Microsoft

Yang e-mail reaches out to Yahoo employees

Wonder what Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang and the company's nonexecutive chairman, Roy Bostock, said to the troops on Friday, after Microsoft launched its unsolicited $44.6 billion bid?

Here's the text of the e-mail they sent to employees, which the company filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Subject: more on today's news...

-CONFIDENTIAL-

fellow yahoos:

since we talked to you this morning, there's been a lot of media coverage and industry chatter about microsoft's unsolicited proposal to acquire yahoo!. we know you've been hearing and reading a lot about this. that'… Read more

Microsoft wants to bring Surface home sooner

When people get a chance to try out Microsoft's Surface touch-screen tabletop computer, they often wish they could take one home.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Monday that the company is trying to speed up that process after getting a lot of demand for a consumer version.

When Microsoft announced its plans for Surface last spring, the stated plan was to bring the technology to consumers eventually, but the company warned that it could be five years before a version of the products would be on shelves at the local Best Buy.

But the company got a lot of … Read more

Ballmer: More marketing of Windows needed

With Apple gaining significant market share, Microsoft is finally acknowledging that it needs to do a better job of selling Windows.

"We're going to have to invest more than we ever have in consumer excitement," CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts Monday. "We are going to be doing more to highlight Windows, and that is going to require more investment."

Ballmer also mentioned the need to work on the next Windows, but offered no new details on Windows 7, Vista's successor.

"We're very hard at work on the next version, which we … Read more

Microsoft to open Boston-area research lab

Microsoft on Monday said it plans in July to open its sixth research lab, in Cambridge, Mass.

The new lab will focus initially on "core computer science, especially more algorithmically oriented areas, and the social sciences, with a particular emphasis on building connections between these two areas," Microsoft said, adding that there will also be a small team working on design issues.

The lab will be run by Jennifer Tour Chayes, a veteran of Microsoft Research. The press release was quick to note that Chayes is the first woman to run one of the company's labs.

"… Read more

Yahoo axes music service, strikes deal with Rhapsody

It's been a tumultuous few days for Yahoo--you know, with that takeover bid from Microsoft--but the company continues to shake things up internally, too.

On Monday, the company announced that it will discontinue its Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription service and will transfer its customers to RealNetworks' Rhapsody service.

In mid-2008, Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers will be guided through an in-browser process to convert their music libraries to Rhapsody's service. For a limited time (length unknown), they'll be able to keep paying Yahoo's subscription fees, which cap out at $8.99 per month, before being required … Read more

Microsoft is "committed to openness," snickers its general counsel

Wow. Microsoft is nothing if not brazen. When you think of Microsoft you normally don't think of these words, at least not together, yet these words came from Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith, in response to Google's complaint that a Microsoft and Yahoo! tie up would be bad for the Internet:

Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the Internet.

Microsoft? Committed to openness? Microsoft has been committed to destroying openness over the years, and Brad Smith has played an integral role in that strategy, defying the US Justice Department and the world's consumer. I think highly of Brad, but I find this guile to be galling in the extreme.

Google is exactly right in calling out Microsoft's cheek:… Read more

Microsoft lashes back at Google

UPDATED: 6 p.m.

Nu-uhhh.

That's a one word summary of Microsoft's statement Sunday rebutting Google's statement earlier in the day that said Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo could raise antitrust concerns.

"The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising," Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith said in a statement. "The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet."

Smith argues that Google already has three-quarters of the paid search market and about … Read more

Google warns on Yahoo-Microsoft

Google's top lawyer has penned a letter outlining a number of concerns it sees if Microsoft's bid for Yahoo goes through.

In the letter, "Yahoo and the future of the Internet," Google chief legal officer David Drummond says that Microsoft's offer "raises troubling questions" given the company's monopolistic past.

"This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another," Drummond said. "It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Drummond warns that Microsoft could attempt the same things it did … Read more

Google calls Microsoft's 'hostile' bid for Yahoo troubling

A Microsoft-Yahoo merger could threaten the openness on which the Internet is based, a Google executive says.

Microsoft's $44.6 billion "hostile" bid "raises troubling questions," writes David Drummond, Google Chief Legal Officer, expresses cynicism in a blog posted on Sunday

"Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies--and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets," he writes. "Could the acquisition of … Read more