Microsoft continues its strategic investments in the growing Chinese technology market. The software vendor has signed a $900 million deal with China to promote the growth of the country's software industry, China's National Development and Reform Commission said Wednesday.
In a press statement, the NDRC said that Microsoft will invest 1.6 billion renminbi ($200 million) over the next five years to support joint ventures and partnerships with Chinese software companies and for developing other software and service projects.
Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System development head Rick LaPlante has resigned after an 18-year career at Microsoft, a company spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.
Taking over from him as general manager of VSTS will be outside hire Andrew Kass, who most recently served as senior vice president of product development at S1, an Atlanta-based financial industry enterprise applications maker.
LaPlante, currently on an extended vacation, is leaving to pursue personal interests, according to Microsoft. When he returns, he will spend several months working on the VSTS transition with Kass, who starts his new job in June.
As Microsoft prepares to roll out its Windows Live OneCare security product, it is offering some people the $49.95-a-year service for free.
On Tuesday, Microsoft sent e-mail invitations to a select number of people who have been testing OneCare, asking them to join a "perpetual beta." These people get to use the service at no cost and will have early access to new features, said Brooke Richardson, a lead product manager at Microsoft.
"They do not have to pay for the service, but we ask them to give us feedback," she said. "We expect it will be a small number of our users, less than 1 percent of our user base, that we will ask to stay in this perpetual beta." That would be hundreds or thousands of users, Richardson said.
The lead judge weighing Microsoft's challenge to a landmark European Commission antitrust decision grilled a lawyer defending it on Tuesday, questioning whether the software giant's actions were abusive.
The sharp questioning of the Commission, which fined Microsoft 497 million euros ($617.4 million) and ordered it to change its business practices in 2004, capped a two-day review of a finding that Microsoft had illegally bundled Windows Media Player into Windows.
Judge John Cooke, who led the inquiry and will write a draft decision for the 13-judge panel, questioned the reasoning and conclusions of the Commission.
The European Commission forced the world's largest software maker to offer a product no one wanted and virtually no one bought, Microsoft told the European Union's second-highest court Monday as it began trying to overturn a landmark antitrust ruling against it.
Microsoft lawyer Jean-Francois Bellis said in his opening statement that the commission made "fundamental errors of fact and reasoning" in its decision two years ago that the company abused its dominant market position to muscle into media software.
Microsoft on Tuesday expanded its anti-piracy efforts by unveiling a tool that puts "nag" messages on the screens of computers running bogus copies of Windows.
The "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool displays a message when users of counterfeit Windows log on. "It appears that you could be a victim of software piracy. The copy of Windows installed on this computer is not considered to be genuine by Microsoft," the initial dialog box message reads. "The notification will continue to display until your computer is running genuine Microsoft Windows." A similar message pops up at random times from the system tray section of the Windows taskbar.
The next Longhorn server beta is due "shortly" but the final product won't ship until the second half of 2007.
During his keynote at the Microsoft Management Summit 2006, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of servers and tools at Microsoft, told the audience that the next major Windows server upgrade, code named Longhorn and informally referred to as the Vista server, will likely ship during the second half of 2007.
The company has said it would ship in 2007 but did not provide this guidance in the past.
Microsoft on Monday evening released Beta 2 for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Service Pack 2, an overhaul of the browser featuring enhanced security and a redesigned user interface.
While remaining close-lipped about a U.S. ship date, the company did say in a statement that it expects to ship final code in the second half of 2006.
At this point, company officials are urging more technical users to try the new browser in production environments. ?This build is really solid [and] we think it is ready for technology enthusiasts,? says Margaret Cobb, a product manager for IE 7.
The opinion of the U.S. government could be the deciding factor on whether the Supreme Court hears an appeal by Microsoft to avoid paying overseas fines in a patent dispute with AT&T.
The Supreme Court is asking the administration of President George Bush for its opinion on whether to review a patent case between Microsoft and AT&T--which was AT&T in 2001 when the case was filed--over audio-compression technology. In a court order filed this week, the highest court in the U.S. asked the solicitor general to file a brief expressing the opinions of the government in the case.
Microsoft has introduced a new program for testing if customers have a genuine version of its Office productivity suite, according to the company.
The move is part of Microsoft's continued efforts to prevent software piracy and the distribution of counterfeit copies of its software.
Microsoft has launched a pilot of the Office Genuine Advantage program in seven languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Greek, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Russian and Spanish, according to Microsoft. The program will determine if pilot users have a genuine installation of Microsoft Office installed on their computers.