WinInsider

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates touted advances in development tools, Web services and other technologies Thursday during a speech to top business executives. Gates opened Microsoft's CEO Summit, a two-day gathering of more than 100 international business leaders, with a talk that showcased recent product introductions and gave sneak peeks at a few upcoming releases, wrapped around themes of boosting productivity and lowering business costs.

Forbes magazine puts a dollar figure on the Seattle, Washington-area native's net worth -- $46.6 billion in 2003 -- and crowned him the world's richest person for the seventh year in a row.

His company, Microsoft, reports that it raked in $32.19 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending in June 2003, ranking it among Fortune's top 50 largest U.S.-based corporations.

And by donating $600 million a year and creating a charitable foundation with a $26 billion endowment, Gates is the world's largest private giver, according to The Washington Post.

Microsoft execs say the company is working to polish its lackluster image with software partners as it increasingly views everything from its Office productivity suite to its business applications as a platform.

At a Wednesday session here at the Software & Information Industry Association of America's Enterprise Software Summit 2004, Charles Fitzgerald, the general manager of Microsoft Corp.'s platform strategy and partner group, was asked about the company's often shaky relationships with others in the software industry. He responded that the Redmond, Wash., company has made headway in reaching out to the industry.

Microsoft, renowned for its industry-leading employee benefits, plans to scale back in some areas as part of a broader effort to cut costs and improve its profit margin even as revenue growth slows.

Don't worry, the soft drinks in the break rooms are still free.

But the company yesterday said it will reduce the discount employees receive when they buy Microsoft stock, shrink the window in which they can take their four weeks of paid parental leave, require a co-payment when they choose brand-name prescription drugs over approved generic equivalents and trim the vacation time received by new hires.

Microsoft said Wednesday that some volume licensing customers will soon be able to store their software at no charge on an additional server used solely in the event of a disaster.

The software maker said that starting June 1, businesses in its Software Assurance program will be able to make a duplicate copy for each server software product they license.

There are two major caveats, however. The software must be stored on a "cold" server, that is, one turned off until a disaster occurs. Also, the rights to store the extra copy are good only as long as a Software Assurance agreement is in place.

Microsoft on Wednesday said it plans to submit a proposal to make its antispam technology a standard, becoming the latest Internet giant to seek industry approval for adoption of its technique.

The technology, called "Caller ID," is an Internet Protocol-based method to ensure the sender's return e-mail address is authentic. Many spammers have used a method called "spoofing" that makes their return addresses appear legitimate to the recipient's spam filters. Oftentimes people open unwanted spam thinking it originated from a contact, which could lead to the further dissemination of viruses and user annoyance.

Answering the long-asked question of whether Microsoft will testify in the U.S. Department of Justice's much ballyhooed case against Oracle, the Justice Department released Tuesday night its witness list, and it included the software giant.

The Justice Department will call Microsoft to the witness stand to support its claim that Oracle's proposed-and hostile-takeover bid of PeopleSoft Inc. is bad for competition in the upper echelons of the ERP (enterprise resource planning) software industry. The DOJ has defined competition in the upper echelons of the ERP software industry as between Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP AG.

While Microsoft has been beating the Longhorn drum at recent events, at Tech Ed next week the vendor will concentrate on current and soon-to-be-launched products, and will have little to say about the next major Windows release expected in 2006.

Microsoft is shifting the focus back to the here and now at its Tech Ed event in San Diego, in contrast to its Longhorn-themed Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles last year and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle earlier this month, which also had plenty of sessions on Longhorn.

Edging closer to a direct confrontation with Microsoft, Web search engine Google is preparing to introduce a powerful file-and-text software search tool for locating information stored on personal computers.

Google's software, which is expected to be introduced soon, according to several people with knowledge of the company's plans, is the clearest indication to date that the company, based in Mountain View, Calif., hopes to extend its search business to compete directly with Microsoft's control of desktop computing.

Bulked up by a recent arrest in the Sasser worm case, Microsoft is confident that the creators of the infamous MyDoom and Blaster worms will be brought to justice. On Tuesday, Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Nancy Anderson said the software giant's $5 million reward program is beginning to pay off--and future arrests are likely.

Anderson said Microsoft provided technical assistance to the FBI, Secret Service and German authorities that led to the arrest on Saturday of the teenager believed to be responsible for creating both the Sasser and Netsky worms that infected millions of PCs. Information leading to the arrest resulted in part from Microsoft's antivirus reward program.