Microsoft plans to intensify its pursuit of Yahoo this week when it authorizes a proxy fight to oust Yahoo's board, meaning
the 19-day old acquisition attempt will soon turn a darker shade of ugly, according to The New York Times.
The proxy fight will cost Microsoft between $20 million and $30 million, much less than having to significantly up its offer
for Yahoo, The Times reported Tuesday morning, quoting anonymous sources.
The aggressive move would be consistent with Microsoft's statements hinting that it's willing to acquire Yahoo via hostile
means if necessary. Yahoo's board rejected unanimously Microsoft's offer, calling it too low.
Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 is slated for widespread availability on March 1, after a gala launch on February 27. But when will it enter widespread usage? A major report released today seems to present an overly rosy picture.With Windows Server 2008 to be widely available to everyone in March, how many businesses and other organizations are really going to migrate to the new OS, and when? Technology retailer CDW today released survey results claiming that 68% of all organizations are going to adopt the new Windows Server, with 18% already in the planning stages.
No matter what Toshiba decides to do about HD DVD, Microsoft says the decision will have little bearing on the Xbox 360 game console, for which the Redmond company sells and HD DVD add-on. Microsoft had aligned behind HD DVD from the beginning. The company helped create the HDi interactivity platform used by the format, and offered an external player hooked to its flagship game console. Sony, in contrast, built a Blu-ray player into the PlayStation 3 and used the format for its game discs.
Three high-ranking executives are leaving Microsoft as part of the company's latest shake-up in its top management.
Those departing include a senior vice president in Microsoft's unprofitable Internet unit and the marketing executive who oversaw the introduction of the company's Windows Vista operating system. Also leaving is the longtime chief of Microsoft's Windows Mobile division.
The company confirmed those exits Thursday as it promoted and reshuffled executives across its product groups.
Yahoo is calling on Microsoft to bump up its buyout bid, but the trouble is a number of the Internet giant's largest investors own shares in both stocks.
And, in a number of cases, Microsoft accounts for a larger slice between the two, which could dampen Yahoo's efforts to generate strong investor momentum in calling for a substantially higher price, according to a report released Friday by RiskMetrics Group.
In effect, it's like asking these large investors to bid against themselves.
Microsoft said on Friday that it has added Office binary formats to a list of technologies that are protected against patent-violation
claims, answering criticism from some involved in the OOXML file-format standards process.
The OOXML format is being considered as an international standard by the ISO,
but translation between the original Office binaries and OOXML is necessary for there to be seamless document exchange between
older versions of Office and Office 2007. Corporate developers and makers of other office productivity products need access
to the formats in order to write converters between Microsoft's format and the possible standard.
Those lucky enough to have access to MSDN or TechNet Plus subscriptions may be interested to hear that Microsoft has bowed to public pressure and released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 via those venues. This release is significantly earlier than the original plan, which saw Microsoft delivering SP1 to MSDN and TechNet much later in the month. Maybe they'll relent and let the general population download it early too. We can dream.
Security researchers have uncovered "critical" security flaws in a version of the Linux kernel used by a large number of popular
distributions.
The three bugs allow unauthorized users to read or write to kernel memory locations or to access certain resources in certain
servers, according to a SecurityFocus advisory.
They could be exploited by malicious, local users to cause denial of service attacks, disclose potentially sensitive information,
or gain "root" privileges, according to security experts.
The head of Microsoft's mobile phone group is jumping ship, moving to U.K. mobile operator Vodafone Group to run its Internet
services.
Pieter Knook will join Vodafone on March 10, where he will lead a new unit delivering consumer Internet services, Vodafone
said Thursday.
Vodafone's announcement comes in the wake of press reports that Microsoft will reshuffle its executive team later Thursday.
Knook's replacement as head of Microsoft's mobile communications business is likely to be Andrew Lees, currently with the
company's server and tools group, according to a report on the Web site of The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday night, which
cited a person familiar with the situation. Both Knook and Lees are Microsoft veterans, working with the company since 1990.
Microsoft is on a health kick. No ? that doesn't meant that CEO Steve Ballmer has taken up jogging.
Instead, in the last year or so, the company has acquired several health-related products and companies. That includes medical information software developer Azyxxi, and Global Care Solutions, a privately held company based in Bangkok, Thailand that develops software for running hospitals.
Now Microsoft is taking the first steps to bring them under the same aegis by rebranding them all under a common name -- the Microsoft Amalga Family of Health Enterprise Systems.