It didn't take very long - less than a week - for Microsoft's Bing to surpass Yahoo Inc. to become the number two search engine in the U.S. and worldwide.
A report today from StatCounter Global Stats, which analyzes Web site traffic, also shows that Bing grabbed some market share from rival Google Inc. StatCounter analyzed search engine use on Thursday and found that while Google still dominates the U.S. search engine market with a 71.47% share, Bing grabbed 16.28% and Yahoo came in third with 10.22%.
A leaked memo from Best Buy claims that the retail chain will pre-sell Windows 7 upgrades for as little as $49.99 starting June 26, a technology enthusiast site reported today.
On Friday morning, Engadget posted an image of what it said was an internal Best Buy memo that outlined the company's plans for Windows 7, which Microsoft has announced will go on sale starting on Oct. 22.
The memo, which dubbed Windows 7 as more than just a "Vista that works" operating system, said that Best Buy would kick off pre-sales of Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional for $49.99 and $99.99, respectively, beginning June 26. The promotional prices will be good through July 11, the memo added.
The Toolkit includes emulator images, new touch and gesture APIs, and code samples for developing software for Windows Mobile 6.5. The team is most excited about widget development, and in its blog today provides a step-by-step guide for widget creation (essentially "write the code, package it, run it.")
With the emulator images provided in the Toolkit, developer and consultant Nikita Polyakov has provided the first review of Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard (a.k.a. the non-touch version) which is expected to be available as an upgrade on the Samsung Jack. In these emulated images, Bing Mobile is the default search, and there is a desktop app leading to the Windows Mobile Marketplace, which still leads to a placeholding site.
Microsoft Office is still the most prevalent productivity suite among enterprise customers, but 2010 could see more adoption of competitive suites as companies ponder their next investments in this area, according to a new report by Forrester Research.
Eighty percent of enterprise customers are still using some version of Microsoft Office for worker productivity and collaboration, with only 8 percent using alternatives, which include Sun StarOffice, Google Premier Apps, Lotus Symphony and Zoho, according to the report by Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish. The report polled 152 IT decision makers."Basically, the bottom line is Microsoft Office is really quite entrenched in the global large business organization today," she said in an interview Thursday.
Microsoft almost always toots its own horn when it has a successful product or service. For those products and services that don't achieve their goals, though, Microsoft often has a quiet demise on tap, according to a new study released this week.
One point that jumps out of the report, which was written by Matt Rosoff, vice president of consumer products and corporate news at Directions on Microsoft, is that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has eliminated, phased out, spun off, outsourced, or sold off more than a dozen products and services just since October. The report is titled "How Microsoft Phases Out Products."
Microsoft said on Wednesday that its latest server product, Windows Server 2008 R2, will be broadly available on Oct. 22, the same day as Windows 7.
The confirmation came from Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft's original equipment manufacturer division corporate vice president, during a keynote speech at the Computex electronics exhibition in Taipei. Microsoft has said the server product was on schedule for release around the same time as Windows 7.
Three years ago, there was some talk about whether Microsoft would help define the small, portable device category by making a version of Windows for it. That's when we learned that devices at that level will not -- perhaps ever -- be defined by their operating systems. When Microsoft started marketing a concept called "Origami" by answering consumers' questions with a question, "What Am I?" customers in large numbers resoundingly responded, "We don't care." Now, there's yet another new class of small devices supposedly in the works, and reporters this morning are asking, will it be defined by a new version of Windows? Time once again to wake up and smell the history.
Microsoft will ship Windows 7 to customers worldwide on Oct. 22, the company said Tuesday.
At the same time the company will offer an upgrade service called the Windows Upgrade Option to current Windows users, Microsoft said. More details about that program will be revealed during a keynote by Microsoft Corporate Vice President Steve Guggenheimer at Computex in Taipei Wednesday. The Windows Blog also discussed it today.
Microsoft previously said it would release both the consumer and business versions of Windows 7 in time for the year-end holiday shopping season. A release candidate of the OS already has been distributed through Microsoft's update service and has gotten generally positive reviews by users.
A patent-holding company has sued Microsoft for patent infringement for technology used in dynamic Web pages.Parallel Networks filed suit late last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over two patents, United States Patent Nos. 5,894,554 and 6,415,335 B1.
The company was granted the patents in 1999 and 2002, respectively, according to the court filing.The patents cover systems and methods for managing dynamic Web-page generation requests. Parallel said it believes Microsoft is willfully infringing on them and is demanding a jury trial. Parallel, in Tyler, Texas, was formed originally in the 1990s as InfoSpinner to provide software to make Web sites run faster.
Microsoft has purchased software from Merck & Co. to make its Amalga data-aggregation and management software more useful to life sciences and pharmaceutical researchers, the company said Monday.
Microsoft has signed an agreement to buy the assets of Rosetta Biosoftware, a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck. The move will allow it to add features to its Amalga Life Sciences software for managing genetic, genomic, metabolomic and proteonics research data.