Online services

LOS ANGELES--Despite having just been hit with a record fine, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Wednesday that his company is actually in full compliance with European regulatory demands.

"This is not news today," Ballmer said in an interview with CNET News.com. "We are in compliance, they agreed we are in compliance. This is a fine for activities that pre-date the compliance activities that Ms. Kroes talked about last fall. It says there was a past transgression and they assessed a fine for that past transgression."

However, Ballmer stopped short of saying that Microsoft's regulatory … Read more

Well, when it rains it pours. After a day of writing about Windows Live mail problems, I was alerted by a colleague that Yahoo mail was out for them.

I tabbed over to my Yahoo Mail window and noticed that my window, which had been working all day, was now returning an error message.

When I tried to reload the page, I got the following message:

"Can't talk now. System's down," read the headline. "Sorry for the holdup. Looks like a temporary glitch in our network has part of Yahoo! mail down, so you're … Read more

LOS ANGELES--After a day of problems, Microsoft says its Windows Live log-in issues are now a thing of the past.

Although a large number of Windows Live servers are running on Microsoft's Windows Server 2008, which is due to be launched Wednesday, a representative said the problem is not a glitch with the new operating system.

"We can say with certainty that Windows Server did not contribute to this incident," Windows Live Product Manager Samantha McManus said in a statement to CNET News.com.

Microsoft was far less detailed when it comes to what the problem actually … Read more

Microsoft said Tuesday afternoon that it has reduced the number of people unable to access their Windows Live accounts, but said that some people are still not able to log in.

Since early in the day, a significant number of users of Hotmail and other Windows Live services have been unable to access their information.

"We have made significant progress in decreasing the number of customers currently affected since initial reports, but the issue has not yet been completely resolved," Windows Live product manager Samantha McManus said in a statement. "Microsoft is working quickly and aggressively to … Read more

Just a short while after abandoning Facebook due to being overwhelmed with friend requests, Bill Gates plans to experiment on rival service LinkedIn.

On Thursday, the Microsoft Chairman will post a question related to "how technology can be better utilized for charitable causes" to LinkedIn's entire 19 million members. I'm interested to see whether Gates finds LinkedIn scales to someone of his stature any better than Facebook.

The move comes as part of a set of announcements that LinkedIn plans to make on Thursday. A pitch from LinkedIn noted the company will have a revamped home … Read more

Two Detroit pension funds have filed a shareholders lawsuit against Yahoo in the Delaware Chancery Court, according to reports Friday.

The lawsuit, filed by the a Detroit public employees pension fund and a Detroit firefighters and police pension fund, accused the Internet search pioneer of stonewalling Microsoft's unsolicited buyout offer, initially valued at $44.6 billion on February 1.

"Yahoo's directors cannot 'just say no' indefinitely to legitimate acquisition offers when the effect of that decision is to deny shareholder choice in the face of non-coercive and economically beneficial bid--especially where, as here, the bid may yet … Read more

Is flying through outer space from the comfort of your living room enough to make you cry?

It is for former Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble. A couple weeks back he said on his blog that a new Microsoft technology made him cry. He didn't give many details, citing a confidentiality agreement, but he provided enough there for folks to connect the dots.

My new boss, Dan Farber, correctly predicted that it was an updated version of the WorldWide Telescope program, a fact later confirmed by TechCrunch.

Microsoft researcher Curtis Wong showed an early version of the telescope software at … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Bill Gates is willing to pay a lot for engineering talent.

Asked what makes Yahoo worth more than $40 billion, Gates pointed not to the company's products, its huge base of advertisers, or its market share, but rather to Yahoo's engineers. Those people, he said, are what Microsoft needs to go after Google.

In an interview after his speech at Stanford University, Gates said that it turns out it takes a lot of manpower to build tools for advertisers, mobile, and video products as well as improving its core search algorithm and building an infrastructure … Read more

DeviantArt gets 1.5 billion page views a month, making it one of the most popular Web sites that many people have never even heard of.

Despite the name, only a fraction of the art on the site is what might be labeled deviant. In reality, the site boasts millions of user-uploaded works of art, everything from photography to 3D digital conceptual art to old-fashioned canvas-and-paint portraits.

Think of it as a YouTube for artists trying to show their own work. Pieces can be viewed, commented on, even added to a user's own gallery of favorites. The range of … Read more