While Google, Amazon and Salesforce have gotten the most attention as cloud service providers, Microsoft-with its 300 products and services delivered from its data centers-has a large cloud bank all its own.
The biggest challenge to the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership may not be Google the company as much as Google the habit.
After a year and a half of negotiating, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a search deal partnership this morning that will make Redmond's new search engine, Bing, Yahoo's search platform and put Yahoo's sales force in charge of handling both companies' search advertisers.
In the financial quarter that just ended, arguably one of its most important quarters ever, Microsoft had a chance to bounce back after an unprecedented year-over-year revenue drop last quarter.
Microsoft's profits are seriously down, and you don't have to be Warren Buffet to figure out why.
Outrage spread like wildfire across the Internet this week with criticism of Microsoft's alleged new upgrade process for Windows 7. People were concerned if they wanted to upgrade to Windows 7 they would be required to activate the current version of Windows they were using prior to upgrading.
Google says it is working on an operating system designed for netbooks that boots in seconds, is impervious to viruses, and is designed to run Web-based applications really well. What's not to like? Plenty--if you're the number one software maker, Microsoft. Expect a showdown. Google faces an uphill battle rolling out its operating system, Chrome OS. The irony is, Google may not care if Chrome OS succeeds or fails. Here's why.
Microsoft has sued a Hong Kong seller of mobile ringtones, saying the company used phishing techniques to flood Microsoft Live Messenger users with spam messages.
Microsoft has released more details of plans for Windows Azure, its operating environment for cloud-based provisioning of applications and computing resources.
Microsoft today <a href="http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsphone/default.aspx">announced</a> that its upcoming mobile software store, dubbed Windows Marketplace for Mobile, will being accepting submissions for mobile applications on July 27, with a target launch of fall 2009 for Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. Sample View of Windows Marketplace Business Center (Subject to Change)
In the future, computers will do more work automatically for people, rather than reacting to human input, Microsoft's head of research and strategy said on Monday.
It has taken Microsoft a long time to bring its flagship Office suite to the Web and now it finally has with Office 2010. The software suite comes packed with meaningful improvements such as new cut-and-paste features for Word and new ways to broadcast your PowerPoint presentations online. But the most striking addition to Office 2010 is the introduction of Office Web Apps. These are light-weight versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote that are all accessible via desktop, mobile devices, and Web browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.
Windows 7 pre-orders may be burning up the charts, but many users are apparently still reluctant to switch over to Microsoft's newest operating system. This is particularly true for businesses that are a little upgrade-wary after investing in Vista, while others are reluctant to give up on Redmond's classic XP system. Compounding the temptation not to switch was news earlier this year that Microsoft wasn't making life easy for XPers migrating to the new OS.
Microsoft is launching Windows 7, Google has fired back with Chrome OS, and today Microsoft is turning up the volume on Office 2010. That's a lot to juggle, and soon you'll be asking yourself: Can I afford to upgrade or can I afford not to upgrade?
The future may be the cloud, but it also may be Microsoft that ushers us into that realm of possibility and imagination. Today, Redmond unveiled as a part of Office 2010 a suite of Microsoft Office Web apps that will compete directly with Google Docs. While Microsoft isn't letting anyone play around with the apps just yet, on paper, Microsoft's Web apps look like they could blow Google's online services out of the water -- beta or no beta.