Microsoft Windows chief Steven Sinofsky took to the Professional Developer Conference (PDC) 2009 keynote stage on Wednesday morning to bask in the afterglow of Windows 7's successful launch and ask that developers create compelling new applications that build on Windows 7 technologies. He also showed off a very early version of Internet Explorer 9, which Microsoft says will be more standards compliant and offer huge performance improvements.
"The tremendous support behind Windows 7 equates to tangible opportunity for developers on the Windows platform," Sinofsky said. "We're looking forward to the new ways that they will bring Windows and the web to life for all of our customers."
Microsoft's Bing search engine accounted for 9.9 percent of all web searches in the United States, up from 9.4 percent the previous month. However, most of that gain clearly came at the expense of Yahoo! since market leader Google also expanded its share, from 64.9 percent to 65.4 percent. Yahoo! lost big time, falling to 18 percent from 18.8 percent.
Despite the fact that Microsoft recently posted its first declines in revenue and earnings in its history, stockholders today at the company's annual shareholder meeting appeared forgiving.
None of the audience harangued the company for not doing better in the current economy, although Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took a defensive stance on the company's performance anyway.
"Our numbers show we're on the right track, driven by strong revenues from the Windows Division and the Xbox 360," he said.
The Day 2 keynote is actually still ongoing at the time I'm writing this -- it's run 20 minutes over schedule, and the SharePoint demos are still going on. But here's an assessment of the information we've received thus far today: First of all, the first news on Internet Explorer 9. If you weren't listening closely to Windows Division president Steven Sinofsky, you might have missed this little fact: The team is only three weeks into the project, having just started after the Windows 7 launch. Now, think about that for a bit: The implication here is that the development team cannot work on the operating system and the Web browser at the same time. This from the company that used to argue that the two components were inseparable.
Much of the value proposition for Windows Azure -- the star of the show Tuesday at PDC 2009 in Los Angeles -- has been its ability to open up new business avenues for customers who had not been able to envision hosting high-intensity data center operations before. Azure could give these customers a leg up, a new and more affordable way to get off the ground.
But once they're off the ground, the question becomes, why stay up in the air? What's to keep those customers grounded -- to mix metaphors like an old editor of mine -- in the cloud? The surprise answer to that question is coming from a senior product manager for Windows Server, not Azure. Scott Ottaway told Betanews today that provisions are being planned for customers to move their deployed applications back off the Azure cloud, onto on-premises data center servers.
Microsoft on Wednesday announced that SAP will be the "preferred partner" for customers buying its budgeting, planning and forecasting applications, a move that's clearly intended to send a message to Oracle.
The deal represents an extension of the two software giants' existing and largely amicable relationship as well as their shared disdain for Oracle.
While Oracle remains SAP's largest and most formidable rival in the business application market, it's also the most significant threat to Microsoft's database software business.
Microsoft has unleashed the public beta of Microsoft Office 2010. The Office 2010 beta includes updated versions of Word, excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace, and Communicator. You can download it right now from the Microsoft Office 2010 beta site.
Like Windows XP versus Windows Vista, a fair percentage of users never made the jump from Office 2003 to Office 2007. The Windows Vista backlash had a residual effect which led customers to adopt a 'my-current-version-works-fine-why-change-it' mentality.
Microsoft opened the second day of its Professional Developer Conference 2009 with the announcement of Silverlight 4 and a progress update on Internet Explorer 9.
But the presentation began with a look back. The opening keynote came from Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live division of Microsoft. One year ago, he was offering the first developer beta of Windows 7. Today, he got to talk about the process of testing the operating system that launched three weeks ago.
Windows 7 took the Professional Developer Conference stage this morning in the guise of Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows & Windows Live division. Sinofsky stood before the crowd of Microsoft developers as a victor. Last month, his team released Windows 7 nearly flawlessly and to generally positive reviews (PDC Day 2 live blog).
Sinofsky did not pitch a three-screen strategy -- PC, TV and mobile device -- as I expected based on statements Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, made during the Day 1 keynote. For PDC, Microsoft is missing one screen. The company doesn't plan to announce its next-generation Windows Phone -- or Windows Live, for that matter -- until next year's MIX conference.
Microsoft has extended the availability of the Windows Marketplace for Mobile app store to include Windows Mobile 6.0 and Windows Mobile 6.1 devices. The broader availability is a benefit for both users and developers, but it may not do much to help the Windows Mobile platform capture market share.
While Microsoft claims there are over 18,000 apps available for the Windows Mobile platform, the vast majority of those are only available from the third-party vendors that developed them. The Windows Marketplace for Mobile inventory is restricted to the relative handful of apps that have passed Microsoft's rigorous testing to validate that they work well on the intended devices.