Microsoft is facing deeper scrutiny from European regulators on whether it is abusing its dominance in word processing and spreadsheets, three people with direct knowledge of the case said.
The European Commission in Brussels has sent a second questionnaire to rivals of Microsoft asking them for additional details on how the world's largest software maker may crimp competition by withholding technical data on Word and Excel, said the people, who declined to be identified because the letters aren't public.
Microsoft finally broke the $50 billion barrier for revenues in fiscal 2007 ? and the company's financial team is predicting more of the same in the current fiscal year.
For the year, which ended January 30, the company brought in $51.12 billion, up 15 percent from last year's $44.28 billion. For the fiscal fourth quarter, Microsoft chalked up $13.37 billion, a 13 percent jump from last fiscal year's fourth quarter revenues of $11.8 billion.
As to the bottom line, Microsoft brought in a whopping $14.07 billion in reported net income for the year, an 18 percent boost from last year's $12.6 billion.
As part of its plan to earn more revenue from online advertising, Microsoft is teaming with a San Francisco-based provider of mobile broadband advertising to deliver advertising to users of municipal Wi-Fi networks.
Microsoft and JiWire have struck a deal to deliver advertising combined with location-based content from Microsoft's MSN portal on one metropolitan area Wi-Fi network that is currently deployed and another in the late stages of development, and the companies have plans to expand to more networks in the works for the future, said David Blumenfeld, vice president of marketing at JiWire.
After months of diminishing market share in the search industry, Microsoft may have found the answer to competing against Google and Yahoo: Chicktionary. The addictive game, which is available on the Live Search Club site, rewards users with prizes such as software.Microsoft's troubles in the search market date back many years. The company previously utilized Google and Yahoo to handle its search results, not launching its own engine until late 2004. At the time, Microsoft said it would put forth considerable effort and resources to regain ground on its competitors and boost its search share above 9.5%.
A U.S. committee whose recommendation is viewed to be a bellwether as to whether Microsoft's Office OpenXML document formats are likely to be adopted as a major international standard, failed last week to garner enough votes to move the proposed standard along, according to a private blog post by one committee member.
The vote by Technical Committee V1 of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards came just two votes shy on Friday of the two-thirds majority required to recommend that OOXML be adopted by the International Organization for Standardization The V1 committee of the INCITS organization, which is accredited by the American National Standards Institute, is charged with formulating the U.S. response to ISO standards proposals for open document formats.
Microsoft has expanded its Office rental trial in South Africa to include Office 2007. Microsoft will make Office 2007 available for 199 rand ($28.54) for a three-month subscription, according to a Reuters report. First-time users willg et an extra three months for free, Reuters said. (Thanks to Bink.nu for the link to the Reuters story.)
Microsoft has been testing pay-as-you-go schemes for Office 2003 in several developing countries, including South Africa,?? company officials said earlier this year. At that time, Microsoft officials said the Office rental trials were also in full-swing in Mexico and Romania. Back in January, Microsoft was planning to decide "in the next couple of months whether to extend the program to include Office 2007.
One major change with Windows did get revealed this week, but it concerns the previous Windows version, XP, and not current or future versions: Microsoft is opening up its Games for Windows LIVE service (which brings some of the functionality of Xbox Live to Windows) to XP users. One of the first Games for Windows LIVE titles to support both XP and Vista will be "Gears of War," the hit Xbox 360 title with a painful and little-discussed skeleton in the closet: Its multiplayer component is a joke. (That said, it's one of the best single player games ever made, behind, perhaps, just "Half-Life 2.") The PC version of Gears will include 5 new single player levels, a new multiplayer mode (hopefully one that isn't pathetic), and new LIVE Achievements. Woo!
Less than a day after he chastised Sony for failing to be successful in Japan with the PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox chief Peter Moore has abruptly resigned from Microsoft. Moore will become president of EA's Sports division.Succeeding Moore at Microsoft will be Don Mattrick, who was a former president of game development Electronic Arts. Mattrick will become senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, which includes the Xbox and Games for Windows groups.
Microsoft said Moore was leaving the company out of a desire to return to the San Francisco Bay area, citing "personal reasons" as the driving factor. Still, industry watchers are speculating that Microsoft's struggles in the gaming market and the incredible pressure facing Moore specifically were partly to blame for his departure.
The European Union Court of First Instance announced this morning that it will issue its ruling in the Microsoft antitrust case on September 17. Microsoft had appealed the antitrust decision against the company to the EU's second-highest court in 2004.
"We look forward to receiving the court's judgment and continue to work with industry and government on the best way to serve the needs of customers and communities in Europe," a Microsoft spokesperson said. Mark your calendars: The ruling will be issued at 07:30 GMT on September 17.
Microsoft outlined the specific projects to which its looking to universities for research contributions on July 16, the opening day of its 2007?? Microsoft Research Faculty Summit.
(The Research Faculty Summit has been an annual event. Starting next year, it will become an every-two-year event, with a new Microsoft graduate-student-focused research event occuring in the "off years in between, company officials said.)
Microsoft officials made public the six research areas for which the company has published requests for proposal and the amount of funding the company is putting aside for each.