Well no one saw this one coming: a comparison between Steve Ballmer and Tim Cook; the Future of Television according to Netflix; 3D printers and guns; plus Touchscreen Toddlers and San Francisco’s real estate inflation are some of topics covered this week. Read more »
Joachim Kempin is the former Microsoft exec who handled the company’s interesting relationships with OEM partners. Now he’s weighing in with ideas to bring Microsoft back to power. Read more »
The notion of a privately-held Dell, partly owned by Microsoft, is getting closer to reality, according to published reports. A deal in which Microsoft owns a big stake in a PC company shows just how drastically times have changed. Read more »
Star engineer Mark Lucovsky appears to be back at VMware, after handing the Cloud Foundry PaaS over to VMware/EMC’s Pivotal Initiative spin-off. Read more »
For its second quarter, Microsoft’s profits sagged to $6.4 billion or 76 cents per share from $6.6 billion (79 cents per share) compared to last year’s comparable period. Read more »
Both Microsoft and Dell face lagging stock prices and the perception that they both missed the boat in mobile. But the two companies also face very real threats to their core enterprise IT businesses. Read more »
If Microsoft takes a big stake in Dell it could sway operating system and software loaded on Dell PCs, servers and potentially other devices. Read more »
Craig Mundie, who was Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer up till recently, will retire in 2014. With Ray Ozzie and now Steve Sinofsky gone, some wonder who will drive Microsoft’s key technology vision going forward. Read more »
Contrary to numerous reports, Steven Sinofsky said he did not try to wrest control of Windows Phone or the developer division before leaving Microsoft. Sinofsky responded in comments to a blog post about his exit by a former Microsoft colleague. Read more »
Steven Sinofsky’s ability to deliver big-money products with minimal delay put him on the short list to be Microsoft’s next CEO. But, he did not work well with others and that will be a key requirement for whoever steps in for Steve Ballmer. Read more »
Steven Sinofsky, who drove Microsoft Office and then Windows development for years, is leaving Microsoft abruptly. His duties will be assumed by Tami Reller and Julie Larson-Green, according to a company statement. Read more »
With a new operating system, Microsoft has a new story to tell about Windows 8. The “reimagined” interface made for touch and the diversity of hardware support, coupled with a strong ecosystem was the gist of the sale. Smartly, Microsoft didn’t compare itself to competitors directly. Read more »
Microsoft’s lackluster first quarter earnings news actually came as a relief after a raft of bad tech sector news from IBM, Intel and Google this week. The software giant missed expectations but not by all that much for the quarter ending September 30. Read more »
Does it make good business sense for Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon (or any high tech company) to make its employees use its products alone? The great dogfooding debate rages on anew in the bring-your-own-device era. Read more »
Mark Penn, the spin king/pollster who worked with Bill Clinton during Monica-Gate and advised Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, is now taking on Microsoft where he will head up “special projects” and focus on the consumer sector, reporting to CEO Steve Ballmer. Read more »
As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off the company’s latest Office software Monday, he hit all the right marks — a touch interface, cloud storage, VoIP integration and social networking tie-ins. They had to. But a very different interface might spook current Office users. Read more »
Apple took Microsoft to school with its iPod, iPhone, iPad trilogy and Microsoft responded with vows to one-up Apple with Surface and Windows phones. But can the Microsoft of the 21st century do what the older Microsoft did in overcoming foes? Skepticism abounds. Read more »
Steve Ballmer, unbowed by a negative Vanity Fair story that paints Microsoft as a company that no longer competes effectively remains … well, Ballmer. In a recent interview, Ballmer said Microsoft will take the battle to Apple again in tablets, in smartphones, in cloud. Read more »
French media is reporting that Microsoft’s Paris-based subsidiary is being investigated by the country’s tax authorities over its system for avoiding corporate taxes. It marks the latest low point for the business, which wrote down its $6.2bn purchase of aQuantive earlier this week. Read more »
There are write downs — and then there are write downs. Microsoft is wiping the books clean of almost all of the $6.3 billion it paid for interactive ad company aQuantive in 2007 and admitting its Online Services Division will not make big bucks, Read more at paidContent »
Microsoft’s lost its attempt to get an €899m European antitrust fine overturned — an apparent victory for local regulators. But the reality is that while this fine might be vast by European standards, it’s barely a scratch on the surface for Redmond. Read more »
The Muppet Theory making the rounds of late holds that everyone is either either a Chaos Muppet — volatile, energetic, perhaps brilliant — or an Order Muppet, surprise-averse, and hyper-organized. The late Steve Jobs? Order Muppet extraordinaire. Steve Ballmer? Hmmmm. Larry Page? Read more »
VMware’s set its sights on becoming a bona fide application development powerhouse. With the latest version of its Springsource-based vFabric Suite, VMware adds application deployment automation, vSphere-optimized Posgres and a SQLFire in-memory database layer — all are geared to woo web scale developers. Read more »
Microsoft”s $300 million investment in Barnes & Noble’s Nook business gives it a piece of an ebook reader also-ran. But this is far from the first time Microsoft enlisted a B list ally to attack a recalcitrant market. Read more »
Software developers in search of a platform still wonder whether Google is really serious about Google AppEngine. Google’s Greg D’alesandre insists that Google — up to and including CEO Larry Page — is all-in with GAE Read more »
Two star hires and a well-reviewed phone-and-tablet operating system do not necessarily remake a company, but they do ease the perception — prevalent in recent years — that Microsoft is on its last legs. Could the once-dominant software giant be on the comeback trail? Read more »
“Google is a crack dealer” is a phrase Larry Page never wanted to hear: but as the company’s relationships with developers begin to fracture across the board — from the web to mobile to apps — it is losing its grip on its own destiny. Read more »
Was Bill Gates, chairman and co-founder of Microsoft, the power behind the proprietary Windows-and-Office juggernaut, really an open source champion? A new Wired article lays Microsoft’s wider embrace of open source technologies — including Node.js and Hadoop — squarely at Gates’ feet. Read more »
Microsoft may have finally accomplished something it has failed to do at the last six Consumer Electronics Show events I’ve attended: It has people talking about its phones. Even with few product launches announced at CES, there’s good reason for the Windows Phone buzz. Read more »
The decision to end Microsoft CES keynotes after next month was painted by both parties as an amicable split. Inside sources say it was anything but and that the Consumer Electronics Association booted the software giant in a bid to shake up the show. Read more »
If one thing was expected from Microsoft paying $8.5 billion for Skype, it was the criticism of the deal. I spoke with Steve Ballmer and Tony Bates about the deal and what comes next. Here are my notes from that conversation. Read more »
Now that Steve Ballmer has direct control over Microsoft’s mobile efforts, is his neck on the line? With the shift to mobile, this market is more important than ever to Microsoft — if it doesn’t deliver, it could be the beginning of the end for Ballmer. Read more »
Steve Ballmer, the chief executive officer of Microsoft, the world’s largest software company — is almost always wrong. He was wrong about the iPod. He was wrong about the iPhone and he is once again going to be proven wrong about Google’s Android OS. Read more »
Kicking things off with the proclamation that “we’re betting the company on it,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussed cloud computing and the future at the University of Washington this morning. “The goal can’t be to throw out all the world’s software and start again,” he said. Read more »
Even after Microsoft reported record earnings a few days ago, one of its former executives has effectively written the company’s obituary in a NYT op-ed piece. Is Microsoft not savable? Here are three surprise scenarios that could have a lot of upside for the company. Read more »
The Windows 7 trumpets are blasting with gusto, with Steve Felice, president of the small and medium-sized business (SMB) division of Dell, claiming that Microsoft’s new operating system is fueling a surge in demand for PCs, according to Computerworld. “As soon as Oct. 22 hit, both […] Read more »
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage today in San Francisco to extol how the company’s new slate of products — Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server2010 — can help businesses save money and increase productivity as corporate IT budgets remain tight. […] Read more »
Allow me to set the scene. It’s January 2007. The iPhone has just been announced and the tech world is going crazy. CNBC interviews Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. CNBC: “Let me ask you about the iPhone ... What was your first reaction when you saw that?” […] Read more »
After laying off thousands yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer visited Stanford today in high spirits, telling students that his company is hiring and that he can’t think of a better time to start a business. “These are tough economic times, but these are times that are […] Read more »
