Four former Microsoft employees, all of them Seattle-area residents, have been charged with stealing $32.4 million worth of software from the Redmond company. The allegations are the latest in an ongoing 2-year-old investigation into employee thefts from the world's largest software maker.
A complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle alleges that the four -- Alyson Clark of Normandy Park, Finn Contini of Redmond, Christine Hendrickson of Bothell and Robert Howdeshell of Puyallup -- conspired to defraud Microsoft and sell the company's products for personal profit, in violation of federal law.
Repeating what has become a perennial complaint, shareholders at the company's annual meeting in Bellevue questioned and, to some extent, challenged executives, including Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, over Microsoft's sluggish share price.
"I've been very impressed with the financial, technical results of the company and Steve's enthusiasm, but not the stock performance," said Tom Bass of Bellevue. "Can you explain why the stock seems to be stuck?" Others in the audience applauded his question.
Internet companies said Tuesday that they're racing to roll out better methods to block junk e-mail, but have not resolved long-standing differences over how much influence Microsoft will have over the final technology.
Microsoft's effort to convince the Internet Engineering Task Force to adopt its patented technology for e-mail authentication failed in September amid concerns it would cede too much control over the future of worldwide correspondence to one company. Since then, no progress has been made toward a resolution, engineers and lawyers said at a summit convened here by the Federal Trade Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Microsoft has expanded the scope of its intellectual property protection policy to cover customers using current and earlier versions of its software. The announcement, made late Tuesday evening, includes the Windows Server System, Microsoft Office System and the Windows client. Microsoft said it will cover the four forms of intellectual property disputes commonly associated with software: patent, copyright, trade secret and trademark disputes.
Microsoft is set to unleash its much-anticipated search technology on Thursday, as it ramps up efforts to take on market leader Google Inc. The new search engine will go live on the company's MSN Web site, a representative for the company said.
The software giant has made clear its plans to conquer the lucrative search market, teasing industry watchers with Web and desktop search previews. In June, Microsoft upgraded its MSN Search site and it has been posting new search technology prototypes at its testing site http://sandbox.msn.com. Meanwhile, company executives have stated their intentions to take Google to the mat.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan said it arrested a Meriden, Conn., man on charges of trying to sell Microsoft's Windows NT and 2000 source code after it was leaked onto the Internet earlier this year. Officials said they charged William Genovese, 27, with one count of unlawfully distributing a trade secret. His site, illmob.org, contains dozens of questionable code snippets, including software Trojans and other cracker tools.
If convicted, Genovese could, under the Economic Espionage Act, spend 10 years in prison and pay $250,000 in fines, though the complaint states Microsoft could get up to twice the gross loss resulting from the offense.
Microsoft said Tuesday that it has released a patch for its Virtual PC 7 emulation program to correct a problem that affected some Mac G5 customers with systems with more than 2GB of memory. Virtual PC allows Macs to run Windows through software emulation. The company also released an improved version of its Auto Update utility for the Mac, correcting an error that occurred in the French, Swedish and Spanish versions.
Microsoft shareholders on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved changes to the company's stock compensation programs, paving the way for the software maker to complete a one-time, $32 billion payout.
To get the $3-per-share dividend, shareholders were asked to make changes to ensure the payout doesn't hurt stock compensation programs for employees, directors and consultants. More than 94 percent of shareholders approved the two required measures.
It takes a special kind of person to stay up all night and stand in a line nearly 250 people long just to buy a video game -- but for rabid fans of the first "Halo" on the Xbox video game console, it was well worth the wait to buy the new "Halo 2." "It's just addicting," said Brady O'Connell, 22, a college student who joined hundreds of others late Monday night -- and early Tuesday morning -- at the L.A. pedestrian mall Universal CityWalk for the West Coast launch of the new "Halo."
Over the next three days, in eight languages and 27 countries, Microsoft will release its most important program of 2004 -- not a new version of Windows or Office, but the epic tale of super-soldier "Master Chief" defending the Earth from a mysterious alien force.
Microsoft's presence in the Seattle region is expanding to TV sets. Comcast Cable yesterday announced a plan to roll out Microsoft's software across its digital-cable system in Washington state. The deal means that local Comcast digital-cable customers will soon be using Microsoft's on-screen program guide and related features, rather than the TV Guide Interactive system currently in place.
It will be the first major U.S. deployment of Microsoft's special software for cable systems, the Microsoft TV Foundation Edition. In addition to providing an on-screen programming guide, the software is designed as an end-to-end system for cable companies.