Microsoft copyright attorney Thomas Rubin accused rival Google of profiting handsomely from online theft, the latest arrow slung between two software giants struggling to corner online markets.
Rubin, who made his accusation in an address to the Association of American Publishers here today, said that Google employees "actively encouraged advertisers" to build ad programs around key words referring to pirated software, music and movies illegal copies of digital content.
Microsoft announced Tuesday that its FRx Software subsidiary will ship a significant update to its budgeting and planning tool for organizations this spring.
Denver-based FRx Software offers a suite of financial analytics and reporting tools for small and mid-size businesses as well as for emerging enterprise.
The products are part of Microsoft's Business Solutions group, which develops and markets the Dynamics brand of business and financial products. Microsoft Forecaster provides budgeting and planning tools for mid-market companies, according to Microsoft statements. Version 7.0 adds a new user interface along with support for Windows Vista and Office 2007.
Office Live topped 300,000 subscribers last week, a milestone reached as Microsoft makes several tweaks to the service, including domain redelegation and sales and service through Best Buy.
In January, Baris Cetinok, director of project management and marketing for Office Live, said that domain redelegation would headline a number of updates planned for spring and early sumer. We spoke after I had to cancel an Office Live account to get direct access to domain registrar. I had wanted to change registrars.
More than two decades after leaving Microsoft, Paul Allen still has designs on the computer business. But this time, he's aiming for something smaller.
See Todd Bishop's blog for more details on, and more images of, the FlipStart.
To be precise, it's less than 6 inches wide and weighs just about a pound and a half.
It's a miniature computer, dubbed FlipStart, and it's slated for release later this month, after years of development. The device rests on the palm but looks like a tiny laptop, contains a 30-gigabyte hard drive and runs full-fledged software on a microprocessor good enough for a traditional desktop computer.
Microsoft has quietly released a fix for a security vulnerability that could let Xbox 360 owners run their own applications or operating systems on the console.
The update corrects a problem with a tamper protection mechanism on the Xbox 360. Hackers had discovered a way to break through the shield and run their own software, including operating systems such as Linux, on the Microsoft game console.
Full details of the security vulnerability were disclosed last week in a posting to two widely read security mailing lists. The flaw was actually discovered in November, demonstrated at a hacker conference in December, and fixed by Microsoft in January, according to the posting by an anonymous hacker.
In early 2005, Microsoft launched its internally developed Internet search engine with great fanfare, after a large investment. Its goal was to rival Google in the growing and lucrative market.
But two years later, Microsoft has an even smaller slice of the U.S. search market than when it began, based on an analysis of statistics from two major research firms.
Numbers from Nielsen NetRatings show that the overall market has climbed to more than 7 billion queries a month, from about 4 billion when Microsoft launched its homegrown engine, then known as MSN Search. But Microsoft's volume of queries hasn't kept up with that growth -- remaining relatively flat, at 643 million queries in January.
Bill Gates sold over 20 million shares of Microsoft stock last month, and turmoil in the global stock markets probably shaved a few million dollars off of the money he made.
The Microsoft chairman was still selling off the final block of shares early last week when the world's stock markets began to fall. The decline was prompted by several factors including a share sell-off in Shanghai and fears that Japan may raise interest rates.
The sale of shares by a company executive is not unusual, and the shares sold by Gates were only a small part of his total Microsoft holdings. But the sales were notable because they coincided with the downturn in the stock market.
Dan Ling, who has led Microsoft Research's Redmond lab for most of its existence, says he will retire this month after 15 years with the company.
His retirement is slated to be announced Tuesday at Microsoft Research's annual TechFest event. The company plans to name as Ling's successor Henrique "Rico" Malvar, a Microsoft distinguished engineer who has played a key development role in areas including the company's Windows Media audio and video technologies.
Ling, 53, a Microsoft corporate vice president, was among the first computer-science researchers brought in by the company when it was building Microsoft Research in the 1990s. The Redmond lab, the research division's largest, has expanded to about 300 people during Ling's 12 years at its helm.
In the On-Demand test, the independent AV Comparatives uses one million known viruses to test the antivirus software. The top scoring products were the little guys. G Data Security's AntiVirusKit came out on top, detecting 99.5 percent of the malicious code.
The big names, Symantec and McAfee, came in lower. Symantec Antivirus caught 96.8 percent of the viruses, while McAfee's VirusScan caught 91.6 percent, which put it in 14th place.
Bringing up the rear was Windows Live OneCare, which caught just 82.4 percent of the viruses, and these were known, identified viruses. At least Microsoft has the excuse of being a new product. But the results are a ding to the well-known McAfee, one of the first commercial antivirus vendors.
A key executive in Microsoft's Windows Live online group plans to leave the company, according to an Internet report by a veteran journalist who tracks the Redmond company. Blake Irving, a Microsoft corporate vice president whose responsibilities include the build-out of the company's online data centers.
Irving is "the last of the high-level VPs from the old MSN who is still in a significant position of power," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Kirkland-based research firm Directions on Microsoft. If Irving does plan to leave, it could be viewed as part of the ongoing reshaping of the Windows and Windows Live executive teams under Kevin Johnson, the president of the Platforms and Services Division, Rosoff said.