Corporate stuff

Microsoft will have to put up with another two years of court antitrust oversight, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

In her ruling, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly cited the length of time it has taken Microsoft to get its protocol licensing program up and running as the primary reason she is extending the consent decree, which was due to expire at the end of last year.

"The court's decision in this matter is based upon the extreme and unforeseen delay in the availability of complete, accurate, and useable technical documentation relating to the communications protocols," Kollar-Kotelly said. "… Read more

VMware took in less money on virtualization software than expected in the fourth quarter, leading to a steep drop in the company's shares.

The software maker said Monday that it earned $78 million, or 19 cents per share, as compared with $31 million, or 9 cents per share in the prior quarter. Its sales were also up sharply, to $412 million, though that was slightly less than the average analysts' forecast.

After the report, VMware shares plummeted more than 25 percent in after-hours trading. As of 3 p.m. PST, its shares were trading at $60.60, down $22.… Read more

While many businesspeople are worrying about a possible recession, Microsoft says it sees its part in the economy remaining strong.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Colleen Healy, Microsoft's general manager of investor relations, said that the company booked a greater amount of future revenue than it had expected, taking in about $500 million more than planned in its "unearned revenue" column. That comes on top of the record results for the quarter that ended December 31.

"From our perspective, we are expecting IT spending to remain stable," Healy said. "Software, in particular, remains … Read more

Whatever form of capitalism it is that Microsoft is practicing, it seems to be working.

Reporting second-quarter results Thursday, the company said it earned $6.48 billion, or 50 cents per share, on revenue of $16.37 billion for the three months ended December 31.

Analysts were looking for about $16 billion in revenue and per-share earnings of 46 cents per share. That's at the high end of what Microsoft forecast back in October. Investors have also been keenly interested to hear what Microsoft has to say about its own outlook as well as its sense of the broader … Read more

UPDATE: The actual speech is available for viewing.

Few people have benefited more from capitalism than Bill Gates.

But these days, Microsoft's chairman is seeing first-hand the failures of the market system and is now calling on businesses to take greater responsibility for those left out in the cold by the free market.

In a speech Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates is calling on companies to think more broadly about how their products can benefit society.

Much of Gates' work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has centered on two particular shortcomings of … Read more

Ahh, would that Microsoft really were adding an easy button to its Windows Mobile software. But alas, Microsoft is only announcing that it has hired one of the marketing executives behind Staples "easy button" campaign.

Todd Peters, who has also worked at Intel, joined Microsoft on Monday as corporate vice president for Windows Mobile Marketing, reporting to mobile-business head Peter Knook. Peters fills the spot created after Suzan Del Bene left last August.

"Microsoft is gaining a real foothold with its mobile products and services in the consumer world," Peters said in a statement. "I … Read more

Microsoft is making a new bid to get governments to go with its technology, rather than open-source alternatives such as Linux and OpenOffice.

At its Government Leaders Forum in Berlin, which kicks off on Tuesday, the company plans to announce what it is calling the Citizen Service Platform. It's not a whole new set of products, but rather templates and architecture that use a range of Microsoft products to provide electronic access for residents.

At its most elaborate, large governments could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on everything from Dynamics CRM to SharePoint to Internet Information Server to … Read more

Microsoft, which once was only a modest customer of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, has been one of its biggest customers in recent years.

In just the past two months, more than 500 applications from the Redmond, Wash., software maker have been published. (That's actually a reflection of how active the company was in mid-2006, since patent applications aren't generally published until 18 months after their filing).

But it's one particular filing that has been grabbing headlines in recent days. That patent covers a means by which a computer that can use factors such as … Read more

Microsoft said Tuesday that it has signed a patent cross-licensing deal with Japan's JVC, the latest of many such deals.

The companies did not release financial details, other than to say that money will be headed in Microsoft's direction. And, unlike many recent patent deals, the press release did not specifically mention Linux.

Not missing was the flowery language that typically accompanies such agreements. "When technological industry leaders collaborate through intellectual property licensing, we foster greater innovation that will benefit the customer, the consumer and the overall IT ecosystem," Microsoft intellectual licensing VP Horacio Gutierrez said … Read more