Microsoft reported Tuesday that it will open a Search Technology Center in Europe as the software company stepped up its effort to catch Google in online searching capability.
The new center will be "designed to help accelerate Microsoft's investments in Live Search and disrupt the search and advertising marketplace to the benefit of both the consumer and the advertiser in line with Microsoft's recent announcement in the U.S. of Live Search cashback," the company said in a release.
"Success in search in Europe is paramount, and we see the investment in this new Search Technology Center as an important step in doubling down our long-term investments," said Kevin Johnson, Microsoft's president of the Platforms and Services Division, in a statement.
Microsoft sought on Friday to enlist support for its opposition to a new
advertising collaboration deal between Google and
Yahoo, two sources familiar with the matter told
Reuters.
One day after the companies announced an agreement allowing
Google to sell search ads on Yahoo's Web site, Microsoft
contacted advocacy groups that work to influence policy in
Washington.
According to one source who was contacted by Microsoft, the
software company said in an e-mail that the Google-Yahoo
agreement would "limit choices for advertisers and publishers"
and "destroy a competitive alternative.
Microsoft yesterday kicked off the NXTcomm08 event by showcasing its IPTV telco and service provider offerings. The company described some of its software, services and partner integration efforts in a series of announcements. NXTcomm08 is currently being held this week in Las Vegas.
Some of Microsoft's solutions for service providers center on its service delivery platform, known as Microsoft Connected Services Framework. The framework includes a customer care component that can be used with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to roll out and manage new services.
Microsoft on Monday introduced its first operating system designed for manufacturers of handheld portable navigation devices.
Windows Embedded NavReady 2009, which is based on Windows Embedded CE, includes technologies for connecting PNDs to online services, mobile phones using Bluetooth, and Windows-based PCs. The OS includes online search through Microsoft's Live Search and also includes the software maker's Live Search Map service.
Through the OS's Bluetooth support, manufacturers can build PNDs that connect to mobile phones to share data, such as address books, or make hands-free phone calls. Manufacturers also can choose to connect devices to Microsoft's MSN Direct services, which provide commuter information such as traffic alerts and fuel prices.
The marketing executive who helped establish Microsoft's Halo 3 as one of the top-selling video games of all time is leaving the company.
Jeff Bell, corporate VP for global marketing at Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business unit, is leaving the company "to pursue other opportunities," Microsoft said in a statement Thursday.
Bell will stay on at the company through the summer. His pending departure has sparked a shakeup in Microsoft's Xbox-related business groups. Shane Kim, VP for Microsoft Game Studios, has been promoted into the new role of VP for strategy and business development within the Interactive Entertainment group.
Microsoft has become a sponsor of The Open Source Census, a project started earlier this year that aims to track and catalog the use of open source software in enterprises worldwide,
the group announced Monday.
The company's "customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments," so participation
in projects such as the census is relevant to the "ecosystem" in which Microsoft operates, said Sam Ramji, Microsoft' senior
director of platform strategy, in a prepared statement.
IT pros wanting to try out the latest Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology can now get the Release Candidate 1 version via Windows Update. This optional version, which contains minor improvements, was first announced by Microsoft last month.
RC1 contains a few performance and bug fixes over RC0, according to the Microsoft Windows Virtualization Product Group Team Blog. Integration components have been added to the integration services setup disk. RC1 also supports IPv4 address migration. There's also an improvement to work with Linux virtual machines.
Microsoft offered Yahoo Inc $1 billion in cash to buy its search business in a deal that would have delivered $1 billion in additional annual operating income to Yahoo, a source familiar with Microsoft's thinking said on Friday.
In an alternative to a full acquisition, Microsoft would have taken control of Yahoo's search business, delivering the company better rates for s tied to its search results than Yahoo's current Panama advertising system, the source said.
Microsoft would have also paid $8 billion to take a 16 percent stake in Yahoo, which would have valued the company's stock at $35 a share, the source said.
On Thursday, Microsoft is expected to show off its new business-focused social networking project called "TownSquare" at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston . The project has been in "incubation" for some time.
TownSquare is a social networking platform designed for internal company use. Rumors are that it looks like Facebook . The goal is to provide a system for storing anniversaries, job promotions, shared docs, and other information about employees. Sounds like a suped-up and eye-pleasing version of Microsoft Outlook to us.
A key Xbox marketing leader is leaving Microsoft amid executive shuffling in the company's gaming business. Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, is leaving the company at the end of the summer to pursue other interests after only two years at the company, Microsoft said Thursday. Summer in the U.S. typically means the months of June, July and August. Microsoft also has promoted two existing executives to new positions in the business. Shane Kim will take on a new role as corporate vice president of strategy and business development. Kim is currently corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios.