we had never before. ... I've been working in viruses for 20 years, and there were several things that I'd never seen at all," he said. "That, to me, would tell that perhaps this is a new group or a new gang, someone who tried it for the first time."

He added, "The more experienced attackers don't let their viruses or their worms spread this widely. They, on purpose, keep their viruses smaller in size in order to keep them from headlines."

Veteran botnet creators tend to hold the size of the malicious networks to about 2,000 to 10,000 computers to keep from being noticed, he said.

"Even if the [Conficker] gang would want to continue operations, most likely they would drop the current botnet and start something new," he said.

Don DeBolt, director of threat research for CA, an information technology company, said researchers are still watching Conficker.

"It's still being tracked, so it is still active out there, but certainly the threat has been mitigated by all of the attention and focus that it has received," he said.

DeBolt said the press hyped the Conficker story because it was tied to April Fool's Day and because it made so many computers vulnerable to attack.

He said other viruses and botnets pose more serious threats.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, a computer security company, said the infected Conficker network is still growing.

"The interesting thing is, the hackers never really did much with the botnet that they created. So they created an army of lots and lots of computers ... but they've never really done anything with it," he said. "They were almost frightened off doing it."

Others disagree with that assessment.

Hypponen said Conficker was not hype; it was the largest network of its kind seen since 2003 and deserved the attention it got from the security community and from the public.

Porras said theories about the the motives of Conficker's creator are based on speculation.

The important thing, he said, is that security experts will continue to work to reduce the number of computers infected with the worm.

Resources: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/27/conficker.update/index.html

HP researchers develop browser-based darknet

Posted by Tom Espiner on 25 July 2009

Two researchers for Hewlett-Packard have created a browser-based darknet, an idea that could make it easier for businesses to keep eavesdroppers from uncovering confidential information.

Darknets are encrypted peer-to-peer networks normally used to communicate files between closed groups of people. Most darknets require a certain level of technological literacy to set up and maintain, including taking care of the necessary servers. However, HP researchers Billy Hoffman and Matt Wood plan next week to demonstrate a browser-based darknet called "Veiled," which they claim requires little proficiency to set up and run.

"This will really lower the barriers to participation," Wood told ZDNet UK. "If you want to create a darknet, you can send an encrypted e-mail saying, 'Here's the URL.' When (the recipient visits) the Web site, the browser can just get (the darknet application) going."

Hoffman and Wood are scheduled to demonstrate the technology next week at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Wood said HP does not want to turn the project into a commercial product. While the company does not plan to make the source code available, the researchers do plan to open source their idea, so to speak, so other security researchers can "pick up the baton."

"HP has no desire to patent or copyright or release any code," Wood said. "Black Hat is one of the top security conferences, and we want to get this cool idea into the hands of people who are really smart."

Businesses could use browser-based darknets to set up workgroups to exchange commercially sensitive information, or to have a means of making anonymous suggestions to management, Wood said. "I like the idea of a suggestions box on the Web," he said. "It provides an anonymous way to make suggestions to your boss."

HP's darknet research came about when the researchers realized the potential of new browser technologies, according to Wood.

Browsers with HTML 5 support--such as recent versions of Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer--allow files to be stored "persistently" on the client, for working on them when offline. This feature, coupled with the distributed grid-computing nature of a darknet, means files can be effectively uploaded in perpetuity, even when the initial browser has been shut down. It also makes the darknet resilient, said Wood.

"One of the benefits of a darknet is that they are distributed," said Wood. "To destroy it, you would have to take down all of the clients, because if one server gets compromised, you just shift to a different server. They can hop around."

Advances in JavaScript engines, such as Google's Chrome V8 and Mozilla's TraceMonkey, have also helped make browser-based darknets possible, according to Wood. These engines allow browser-based communications to be set up quickly and encrypted. The Veiled darknet uses RSA public key cryptography, but any cryptography will work.

"Cool advances in JavaScript technology allow encryption in the browser," said Wood. "Browsers are getting really powerful."

Resources: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10295761-83.html

PayPal tries rewiring e-commerce with new interface

Posted by Josh Lowensohn on 23 July 2009

PayPal, eBay's well established but aging mechanism for online payments, is trying to rebuild itself for a new generation of online commerce possibilities.

At an event for press and developers on Thursday, PayPal and its partners described several new programming interfaces that are part of the company's upcoming Adaptive Payments Service and showed what developers can do with them.

For example, Microsoft will use the interface to enable payments within its forthcoming Azure cloud-computing service. And LiveOps' on-demand outsourcing service will use it to automatically handle fluctuating payment amounts and changes to who's being paid. Finally, the interface takes PayPal beyond the browser, opening it up for use on mobile phones, set-top boxes, and other increasingly smart devices.

"It's truly disruptive," said PayPal CEO Scott Thompson at the event. "It puts developers in the driver's seat by allowing you to do what you want to do and (choose) how you want to get paid."

The new service will be available to 300 PayPal partners starting Thursday, with a public beta this November--just in time for PayPal X Innovate 2009, its first developer conference.

PayPal is pitching the Adaptive Payments platform to developers as a way to more easily build PayPal-powered payment options into their applications. It's also a more streamlined version of PayPal's existing program for letting businesses manage transactions between several different parties.

The new payments service is a key part in PayPal's plan to double its revenues within the next three years. Back in March, PayPal's president Scott Thompson promised as much, saying that by 2011, the company should be doing somewhere between $100-120 billion in annual payments. PayPal has also had a fire lit underneath it since Amazon rolled out its own online payments service around this time last year. It let users make online purchases using billing information that was stored on Amazon.com

PayPal isn't just central to eBay's future. It will eclipse the company's auction and commerce operations, the company says.

"PayPal is a business that will be bigger than eBay," eBay Chief Executive John Donahoe said Thursday at the Fortune Brainstorm conference.

PayPal is a force to be reckoned with. On average, more than $2,000 goes through PayPal every second of each day. It has 75 million active accounts, and it's available in 190 markets and 19 different currencies.

Beta testing

Before the announcement, PayPal had been working with a handful of companies to test the new APIs (application programming interfaces). One of those companies is Microsoft, which is tapping PayPal for online payments in the Web applications built for the company's upcoming Azure platform.

At the unveiling, Yousef Khalidi, a Microsoft distinguished engineer, demonstrated an application that integrated PayPal's payment and billing functionality. It took only two days to integrate it into the existing product, Khalidi said.

Khalidi said that Microsoft plans to offer a simple way to build PayPal's mechanism into hosted applications as part of Azure's full release later this year.

Microsoft probably had an easier time choosing PayPal for its payment service than some of the alternatives: Amazon Flexible Payment Services and Google Checkout both come from companies in direct competition with Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing service.

Michael Ivey, CEO and co-founder of TwitPay, also took the stage to show his company's use of the new PayPal API--specifically to let people pay multiple people at once.

"In one transaction, I'm paying four different people," he said. Before the new APIs, the service would require users to make each payment as its own transaction.

Sites already using the new API include: Webassist, GroupCard, Lottay, Rainfall of Envelopes, and MedPayOnline.com

"PayPal will help you get paid for your innovations--your business will become our business," Thompson told the developers. "We view you as our third set of customers."

New features

The new payment service has a handful of new features designed to make it easier for developers to make money with their applications and services.

Thompson said that even if developers were acting as an intermediary between the person sending the money and the recipient, they would now be able to take their cut of that transaction--just as PayPal does.

Part of getting that to happen involves a new API that lets developers create peer-to-peer and business-to-business money-sharing applications. They can now also split up payments into several transactions and let users authorize a payment after the transaction's been made. Those two mechanisms can speed purchasing, regardless of whether the buyer is ready to pay the full amount at the outset.

As part of the new platform, PayPal also is changing the way fees are charged. Application developers can choose to have the sender of the money, not just the recipient, pay the fee.

In addition, the fee rates can be changed based on the type of purchase, which should ease the chore of handling both high-value transactions and micropayments (transactions below $12) within the same application. As it stands today, PayPal currently requires sellers to have two different accounts open, one for bigger payments and another for micropayments--and each has different rates.

People use PayPal today through a Web interface, but a new API will bring PayPal to nontraditional computing platforms including mobile phones, set-top boxes, and gaming consoles. That's important, given that those devices increasingly are networked and have their own ecosystems of applications. And moving to a browser can be disruptive to a user who just wants to make a quick payment.

Using PayPal that way also means that a developer must build the necessary user interface, though. PayPal didn't provide specifics on that element of the new payments system.

Overall, Thompson said the new payment system will help PayPal keep pace with changes in technology and business.

"The pace of innovation is just staggering," he said. "And the next wave of innovation is poised to move that much faster. "

Resources: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10294233-2.html

Microsoft finalizes Windows 7

Posted by Ina Fried on 22 July 09

Microsoft on Wednesday said it has finalized the code, paving the way for the software to make its way onto retail shelves and new PCs in time for its October 22 launch.

The software maker is hoping the response to the new operating system differs from the lukewarm reviews and compatibility challenges that marked the release of Windows Vista, which hit the market in January 2007. In contrast to Vista, Windows 7 has been marked by the company consistently hitting its deadlines and receiving largely positive feedback along the way.

"That is our final engineering milestone in what has been a three-year journey," said Mike Angiulo, general manager for planning in the Windows unit.

Windows 7 relies on the same underpinnings as Windows Vista, but adds a lot of features aimed at making the operating system both look and perform better.

Visually, it does a better job of managing open windows through an improved taskbar and a feature that lets users peek at one particular window or see the desktop that is hidden below all of the windows. On the performance side, it boots up and shuts down faster, and can run better on Netbooks and low-end machines.

Whereas Vista suffered several delays and saw its feature set change significantly in the years it was being developed and tested, Windows 7 looks very similar to the early developer preview version first shown at last October's professional developer conference.

"It feels great to be here on time," said Tami Reller, the Windows unit's chief financial officer, who recently added marketing responsibility for Windows as well.

Microsoft plans to offer Windows 7 in a number of different versions ranging from a low-end "starter edition" to an ultra-high-end "ultimate version." However, it expects most people in the U.S. and other developed markets to run either the Home Premium or Professional editions.

The company has been conservative in talking publicly about the product, waiting until features or dates were largely set in stone before discussing them widely.

Things were also fairly calm in the "shiproom"--the conference room inside Microsoft's Redmond headquarters where the Windows team meets to discuss outstanding bugs and issues before executives ultimately sign off on that the code is final.

With Vista--which was a more major update to Windows--it was a place of contentious debates up to the last minute about which issues needed to be fixed and which could be addressed later.

"When you are going through the end game, sometimes it is really bumpy; sometimes it is not," Angiulo said. "It's been really mellow this time."

Microsoft hasn't changed the code for Windows 7 since July 13, with much of the past 10 days spent just waiting to make sure long-term testing turned up no significant issues.

"After we produce a build, all the different teams will go through their test path," said Iain MacDonald, the general manager of the Windows Server unit. Microsoft also on Wednesday finalized the server version of Windows 7--a modest update known as Windows Server 2008 R2.

The actual build that Microsoft is using as the final one--build 7600.16385--has already leaked to the Web--several days ahead of Microsoft's confirmation that it was, in fact, the final version.

One of the last notable changes to Windows 7 was the incorporation of changes that were made to Windows as part of the last monthly "Patch Tuesday" bug fixes.

Angiulo said closer cooperation with computer makers, as well as the predictable schedule, has meant that a wide variety of new PCs should be ready to launch with Windows 7 in October.

"The (PC makers) have been working on a variety of systems--super-amazing thin and mobile systems," he said. "They are also working on really inexpensive low-end machines and all-in-ones.

Microsoft is also hoping, particularly since the underpinnings are similar to Vista, that users won't find the same sorts of compatibility issues that cropped up when that operating system first hit the market.

The entire PC ecosystem--from retailers like Best Buy to computer and hardware makers--are all hoping that Windows 7 can provide a boost to what has been a rough year.

"Our customers are very excited about Windows 7," Dell's Jim Ginger said. "We know because they tell us."

Update: Here's a video from Microsoft of the formal sign-off at Redmond.

Resources: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10292369-56.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1

Microsoft closing YouTube rival

Posted by Ina Fried on 21 July 2009

Microsoft is closing Soapbox, its onetime video-sharing rival to Google's YouTube, the company said Tuesday.

Last month, Microsoft told CNET News it planned to significantly scale back Soapbox. Now it turns out Soapbox will be scaled all the way down to nothing.

"We have decided to shut down the Soapbox feature," said Microsoft Vice President and MSN leader Erik Jorgensen in an e-mail. "Beginning today, July 21, we will be notifying both our customers and our internal and external partners that on July 29th, people will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox and on August 31st, the service will no longer be available."

Microsoft will continue to support MSN Video, which has 88 million unique users each month and delivers 480 million video streams each month, he said. Soapbox was responsible for less than 5 percent of MSN Video's streams.

"Though we'll be retiring the Soapbox service in its current form, we are committed to user-generated content and our other video offerings through MSN Video," Jorgensen said. "We also plan to add functionality into MSN Video to easily enable bloggers and citizen journalists to upload content to share with our MSN users. Video remains an important and growing area within our overall content strategy."

Microsoft launched soapbox in 2006, but it never caught on as widely as YouTube. Google's in-house offering, Google Video, didn't either, but Google has chosen to support it.

Resources: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10292031-75.html

Microsoft Makes Apple Eat Humble Apple Pie

Posted by Rob Enderle 20 July 2009

The very idea of Apple beseeching Microsoft to lighten up on its laptop hunter ad campaign is hard to swallow. That's apparently what happened, though, and if Microsoft is reacting with glee, it's understandable. After all, Apple is the company that knows how to brilliantly market its brand and devastate the competition while it's at it, right.

There's generally more attention on the fight between Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) this decade than on the fight between Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Microsoft. That's because Google seems to represent the future, while Apple and Microsoft are often seen as anachronisms from a prior age.

However, these two clearly aren't ready for the tech old folks home yet -- both have done some amazing things over the last few years. The difference is that Apple, because it's marketing-driven, typically gets more credit for its activities than Microsoft does. That has changed recently, and Microsoft has been kicking a little Apple buttusky. That's what I'll focus on here.

I'll close with my product of the week: a Linux-based electronic office in a box from Sutus. It gives a small company almost everything it needs, from phones to email.

Apple's Unique Advantage

Apple is a marketing-driven company -- something unique in the technology segment -- while Microsoft has largely been engineering-driven. During the 90s, this was actually more of an Apple liability than an asset, because Apple was being run by people who clearly didn't get Apple's unique capability. Steve Jobs returned Apple to its roots, and the company came back.

What makes a marketing-driven company is that products are created in line with marketing programs. In effect, they are designed to easily fit marketing messages and campaigns. In Apple's unique case, it is Steve Jobs himself who assures this link; he starts thinking about how he will introduce a new product right from its conception. This is part of what creates the magic when he presents something like an iPhone. His passion has helped define the product, and his pride in the result comes through when he introduces it.

I've recently been referring to him as the "Artisan CEO," and I believe that the tech market would benefit if more CEOs took this kind of personal interest in their products and could, with similar pride, introduce, protect and promote them.

For Apple, marketing is strategic, and top marketing people would like to have Apple on their resume. They get a lot of support, and they get to work with products that are relatively easy to market well.

Microsoft's Typical Problem

Microsoft -- and Google has also become a poster child for this -- is an engineering-driven company. This means that products are built based on requirements that are largely set by the engineering teams building them. They do use customer information, but they're generally far removed from those customers, and the information they're working from is often inaccurate or untimely. Their goal is to get the product out the door. Only after the product is crafted does marketing, which is often led by engineers, assume responsibility for selling it. It then has to scramble to figure out how to present and promote the offering.

CEOs at technology-driven companies tend to focus on major investors, large customers, and operations; they delegate the product responsibilities to others. They're often viewed as generic. It isn't uncommon to see engineering-driven firms hire their CEOs from completely different industries -- something Apple did with John Sculley with bad results -- because the role is perceived to be more management than product-related.

This tends to result in very complex products that are often incomplete from a customer perspective -- and very difficult to market. Given that marketing teams are typically neither very experienced, nor very well supported, nor particularly strategic, great marketing campaigns for wonderful products are few and far between. This is largely why Apple has been kicking Microsoft butt for much of the time since Vista launched.

Microsoft Strikes Back

However, anyone you pound on long enough will eventually respond, and Microsoft eventually did. Microsoft brought marketing experts on board, hired one of the most creative advertising teams in the world, and created the "I'm a PC" ad campaign.

This happened during a time when Steve Jobs was incapacitated. While Apple did respond to the campaign, its response wasn't particularly effective, and Microsoft started taking share back. More importantly, Microsoft's image started to improve, and it started to do damage to Apple's image by painting that company as elitist and priced out of the market.

This was allegedly capped by a whiny call from Apple's legal department pleading with Microsoft to change its ads because Apple had dropped its prices by a measly US$100 in response to its sharp drop in market share. Granted, the news of this call came from Microsoft's own COO Kevin Turner. However, the fact that Microsoft even mentioned this is unusual, while it's easy to picture Steve Jobs on stage relishing such a call from Microsoft, had the companies' positions been reversed. Turnabout is fair play.

The success Microsoft's campaign is enjoying -- and the very high visibility of this success -- may well change Redmond for the better in one fundamental way. It should make marketing more strategic, which means that Microsoft will be able to attract better people -- and that marketing will have more say regarding what and when products come out the door, resulting in more complete, elegant (simple) products.

Wrapping Up

I don't expect this change in marketing focus will happen overnight for Microsoft, but I do think this is a lesson most tech companies should take to heart. Done right, as Apple and now Microsoft have demonstrated, marketing can substantially improve margins, increase market share, and help create products the firm, the firm's stockholders, and the firm's customers can be proud of and lust for.

One final thought: If Steve Jobs is truly back, it won't be long before Apple uses a more capable competitive attack, but Microsoft has shown it may now be able to go toe-to-toe with him. Kevin Turner may turn out to be its secret weapon, and he's ex-Wal-Mart. This time, it could be a battle royal that results in better products that are nicely marketed from both companies. And that, my friends, would be a very good thing.

Product of the Week: Sutus Business Central 200

I'm in a nationally syndicated TV show called Tech Close Up, and I do a tech review segment called "Fast Forward." As a result, I get to review a lot of products and pick the ones that stand out to be in the show. One of the more interesting was from Sutus and what made it interesting was that it seemed to combine in a small box the critical components to a business.

Designed for offices with up to 20 people, this product provides advanced VoIP and POTS (plain old telephone service) with advanced features, an internal file server, a Web server, firewall, wireless router, access point, VPN, backup server and email with calendar -- all in one box with a starting price of around $2,200.

Based on Linux done right (you don't see the complexities of the OS, you interface with an easy to use custom interface) for small business, this one product could actually supply most of the needs for the average fledgling company at an affordable price.

Resources: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Microsoft-Makes-Apple-Eat-Humble-Apple-Pie-67628.html

Oracle raises software prices (again)

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on 18 July 2009

One year after raising many prices by 20 percent or more, Oracle is once again raising prices--by 40 percent for certain products.

Interestingly, the products receiving the big price bumps are not the core database or application servers, but instead the administrative tools used for monitoring and compliance.

I'd certainly like to say this is price gouging, but really it is just smart business. Oracle knows database sales can't grow forever and that customers will sooner or later need to have additional tooling. Strategically, it's much smarter to price non-core components higher to ensure consistent adoption and cash flow of the primary product line.

This does introduce a few strategy questions related to the impending Sun acquisition--namely, how does Oracle price MySQL and its related packages, and will the existing tools work with MySQL or will customers running both be forced to buy two sets of tools? And will MySQL users be comfortable with Oracle changing pricing policies?

Pricing changes are common across all software companies, but open-source companies like MySQL have generally stuck to simple models to keep the costs of sales low and volumes high.

The big question is if Oracle owning MySQL helps customers. There are no doubt scenarios in which it will be convenient to buy and be supported from one source (the mythical "one throat to choke"), but it's hard to see how the hands-on approach of Oracle sales jives with MySQL's adoption to sales conversion process.

As a side note, if you think the GPL and open-source licensing is confusing, take a gander at Oracle's Application Licensing Table (PDF), which seems straightforward until you need to use a non-vanilla installation.

Resources: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10290187-62.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Belgian Tax Watchdogs Tracking Facebook, Netlog Updates

Posted by Robin Wauters on July 18, 2009

Not entirely unexpected, but still weird to see it confirmed and acknowledged: the federal tax administration in Belgium, my home country, is keeping tabs on citizens (article in Dutch) via their Facebook and Netlog profiles and their activities on eBay and other social networking sites.

Accountants are quick to point out the watchdogs can’t actually use any of the public status updates, photos and videos from users as proof in case of a dispute, but apparently your lifestyle as you depict it online can prompt an investigation when it doesn’t seem to add up to what your official income is.

The local version of the IRS, the BBI, has already admitted that it actively tracks activity from citizens online to sniff out tax avoiders. To quote director Karel Anthonissen: “It’s technically possible, it’s legal, and it’s happening.”

Just in case they read blogs too: I’m getting paid to write this article and I will make sure to report the income, mr. Anthonissen! Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to jump in my Maserati and drive to our second house on the coast.

Resources: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/18/belgian-tax-watchdogs-tracking-facebook-netlog-updates/

How to Keep XP Running in a Windows 7 World

Posted by Jon Prange 17 July 09

"Operating system migration season begins this fall, with the release of Windows 7. However, there's no need for most companies to be leading the bandwagon. If you're running XP throughout your organization and you're still pretty well satisfied with it, here are some tips for keeping it in top-notch shape for months or even years to come."

With the official Oct. 22 release of Windows 7 approaching -- and Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) recent announcement that business customers can start placing orders as early as September 7 -- many organizations are now facing a major decision about what to do with their PC operating system: upgrade it for all users, phase in an upgrade, or stay with their current OS.

Migrating poses challenges from equipment upgrades, to installing and configuring the new OS, to moving user data and settings. Many organizations will instead choose to stay with their current OS, which is most likely Windows XP. This alleviates the cost of upgrades, but it introduces its own share of maintenance challenges.

The good news, however, is that these challenges can be overcome with a proper maintenance plan. Follow these tips to keep your XP platform running at peak performance, and you'll have the foundation in place to squeeze every last dollar out of your XP investment.

Patch regularly. A good patch management strategy can reduce risks, costs and complexity within the IT environment. Patch management can be manual or automated, depending on how much control you want to exercise over the process. As part of its weekly schedule, Microsoft will continue to provide critical system patches for XP (with SP2) and Office 2003 until 2014. It is important to note that XP must have Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later in order to receive these system patches.

Update and test gold images. "Gold" system images should be created for all systems. These images should have all OS and application updates applied regularly. Once the images are updated, a complete test should be performed. Document an associated test plan that encompasses both the OS and applications.

Ensure software compatibility. Before downloading and installing new software, research its compatibility and known issues with the OS. Incompatible software could have an adverse impact on other components within the IT infrastructure and should be avoided.

Ensure document compatibility. It's important to manage the compatibility of Microsoft Office documents, across versions, for both internal and external users (clients, vendors, partners, etc.). Office compatibility packs allow legacy users to open/view/edit files from newer versions of the program. Be aware, however, that certain features and functionality might not be supported. Without compatibility packs, legacy users would constantly have to tell users of newer versions that they couldn't open their files.

Upgrade memory. Most XP platforms ship with 1 GB to 2 GB of memory. However, you can significantly improve system performance by upgrading to 3 GB or 4 GB. Note however, that upgrading to 4 GB of RAM on a 32-bit XP system will provide access to just 3.39 GB due to resource limitations. (It's a little better in Vista 32-bit, which provides access to 3.54 GB). In the future, consider using 64-bit, because it'll give you full memory access.

Optimize disk drive space. Following memory upgrades, managing disk usage is the second best way to increase performance. The easiest method is to uninstall unnecessary applications and remove the Windows "junk" files that are not needed. XP's System Restore (Control Panel » System » System Restore tab), by default, uses 12 percent of the total space on each disk drive partition to save restore point files and settings. Another step is to perform a disk cleanup by using the Windows built-in Disk Cleanup tool (Programs » Accessories » System Tools » Disk Cleanup) to identify and clean up files from sources like Internet caches and temporary files. After removing all of these files, the last step is to defragment the disk drives (Programs » Accessories » System Tools » Disk Defragmenter).

Load and maintain external drivers. XP has less built-in driver support, so organizations have to load external drivers for most hardware. These external drivers should be maintained with regular updates. However, be aware that many future hardware devices will not be supported on legacy operating systems.

Use the power of the Web wisely. With the ever-increasing availability of blogs, wikis, knowledgebases, etc., many issues can be researched and resolved by tapping online resources. Be specific in your searching, though, because the proper resolution is often found only by searching for the exact error message.

Download tips and tricks while they're available. Many of the current IT blogs and other knowledgebases will start to shift their focus toward Windows 7, which could make it difficult to find new information about XP. It's a good idea to search and save online information to your hard drive now, when it's easily found.

Implement Antispyware. Later versions of the Windows OS (Windows Vista and Windows 7) have Windows Defender, a built-in antispyware program. This same program is available as a free download, and it's recommended for installation on the XP OS. It is also a best practice to have more than one piece of antispyware on your PC. Increase your safety and install Lavasoft's Ad-Aware or Spybot Search & Destroy.

By maintaining XP for the long haul, organizations benefit from having a proven OS. A good maintenance plan can help keep it running smoothly, delaying extra costs and hassles until migration is absolutely necessary, which could be several years down the road if you follow the advice here.

Resources: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/How-to-Keep-XP-Running-in-a-Windows-7-World-67618.html

Could moon landings have been faked? Some still think so

Posted by Brandon Griggs on 17 July 09

It captivated millions of people around the world for eight days in the summer of 1969. It brought glory to the embattled U.S. space program and inspired beliefs that anything was possible.

It's arguably the greatest technological feat of the 20th century.

And to some, it was all a lie.

Forty years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, a small cult of conspiracy theorists maintains the historic event -- and the five subsequent Apollo moon landings -- were staged. These people believe NASA fabricated the landings to trump their Soviet rivals and fulfill President Kennedy's goal of ferrying humans safely to and from the moon by the end of the 1960s.

"I do know the moon landings were faked," said crusading filmmaker Bart Sibrel, whose aggressive interview tactics once provoked Aldrin to punch him in the face. "I'd bet my life on it."

Sibrel may seem crazy, but he has company. A 1999 Gallup poll found that a scant 6 percent of Americans doubted the Apollo 11 moon landing happened, and there is anecdotal evidence that the ranks of such conspiracy theorists, fueled by innuendo-filled documentaries and the Internet, are growing.

Twenty-five percent of respondents to a survey in the British magazine Engineering & Technology said they do not believe humans landed on the moon. A handful of Web sites and blogs circulate suspicions about NASA's "hoax."

And a Google search this week for "Apollo moon landing hoax" yielded more than 1.5 billion results.

"We love conspiracies," said Roger Launius, a senior curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. "Going to the moon is hard to understand. And it's easier for some people to accept the answer that, 'Well, maybe we didn't go to the moon.' A lot of it is naivete."

Conspiracy theories about the Apollo missions began not long after the last astronaut returned from the moon in 1972. Bill Kaysing, a technical writer for Rocketdyne, which built rocket engines for NASA's Apollo program, published a 1974 book, "We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle."

In the book and elsewhere, Kaysing argued that NASA lacked the technology in 1969 to land humans safely on the moon, that the Apollo astronauts would have been poisoned by passing through the Van Allen radiation belts that ring the Earth and that NASA's photos from the moon contained suspicious anomalies.

Kaysing theorized NASA sent the Apollo 11 astronauts up in a rocket until it was out of sight, then transferred the lunar capsule and its three passengers to a military cargo plane that dropped the capsule eight days later in the Pacific, where it was recovered. In the meantime, he believed, NASA officials filmed the "moon landing" at Area 51, the high-security military base in the Nevada desert, and brainwashed the astronauts to ensure their cooperation.

Some believe Kaysing's theories inspired the 1978 movie "Capricorn One," in which NASA fakes a Mars landing on a remote military base, then goes to desperate lengths to cover it up. Others insist NASA recruited director Stanley Kubrick, hot off "2001: A Space Odyssey," to film the "faked" moon landings.

Oh, and those moon rocks? Lunar meteorites from Antarctica.

Decades later, Kaysing's beliefs formed the foundation for "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?" a sensational 2001 Fox TV documentary that spotted eerie "inconsistencies" in NASA's Apollo images and TV footage.

Among them: no blast craters are visible under the landing modules; shadows intersect instead of running parallel, suggesting the presence of an unnatural light source; and a planted American flag appears to ripple in a breeze although there's no wind on the moon.

The hour-long special sparked such interest in the topic that NASA took the unusual step of issuing a news release and posting a point-by-point rebuttal on its Web site. The press release began: "Yes. Astronauts did land on the moon."

In various documents, NASA has countered that the Apollo astronauts passed through the Van Allen belts too quickly to be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation; that the module's descent engines weren't powerful enough to leave a blast crater; that the shadows in photos were distorted by wide-angle lenses and sloping lunar terrain; and that the Apollo flags had horizontal support bars that made the flags swing.

Kaysing died in 2005, but not before grabbing the attention of Sibrel, a Nashville, Tennessee, filmmaker who has since become the most visible proponent of the Apollo hoax theories. With funding from an anonymous donor, Sibrel wrote and directed a 47-minute documentary in 2001 that reiterated many of the now-familiar hoax arguments.

Critics of moon-landing hoax theorists, and there are many, say it would be impossible for tens of thousands of NASA employees and Apollo contractors to keep such a whopping secret for almost four decades.

But Sibrel believes the Apollo program was so compartmentalized that only its astronauts and a handful of high-level NASA officials knew the entire story. Sibrel spent years ambushing Apollo astronauts and insisting they swear on a Bible before his cameras that they walked on the moon.

"When someone has gotten away with a crime, in my opinion, they deserve to be ambushed," Sibrel said. "I'm a journalist trying to get at the truth."

In an episode made infamous on YouTube, Sibrel confronted Aldrin in 2002 and called him "a coward, a liar and a thief." Aldrin, then 72, socked the thirtysomething Sibrel in the face, knocking him backwards.

"I don't want to call attention to the individuals who are trying to promote and shuffle off this hoax on people," Aldrin told CNN in a recent interview. "I feel sorry for the gullible people who're going to go along with them. I guess it's just natural human reaction to want to be a part of 'knowing something that somebody doesn't know.' But it's misguided. It's just a shame."

It's been 37 years since the last Apollo moon mission, and tens of millions of younger Americans have no memories of watching the moon landings live. A 2005-2006 poll by Mary Lynne Dittmar, a space consultant based in Houston, Texas, found that more than a quarter of Americans 18 to 25 expressed some doubt that humans set foot on the moon.

"As the number of people who were not yet born at the time of the Apollo program increases, the number of questions [about the moon landings] also may increase," NASA said in a statement. "Conspiracy theories are always difficult to refute because of the impossibility of proving a negative."

Launius, the National Air and Space Museum curator, believes Apollo conspiracy theories resonate with people who are disengaged from society and distrustful of government. He also believes their numbers are overblown.

"These diehards are really vocal, but they're really tiny," he said.

But Stuart Robbins, a Ph.D. candidate in astrophysics at the University of Colorado who gives lectures defending NASA from Apollo hoax theorists, believes their influence can be harmful.

"If people don't think we were able to go to the moon, then they don't believe in the ingenuity of human achievement," he said. "Going to the moon and returning astronauts safely back to Earth is arguably one of the most profound achievements in human history, and so when people simply believe it was a hoax, they lose out on that shared experience and doubt what humans can do."

In its information campaign against Apollo's "debunkers," NASA may have a potent ace up its sleeve, however. Its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is now circling the moon with powerful cameras, snapping crisp pictures that could reveal Apollo 11's Eagle lander squatting on the moon's surface.

Then again, conspiracy theorists may just say NASA doctored the photos.

"Will the LRO's incredibly high-resolution images of the lunar surface, including, eventually, the Apollo landing sites, finally quell the lunacy of the Moon Hoax believers? Obviously it won't," writes astronomer Phil Plait in his blog on Discover magazine's Web site. "These true believers don't live in an evidence-based world."

Resources: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/07/17/moon.landing.hoax/index.html

Google Wants You To Know A Google Docs Redesign Is Coming (I Wonder Why)

Posted by MG Siegler on July 16, 2009

On the Google Docs blog today, the company took the time to make a non-announcement. Basically, there’s a bunch of words that bury the real story: That Google Docs will soon be launching a “brand new shiny interface.”

Hmmm. I wonder why. Obviously, earlier this week Microsoft laid out its plans for Office 2010, which includes a web-based component meant to take on Google Docs. But once again, there is nothing to actually see right now from Google, instead this is a pre-announcement to let users know that they may be seeing wonky elements over the next few weeks as they tweak things on the fly.

Not surprisingly, the sharing of documents will be a key element to this redesign. Despite it being perhaps the key element of Google Docs, sharing items with others is simply not that intuitive right now. Here’s what Google has in mind for the future:

One thing you’ll probably notice in the next few days is that the “Shared with…” list in the left hand pane will go away. But don’t worry, you can still use Search to do the same thing. Just click on “Search Options” and type the user’s name into the “Shared with:” box. If this is a search you’ll do over and over again, you can click “Save this search” so it will be easily accessible in “Saved Searches”.

Another thing you’ll see is the new Sharing Menu. We feel this is a big improvement over the old one; we’ve moved all the sharing functionality into this one dialog, so now you can completely manage sharing without having to leave the Docs list.

Other than that, Google is adding a bunch of new search operators (which only the hardcore users will care about). And it concludes the post with “They [the new features] will be followed shortly by the new interface and a number of pretty exciting features we have in the pipe.”

Resources: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/google-wants-you-to-know-a-google-docs-redesign-is-coming-i-wonder-why/

Google vs. Microsoft: What you need to know

Posted by Ryan Singel on 15 July 09

In less than a week, Google announced an operating system to compete with Windows, while Microsoft announced that Office 10 will include free, online versions of its four most popular software programs -- a shot at Google's suite of web-based office applications.

The fight between Microsoft and Google is over who'll be seen as the world's most important tech company.

And not more than a month and a half ago, Microsoft unveiled its new search engine Bing, which it hopes will steal market share from Google and finally make it real money online.

From the news of it, it's a full-blown tech battle, complete with behind-the-scenes machinations to sic government regulators on each other.

It is, however, not a death match -- it's more of an fight to see who will be the King of Technology, since both companies pull in their billions through completely different siphons and are unlikely to severely wound one another any time soon.

Google pulled in $22 billion in revenue in 2008, 97 percent of which came tiny text ads bought by the keyword and placed next to search results or on pages around the web. Google makes a negligible amount of money bundling its online apps for businesses, charging $50 a head annually -- but mostly it just gives its online text editor, email and spreadsheet programs away.

By contrast, Microsoft sold $14.3 billion worth of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and other business applications over the last nine months, making a profit of $9.3 billion. It made a further $16 billion in revenue in 2008 through sales of its operating systems, which range from XP installations on netbooks, to Vista, to Windows Mobile to its server software.

Google now plans its own range of operating systems, starting with Android, an open-source OS for small devices like smartphones, and Chrome OS, a browser-focused, open-source OS that will run on notebooks and desktops.

Clearly top executives at each company look over at the others' pots of gold and dream of ways to steal them, or at least make it harder for the other guy to make money.

In fact, they even dislike each other enough to spend money to make the other one lose revenue -- take for example, Microsoft's behind-the-scenes campaign to scuttle last year's proposed Google-Yahoo advertising deal or its ongoing attempts to derail the Google Book Search settlement.

But in reality, the competition is really about creating universes or ecosystems that it hopes consumers will want to live their technology lives inside. And it's about ego -- a fight to be recognized as the world's most important technology company.

Microsoft would love for everyone in the world to be using its Internet Explorer browser to search through Bing to find a story from its MSN portal to email via Hotmail or Outlook to a friend. Add in a smartphone running Windows Mobile and an Xbox in the living room for the kids, and you have a Microsoft family. And though it is much joked about, Microsoft is the dominant platform for software developers of all types, whether they are making small business software, massive online role-playing games or photo-editing utilities.

Google's ecosystem looks different. It starts with a Google Chrome browser (oddly running only on Windows) with a default homepage set to Google News or a customized Google homepage. From there you might go to Gmail and then click on a Word document sent to you as an attachment which Google will quickly -- and safely -- open for you in its online word processor.

But most importantly, Google wants you to search and travel around the web, hitting web pages that run Google-served ads and Google tracking cookies. You might think that Google is a really cool company to give away all this free technology, while never thinking about the persistent and silent data collection Google is undertaking to profile you in order to deliver you to advertisers for a premium.

So how do the two stack up in four key areas of competition?

Browsers: Internet Explorer in all its variations still retains close to 70 percent of the market (depending on who is counting and how). That dominance remains, even though Microsoft's latest offering IE8 lags behind all the other major browsers in features and advanced web capabilities.

Firefox, Opera, and Apple's Safari have all driven browser innovation over the last five years, but most people have not been convinced to leave IE behind, despite other alternatives being safer and more advanced. Why does it matter? Well, IE installations come with a default home page, don't they?

Google's Chrome browser, on the other hand, is a handsome, whiz-kid of a browser. It's sleek and nimble, and it revolutionizes how tabs are handled. The address bar is the search box (Google as default, naturally). Each website opened runs as its own browser instance and has very low permissions to read and write to files. The sandboxing of tabs means that if a single website hangs or crashes, the rest are unaffected. Meanwhile, lower permissions make it harder for a hacker to bust into your computer through your browser.

Chrome also has less than 2 percent of the browser market share.

Online Search: Google's name now means search to most users. Google's search engine means money to Google. In June, it delivered 78.5 percent of search results pages delivered to U.S. web users. In the first three months of 2009, Google pulled in $5.2 billion in revenue, a majority of which came from AdWords, an auction-based service that triggers ads based on the keywords in a search query.

Microsoft recently debuted Bing, a new search engine it hoped would fare well in comparison to Google. It's got some fine innovations, and shows the company is thinking very hard about better ways to present information to users by finding ways to synthesize data, rather than just retrieving links. Still, despite these improvements, a $100 million ad campaign, and generous press coverage that treats Bing like an underdog, Bing gained only a point in June to get Microsoft 8.2 percent of all searches.

Operating Systems: Microsoft has been making operating systems since 1979 and has spent 28 years perfecting MS-DOS and Windows NT, the frameworks that Windows have been built around. Microsoft is estimated to run on about 90 percent of all laptops and desktops in the world. By copying its competitors' best features, leveraging questionable licensing arrangements and using its base of accustomed users to buy it time against innovators, Microsoft has held on to its lead in the OS market for almost 30 years. That's despite challenges from Digital Research, Apple and IBM.

Microsoft's newest version, Windows 7, will be available in the fall. Early reviews say the OS boots quickly and sleeps fast, and avoids much of the confusing interface decisions that have made many dislike Vista, the successor to Windows XP. Microsoft also dominates in the business world, where nearly every medium to large company standardizes around Microsoft Office. Microsoft is also at work on version 6 of its operating system for handheld devices, which it first launched in 2000.

Its OS advantages are immense. It has millions of users who know nothing else and who like Windows. There are millions who are attached to games or the thousands of desktop apps that are only available on Windows. Thousands of devices just plug in and work on its hardware. And familiarity with Microsoft software is a requirement for a huge number of office jobs.

By contrast, Google first stepped into the OS game in 2007 when it announced its Android operating system for small devices. Google estimates that some 18 phone models will be running its system by the end of the year. Last week, Google announced, but did not show off, a new OS to compete with Windows, dubbing it Chrome OS.

That name signifies that Google's OS will be for the web and browser-based. It hopes to convince developers to write software that runs inside a browser, instead of on top of the OS as developers for Windows and Apples' OS X do. It will also let web developers extend the power of their websites by expanding the capabilities of the browser, allowing websites to lean on the browser for storage and processing help.

Advertising: Google is largely powered by its innovative auction-based text ads on its own site, but then expanded into serving ads on other people's sites with the Adsense program. It bought the ad-serving and behavioral-profiling giant Doubleclick in 2007 for more than $3 billion, and has ventured into mobile, print, radio and television ads.

Microsoft has struggled to replicate Google's online advertising success. Despite owning MSN.com -- a portal that is second only to Yahoo as a destination -- Microsoft has not made money on the internet. To turbocharge its ad-delivery technology, it paid more than $6 billion in cash in 2007 for aQuantive, a full-service online advertising concern.

Instead, Microsoft's online ad business lost $1.2 billion in 2008, double what it lost in 2007. The company expects 2009 revenues to be higher than the $3.2 billion it took in last year, but has not said it would make a profit.

Contrary to what some might have you believe, the benefits of the Google-Microsoft competition are immense.

Microsoft had largely grown complacent until Google came along to shake up categories. Gmail's massive online storage capability and fancy programming made Microsoft hustle to upgrade its popular, though not user-friendly, web e-mail service. Google Maps led to Microsoft's Live Maps, which now bests Google's efforts in some ways.

Google has been winning the fight for the last few years, showing that it is still nimbler than the software giant from the Northwest. But the pendulum may be slowing, or even poised to swing the other way. With the innovations in Bing and the promise that Microsoft's online Office offerings will be free and more fully featured than the Google equivalent, Microsoft is taking on Google where it matters for users: on the field of innovation.

Resources: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/15/google.microsoft.battle/index.html

In Our Inbox: Hundreds Of Confidential Twitter Documents

Posted by Michael Arrington on July 14, 2009
From: techcrunch

Here’s a dilemma: The guy (”Hacker Croll”) who claims to have accessed hundreds of confidential corporate and personal documents of Twitter and Twitter employees, is releasing those documents publicly and sent them to us earlier today. The zip file contained 310 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.

We’ve spent most of the evening reading these documents. The vast majority of them are somewhat embarrassing to various individuals, but not otherwise interesting. An example - there are a number of documents showing the names of people who interviewed at Twitter for various senior level positions so publishing their names would obviously be distressing for them. Most of these people remain in their current jobs. Some documents show floorplans and security passcodes to get into the Twitter offices. We’re not going to post any of those documents.

But we are going to release some of the documents showing financial projections, product plans and notes from executive strategy meetings. We’re also going to post the original pitch document for the Twitter TV show that hit the news in May, mostly because it’s awesome.

There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us. But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them.

More posts coming soon.

Windows 7, Office 2010, Google Chrome OS: Never a Dull Tech Moment

Posted by Todd R. Weiss on 13 July 09
From: pcworld

Microsoft is launching Windows 7, Google has fired back with Chrome OS, and today Microsoft is turning up the volume on Office 2010. That's a lot to juggle, and soon you'll be asking yourself: Can I afford to upgrade or can I afford not to upgrade?

Let's first review what's coming down the pike and when. It starts with the official scheduled release of the new Microsoft Windows 7 operating system on October 22.

That's a Big Change Right There

Windows 7 has been getting many accolades from beta testers and reviewers, but that's pretty easy when it's being compared to Microsoft Vista, which was disappointing for many due to wide-ranging hardware and software incompatibilities and other problems, such as software bugs. Lots of users couldn't make their favorite programs, printers, and other peripheral devices work with Vista, highlighting glaring shortcomings.

Then there's the anticipated release of Microsoft's new Office 2010 suites in the first half of next year, with the usual new features and bells and whistles. Users often love the included new features, but do they really need them and the learning curves that are required?

And as if that's not enough change for now, Google last week unveiled its plans for its new Google Chrome OS operating system, aimed initially at netbook-sized computers, for release by the end of 2010.

So what's a tech-loving consumer to do? Are you the upgrading kind? That's going to be a key question.

And if you are, does that mean you'll buy a copy of the new Windows 7 and install it yourself or will you wait and buy a new computer that already has it loaded so you don't have to deal with the install?

And, even more importantly, will you take the plunge immediately upon its release or will you wait a bit to see how it all shakes out for others?

Ah, isn't a new Windows operating system release fun?

Here are Some Options for You.

If you are getting a stomach ache just thinking about doing the upgrade to Windows 7 by yourself on your present computer, then maybe you should consider replacing your machine. The upgrade itself is usually not a big problem, but there are plenty of landmines out there and you never really know what could happen.

The next issue is timing -- do you want to buy it right away on October 22 or do you want to wait to see how others are faring with it and read the first news reports from new users?

I think that's always a good idea.

Back in August 1995, when we were still using Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and DOS 5.22 on our early Intel Pentium-running computers, Microsoft released Windows 95. It was a huge splash and millions of people filled stores at midnight to try to be first in line for a copy. Talk about hoopla!

I admit, I was there, too, watching the chaos and feeling the excitement in the air.

But I didn't buy it and install it until six months went by; just to be sure it was worthwhile. By then, I was prepared, psyched, and the upgrade went beautifully. That was definitely a worthwhile move up the Windows food chain.

The same sort of upgrade worry has surrounded the release of every new Windows version. It happened again with the upgrade from Windows 98 (and the widely-despised Windows Me) to Windows XP, though that was an absolutely worthwhile upgrade to perhaps what has been the best Windows operating system built so far for consumers.

In the last couple years, some people have been so averse to using Vista that they've gone to extremes to find computers they can still buy that run Windows XP.

But Will You Pay for These Innovations?

So, what are you thinking about the upcoming releases of Windows 7, Office 2010, and Google Chrome OS?

Obviously, the money issue comes into play for Windows 7 and Office 2010, because consumers like you will have to decide if the products are worth the money to buy them.

Chrome OS is open source and will have free versions when it eventually is ready, so there's no money issue there.

I guess I just wonder, with all the economic uncertainly that lingers and people worrying about their jobs, houses, bank accounts and college funds, where do the newest Windows programs rank up on their scales of importance?

For the zaniest tech-lovers, they'll buy it right away and play with it.

What about the rest of you?

Tell us what you are thinking.

Will you be there at a midnight Windows 7 launch in your local Best Buy or Staples store, waiting to bring all of that exciting shrink-wrapped code home for your computer? Or will you wait another year to see what Google Chrome OS might be able to do for you in the future?