WinInsider

When Microsoft issued an unprecedented $32.6 billion stock dividend payout to its shareholders in December, the company had a huge effect on the US economy, the US Department of Commerce said this week. According to the agency, the payout raised the average income of US citizens and will likely worsen the nation's deficit. Overall, the US economy will "become more negative" because of the payout because so many of the company's shareholders live overseas.

On Monday, Microsoft revealed that it would not appeal a European Union (EU) court order that upheld a set of previously issued EU antitrust sanctions that require the software giant to release a version of Windows without Windows Media Player (WMP). That means Microsoft will soon ship a new WMP-less version of Windows XP in the European market to both retail stores and computer makers.

"Microsoft has decided to forego its right to appeal the Court of First Instance's interim measures ruling of December 22, 2004," a Microsoft statement issued Monday reads. "Rather than seeking to suspend the Commission's remedies, Microsoft's focus now is on working constructively with the Commission on their full and prompt implementation."

Convincing businesses to upgrade to new versions of Office is a perennial challenge for Microsoft, but the company hopes a new Elixir might speed things up.

An effort, code-named Project Elixir, will take shape later this year as a way to promote Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and contact program, with some additional fields, as a tool for viewing customer relationship data. Eventually, the plan could help the software giant elbow its way further into the customer relationship management market, where Siebel Systems, Oracle and SAP dominate.

As Microsoft intensifies its crackdown on illegal use of software, the company is urging Zambia to speed up the enactment of the government's Information and Communication Technology policy so that software pirates can be prosecuted.

The country's draft ICT policy, in its current formulation, gives guidelines on how to set up an Internet café and what constitutes software piracy.

Microsoft is losing revenue and jobs are in jeopardy because people in the computer business do not acquire legitimate software through official channels, according to Microsoft Market Development Partner Mwiche Simwinga.

SCO Group has won a small legal victory in its lengthy battle with IBM over open-source intellectual property. In a ruling handed down yesterday in Federal District Court in Utah, Judge Brooke Wells ordered IBM to provide SCO with source code for Big Blue's AIX and Dynix operating systems. SCO has long sought that software, which it intends to examine in hopes of finding code it believes infringes on its copyrights.

Microsoft's Xbox video game console seems to be doing even better than previously thought. Thanks in part to humongous sales of Halo 2--6.4 million worldwide since its November 2004 debut--the Xbox has experienced an unprecedented period of growth during the past several months. According to Microsoft, the Xbox has increased its market share for 14 consecutive months and now controls 37 percent of the console market. The Xbox was the only video game console to grow market share during both calendar year 2004 and the last quarter of 2004. Meanwhile, the Xbox Live online game service now has more than 1.4 million subscribers, exceeding expectations. The market includes more than 200 Xbox Live-enabled video games, the software giant says, and the most popular title--Halo 2, naturally--has had subscribers log a record 91 million hours of game play.

Microsoft Research is testing a search toolbar that utilizes an experimental search result clustering technique to automatically categorize search results into groups by topic. But Microsoft isn't the only one who sees potential in the feature; America Online this week implemented clustering into its revamped AOL Search.

Clustering brings a semblance of order to search results, which are traditionally arranged by their ordinal ranking without much emphasis on making navigation more convenient.

Microsoft is expected to roll out the much-anticipated second beta release of its Visual Studio 2005 development platform at the end of March or early April, sources close to the company said.

According to sources, Microsoft is scheduled to release Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005, code-named Whidbey, on March 31. Sources also said Microsoft is expected to release the release candidate version of Visual Studio 2005 around the time of the Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles in mid-September.

Microsoft officials had said to expect the final Whidbey release to ship in late summer 2005.

Apple and Microsoft have something in common after all -- both are attempting to stop bloggers from publishing information about upcoming technology.

Peter Rojas, editor and co-founder of the popular technology blog Engadget.com, said there is an "ongoing situation" over a post that went on his site Jan. 5. The article detailed some upcoming features rumored to be in Windows Mobile 2005 for Microsoft's Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

The post prompted a cease-and-desist letter, dated Tuesday, from intellectual property lawyer Cameron Alston of the law firm Covington & Burling. The letter to Engadget publisher Jason Calacanis stated the material found in the post infringed on Microsoft's proprietary trade secrets.

At the end of last year, rumors were flying that Microsoft was rethinking its commitment to its Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program. But on Wednesday, Microsoft ended that speculation and awarded as MVPs a pool of independent technology experts and announced plans for a 2005 summit for them.

MVPs are experts with knowledge about one or more Microsoft products and technologies. Their job is to help Microsoft support developers and customers via online communities, trade shows, and other ways.