Microsoft plans to reject a recommendation by the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) that certain provisions in license agreements between it and Japanese PC vendors violate the country's antimonopoly code, Microsoft, the company's Japanese unit, said in a statement Monday.
The JFTC gave the software maker until Monday to either accept or reject its recommendation.
The rejection comes as no surprise. Microsoft said on July 13 that it disagreed with the JFTC's findings and planned to reject them. The JFTC also said the same day that it expected to receive a rejection from Microsoft around the deadline day.
The next step in Microsoft's efforts to delay or reverse anticompetition sanctions imposed by the European Union's (E.U.'s) executive branch comes on Tuesday in Luxembourg when officials from the software maker and the European Commission are set to attend an "informal meeting" with the president of the European Court of First Instance (CFI), Bo Vesterdorf.
The meeting, to which other "interested parties" have been invited, was called so that the practicalities and time table of Microsoft's application for a suspension can be discussed, according to a CFI spokesman.
Microsoft is peeling back the covers of its highly anticipated SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 database this week to reveal enhancements such as support for 64-bit x86 platforms, as well as improved security and management tools.
The Redmond, Wash., company will roll out SQL Server 2005 Beta 2, code-named Yukon, for download to about 300,000 MSDN Universal and Professional subscribers. Yukon Beta 2 includes support for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture and Intel's 32-bit chips with 64-bit extensions, said Microsoft officials.
Microsoft is in talks with five or six potential buyers for its online magazine Slate, an executive said Friday. Scott Moore, general manager of MSN Network Experience, which handles content for Microsoft's MSN division, said the company is in early discussions with several media companies over a potential sale.
Moore declined to identify the companies and cautioned that the deals might not come to fruition. "We're at the beginning of the process," he said.
Microsoft posted solid revenues and an 82 percent increase in quarterly earnings yesterday, helped by strong sales of its Office productivity software and another profitable quarter from its MSN division.
Also yesterday, the company reported fiscal 2004 revenue of $36.84 billion, an increase of $4.65 billion, or 14 percent, from its revenue the previous year. Microsoft's net income for the year was $8.17 billion, up from $7.53 billion last year.
A popular resource site for open source developers is preparing for a major contribution from Microsoft, internetnews.com has learned. SourceForge.net Director Pat McGovern said Microsoft is in discussions with OSDN (Open Source Development Network) and is planning on submitting an unidentified amount of software code. It would be Microsoft's third collaboration project with the subsidiary of VA Software. Previously, Microsoft donated parts of its Windows Installer Software and a C++ Template Library.
In another boost for the local economy, Microsoft yesterday said it would hire 6,000 to 7,000 employees worldwide during the coming year -- including 3,000 people in the Puget Sound region.
Although the Redmond company isn't growing as quickly as it did during the heyday of the technology boom, the new hiring projection shows that it plans to continue the steady expansion that gave the region a measure of stability during the economic slump.
Microsoft will soon put some bite into its Sender ID antispam plans by checking e-mail messages sent to its Hotmail, MSN and Microsoft.com mail accounts to see if they come from valid e-mail servers, as identified by the Sender ID, according to a company executive.
The company is strongly urging e-mail providers and Internet service providers (ISPs) to publish Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records that identify their e-mail servers in the domain name system (DNS) by mid-September. Microsoft will begin matching the source of inbound e-mail to the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of e-mail servers listed in that sending domain's SPF record by Oct. 1. Messages that fail the check will not be rejected, but will be further scrutinized and filtered, said Craig Spiezle, director of Microsoft's Safety Technology and Strategy Group.
Microsoft on Thursday reported a 15 percent rise in revenue to $9.29 billion for the last quarter of its fiscal year, which ended June 30, compared with the same quarter a year ago. But the company again failed to match the new record it posted in the last quarter of 2003, where quarterly revenue rose 19 percent to breach the $10 billion mark.
Operating income for the quarter under review came in at $3.13 billion, including a pretax, stock-based compensation expense of $739 million. This was more than double the $1.54 billion posted in the last quarter of the previous fiscal year, but included a pretax, stock-based compensation expense of $665 million and pretax charges of $796 million, primarily related to the settlement of the AOL-Time Warner lawsuit.
Microsoft's decision to distribute a substantial portion of its cash hoard back to shareholders signals that the company is unlikely to make any big acquisitions in the near future.
While other big corporations have gobbled up other companies to spur growth, Microsoft has largely chosen a different path: relying on its own large stable of bright minds and mostly making smaller purchases to complement its own offerings.
As Microsoft searches for new revenue to keep profits growing, analysts expect the company to continue to rely on its in-house talent over its fat pocketbook.