MSN

Mark January 15 in your calendar: Rumors of layoffs at Microsoft peg that as the day the bad news will come.

The latest to report on the possibility of layoffs at the software giant is the blog Fudzilla, which puts the number of job cuts at 15,000, or nearly 17 percent of Microsoft's worldwide operations. The January 15 date is a week before Microsoft's second-quarter earnings report, scheduled for January 22.

Microsoft also has a briefing for financial analysts planned for January 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, with the headliner listed as Robbie … Read more

When most people see the 2009 Suzuki SX4 Sport, they don't immediately think about the Japanese automaker's rally pedigree. They don't think about high-revving turbocharged powerplants or all-wheel drive vehicles that are in this car's DNA. Instead, they think of a cheap econo-box, which is a shame, because there is a lot to like about this modest little sedan.

For one, the SX4 Sport comes standard with an unconventional, but (as we learned) very useful, navigation system. It matches its competition for handling and outclasses them in power. The SX4 Sport also gets four-wheel disc brakes, … Read more

Covering Microsoft for the last eight years, I've seen this pattern time and time again. Internet trend comes along. Microsoft watches. Trend picks up steam. Microsoft watches. Some other company--usually a start-up--creates a site that perfectly crystallizes the trend and achieves a surprising spike in traffic. Microsoft creates a product team somewhere in the bowels of its online organization to come up with an answer. Six to eighteen months later, the imitation launches to general yawns in the press and perhaps some temporary spikes in traffic thanks to Microsoft's massive online reach. (400 million-plus registered users--that's the … Read more

In a move that might be a lesson for my beloved (and, just occasionally, beloathed) Golden State Warriors this Friday, Microsoft has shut down LeBron James.

Two years ago, MSN and the Cleveland Cavalier superhero who looks 35 and is, allegedly, 13 or 14, announced big plans.

Now the deal, just as that of Buick and Tiger Woods, has floated down the Styx with Charon the boatman.

While no one believed that Tiger Woods would ever have allowed even his Secret Service doppelganger to actually own a Buick, there was at least some reason to conjecture that a LeBron James … Read more

Usually when I get news about Sun Microsystems and Microsoft working together, it is some highly technical enterprise collaboration stemming from their lawsuit settlement a few years back.

On Monday, though, the companies announced something in the consumer arena. Sun will start distributing the MSN toolbar to Internet Explorer users when they download Sun's Java Runtime Environment.

The companies said that Sun's Java runtime is downloaded tens of millions of times per month.

"This agreement with Sun Microsystems is another important milestone in our strategy to secure broad-scale distribution for our search offering, enabling millions more people … Read more

Post updated 11:45 AM PST

Beet.TV has the scoop on Nielsen Online's tracking of video streams for September 2008. Yahoo Video streams surged 56 percent and unique users grew 35 percent month over month.

The month of September was also good for Google's YouTube, which had 12 percent growth in streams. Fox Interactive, MSN/Windows Live and Nickelodeon all had negative growth from August to September 2008, according to Nielsen Online.

It's unclear why Yahoo Video saw such a dramatic increase compared to other sites in September. CNET News has call into the company and … Read more

An e-mail snafu has led to the leak of Microsoft's decision to shutter its MSN Groups service, according to LiveSide.net. It's not a surprise, as MSN Groups was one of the last vestiges of Microsoft's Web services strategy pre-Windows Live.

MSN Groups will be closing on February 21, 2009. It'll be replaced with a new service, Windows Live Groups, which debuts on November 17.

Here's the catch: The LiveSide post indicates MSN Groups will not be migrating to Windows Live Groups; the new Windows Live service will be different enough so that the transition … Read more

U.S. paid search rose 26.9 percent year over year in the third quarter, despite weakness in the economy and markets, according to a report released Tuesday by SearchIgnite.

But while paid search increased overall by double digits during the quarter, retail advertisers increased their search spending by a modest 1.5 percent.

And more surprisingly, retailers significantly scaled back their paid search advertising for the month of September, resulting in a 10 percent drop in year-over-year retail advertising spending compared with September 2007. The decline occurred despite a slight increase in click-through conversion rates and the average value … Read more

The masses have spoken.

And Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest retailing chain, retreated from a misdirected and unfair policy. Last month, the company informed customers who bought its DRM-wrapped music that it would no longer issue keys to unlock songs. That meant music buyers would no longer be able to move their libraries to new computers or players. On Thursday, the company reversed that decision and said it would continue to issue keys for "the present time," according to Ravi Jariwala, a Walmart.com spokesman.

OK, let's tally these up. By my count this makes the … Read more