January 7th, 2009

Microsoft at CES: Zune Mobile, no; Win 7 Beta 1, yes

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:42 pm

Categories: CES 2009, Corporate strategy, Facebook, Research, Search, Windows 7, Windows Live, Windows Mobile, Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server"), Windows client, Windows server, Xbox, Zune

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Mobile, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Zune, Microsoft Corp., Beta, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Advertising & Promotion, Software

Microsoft’s rumored Zune Mobile platform was a no-show during CEO Steve Ballmer’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote on January 7. In fact — somewhat surprisingly –  Windows Mobile got next-to-no minutes of fame during Ballmer’s  one-hour-plus worth of consumer-product highlights.

Instead, Microsoft focused on Windows 7. As expected, Ballmer told attendees of the Las Vegas convention that private beta testers could begin downloading Windows 7 Beta bits this evening. The fact Microsoft is labeling this build “beta” and not “beta 1″ is further proof that there will be only one Windows 7 Beta, rather than the two (or sometimes more) that the Windows team has typically fielded in the past.

Any member of the public who is so inclined will be able to download the Windows 7 Beta bits on Friday, January 9, Ballmer said. The bits will be downloadable via http://www.microsoft.com/windows7.

Microsoft also is making Windows Server 2008 R2 (a k a Windows 7 Server) available to testers on January 8.

As to what comes after the Windows 7 Beta, Ballmer shared no new information about when to expect the Release Candidate or final RTM code.

Also as expected, Microsoft announced a new bundling deal with Dell, via which Dell will offer Live Search as the default search engine “on a majority of its new consumer and small-business PCs globally.” Dell also committed to preload Windows Live Essentials, Microsoft’s consumer software/services bundle, on these same PCs.

Ballmer also took the covers off a new five-year deal with Verizon Wireless, whereby U.S. subscribers “will be able to use Live Search to search for local business and shopping information; access maps and directions; perform general Internet searches; and find ring tones, games, wallpaper and other online mobile products and services.”

Facebook and Microsoft also have inked a pact via which Facebook users can share their content and photos with Windows Live.

Other CES announcements from Microsoft:

* Microsoft has renamed its “Boku” video-game development environment for kids as “Kodu.” Kodu becomes an Xbox Live Community Game to be launched this spring.

* Microsoft and Netflix later this month will offer software that will allow Windows Mobile customers to update and view their Netflix movie queue.

* Microsoft is productizing its Songsmith music-making technology that came out of Microsoft Research. (I’m not sure sure if this is the product I heard about years ago that was codenamed “Monaco” and described to me as Microsoft’s GarageBand competitor.)

For those who’ve been following the months of pre-CES rumors, there wasn’t much new announced tonight. And for folks who’ve been dabbling with earlier test builds and/or torrented builds  of Windows 7, there wasn’t a whole lot new in Ballmer’s keynote demos, either.

If you watched locally or remotely, what was your take? Did Ballmer’s keynote fall as relatively flat as Phil Schiller’s MacWorld one yesterday?

October 7th, 2008

Microsoft Live Search now embedded in Facebook

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:53 pm

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Facebook, Search

Tags: Facebook, Microsoft Live Search, Microsoft Corp., Redmond Pie Site, Internet, Search, Mary Jo Foley

When Microsoft announced it had struck a deal with Facebook to integrate its Live Search technology into the Facebook platform, the Redmondians were reluctant to share details.

But as of today, October 7, Live Search  is now part of Facebook.

The Redmond Pie site has more on how the Live Search-Facebook integration works.

As News.com notes, it’s not clear how or even whether searches done from inside Facebook will grow Microsoft’s overall query share, as these are Intranet, rather than Internet, searches.

I’ve asked Microsoft for more information. No response yet.

Update: There is a bit more info on the Live Search blog — with Microsoft promising it will have “more to share on this (Live Search-Facebook) partnership in the weeks to come” — which I found thanks to a link on LiveSide.Net.

June 11th, 2008

Microsoft to show off a corporate Facebook-like prototype

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:04 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Facebook, Office, Research, Web 2.0

Tags: Facebook, Microsoft Corp., Office Labs, Microsoft Office, Productivity, Podcasts, Office Suites, Software, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Office Labs –  an incubator within Microsoft testing business-focused technologies that may or may not end up part of future Microsoft products — is showing off this week yet another of its ideas.

The latest, known as “TownSquare,” is a business-user-focused social-networking tool. According to Computerworld, Microsoft will demo the new offering at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston on June 12.

TownSquare, via a layout similar to Facebook’s, provides internal company information, ranging from promotions and anniversaries, to a list of shared-document modifications pertinent to individual users.

TownSquare was launched inside Microsoft in January, according to the aforementioned report, and has been test driven by 8,000 Microsoft employees so far.

Microsoft has been stepping up its work on a number of other social-networking-related projects throughout the company. At its TechFest research fair earlier this year, Microsoft officials showed off a FriendFeed-like aggregation tool, codenamed C2, which is likely to find its way into Windows Live for Mobile some time in the relatively near future. And earlier this week, Microsoft rolled out a test build of a SharePoint Server plug-in for producing/managing podcasts.

Office Labs is working on other new projects in conjunction with different teams at the company. An example: TaskMarket, an online services marketplace aimed at small businesses, which Office Labs is developing in conjunction with Microsoft Research Asia. TaskMarket focuses on tasks created using Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

May 8th, 2008

Data Portability: The Microsoft angle

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:42 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Development tools, Facebook, Web 2.0, Yahoo

Tags: Microsoft Corp., MySpace, Microsoft Windows, Advertising & Promotion, Strategy, Operating Systems, Software, Marketing, Management, Mary Jo Foley

MySpace unveiled on May 8 yet another industry initiative to allow users and developers to share their social-networking data — a goal Microsoft also has in its sights.

The first partners announcing their participation in MySpace’s Data Portability initiative include Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket (also owned by News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media) and Twitter. I didn’t see mentions in any of the Data Portability coverage I saw as to when/whether Microsoft might play here, too.

So here are the answers to those questions: Microsoft demonstrated in March at its TechFest Research fair a project codenamed C2. Microsoft’s C2  is a social-aggregation toolkit that can work across desktop, mobile and Web clients. It aggregates data, including friends, call history, photos, contacts and the like — from Windows Live Spaces, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, users’ email and other sources.

Although it is technically still a research project, C2 was set to begin internal testing at Microsoft in April. A couple of different Microsoft product teams, including the Windows Live for Mobile one, had expressed interest in incorporating C2 into future releases of their services.

May 7th, 2008

Microsoft going it alone? Not exactly

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:10 pm

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Facebook, Google, Utility/cloud computing, Web 2.0, Windows Live, Yahoo

Tags: Facebook, Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp., Mergers & Acquisitions, Corporate Law, Investment, Finance, Business Operations, Mary Jo Foley

Trying to parse Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ every utterance in search of clues about what Microsoft is doing next is a dangeous game. (Remember the recent Windows 7 date confusion spurred by a recent Gates’ utterance?)

On May 6, headlines across the Web declared that Gates told reporters in Tokyo this week that now that post the abortive Yahoo acquisition, Microsoft plans to go it alone, without any other online services/online advertising acquisitions or partnerships. The problem? That’s not what Gates said, according to company officials.

Microsoft officials just forwarded me the exact wording of the exchange between Gates and reporters:

Question (Noriaki Tomisaka, ANB): We heard in your speech that Microsoft will go individually regarding the Yahoo!. Since this merger didn’t work out, your goal is to chase the Google by your own accord. Does that affect
your strategy from now?

Answer (Bill Gates): Well, Google in many countries has a very high share of search market. We think that there are innovations that will take place in search. We are (the) company with the commitment to breakthrough software technology that can provide some competition. We really make sure that state of the art does get advanced and advertisers have good choices in terms of what they are doing with their interactive advertising. We will have a conference coming up, I think, in next month in Seattle called the “Advance”. We will start to show you the next version of the search. Some of the things are very excited about with that. In courses, we make these advances when we invest in marketing to get word out there so that people try out our product. Fortunately, the search is very easy to type-in new your keywords and try out different product, we will give people that opportunity as we make the advances that will give people great choice there.

If Microsoft isn’t insisting on being the lone cowboy, is it true that the company is in new talks with FaceBook about acquiring that company?

I received no answer from Microsoft on that one.

But if you thought a Microsoft-Yahoo tie-up didn’t make a whole lot of sense, a Microsoft-Facebook one would make even less, I’d argue. What would Microsoft get from buying a social-networking site? Microsoft already has a $240 million investment in Facebook, as well as an ad-outsourcing deal with the company, so it wouldn’t be another case of more online ad inventory (as Microsoft execs argued when they were hot to buy Yahoo). And Live Mesh already has its own Facebook-like news feed, so Microsoft can’t argue that it is looking to Facebook to help it figure out how to integrate social-networking into its wares….

With whom will Microsoft partner and/or who will they (try to) buy next to strengthen the company’s online systems/advertising business? I’m not sure, but I don’t think Facebook is the answer. You?

April 9th, 2008

Yahoo's strategy: Torpedo the Microsoft deal or up the offer?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:34 pm

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Facebook, Google, Windows Live, Windows Mobile, Yahoo

Tags: Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., Telephony, Search, Mergers & Acquisitions, Marketing Research, Strategy, Networking, Investment, Finance

There are two ways to look at Yahoo’s latest move in the Microsoft-Yahoo chess game: Yahoo is either trying to torpedo the deal or trying to force Microsoft to rush into it by upping its offer.

Yahoo announced on April 9 “that it will begin a limited test of Google Inc.’s AdSense for Search service, which will deliver relevant Google ads alongside Yahoo!’s own search results. The test will apply only to traffic from yahoo.com in the U.S. and will not include Yahoo!’s extended network of affiliate or premium publisher partners. The test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than 3% of Yahoo! search queries.”

Update: Microsoft’s response to Yahoo’s latest plan, courtesy of Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith:

“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.”

I’m really feeling the love! Microsoft and Yahoo sure are going to make great allies, if Microsoft’s deal ever is consummated…Not.

Since Microsoft announced its bid for Yahoo in late January, Yahoo has done as much as possible to make itself an unattractive marriage partner. It layed off a bunch of employees, including some seemingly desirable developers. It gave those remaining very generous golden parachutes. It announced that it was backing more “open” protocols and interfaces in building out its search ecosystem. (More specifics on that one still to come, but I’d bet open-source licensing will be key here) . It joined OpenSocial, a Google-backed alliance to fight Facebook, a Microsoft partner.

This week, Yahoo announced it was buying a Web analytics company (Microsoft is building out its adCenter analytics, a k a “Gatineau,” software). Last week, Yahoo bought a stake in Vlingo, a company that provides voice recognition for mobile phones (Microsoft bought TellMe a couple of years ago to provide the same exact service.)

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said earlier this week he isn’t opposed to an acquisition by Microsoft — if Microsoft ups its offer. But Yang also has made no bones about the fact that he is vehemently against Microsoft taking over Yahoo.

So what’s really going on here?

[Poll=20]

I still think Microsoft should take all these Yahoo moves as a sign that its initial plan to buy Yahoo was a bad one, and walk away. I wonder would happen to Yahoo, at this point, if Microsoft did withdraw its offer to buy the company… I doubt it would be a positive outcome. And I bet Google would be thanking Microsoft (privately) for weakening the only search rival it currently has.

Your two cents?

March 25th, 2008

More battle lines are drawn: Yahoo backs Google's OpenSocial

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:09 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Facebook, Google, Web 2.0, Windows Live, Yahoo

Tags: Yahoo! Inc., Google OpenSocial, Strategy, Business Structures, Management, Finance, Mary Jo Foley

On the same day Microsoft announced new interoperability deals with five social-networking sites, Yahoo announced it has joined the Google-backed OpenSocial social-networking intiative.

Yahoo announced on March 25 that not only had it joined the OpenSocial group, but that — along with MySpace and Google — Yahoo also would create the not-for-profit OpenSocial Foundation “to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the Web.”

When Google and a group of launch partners announced late last year their plans to create a set of open social-networking application-programming interfaces (APIs), the move was viewed by industry observers as a counter to Facebook’s decision to make its development platform more open to developers.

Not too surprisingly, Microsoft was not and still is not an OpenSocial backer. (Nor is Facebook, in which Microsoft invested $240 million last year.) But a couple of the social-networking vendors who signed contact-sharing deals with Microsoft that were announced on March 25 — specifically, Hi5 and LinkedIn — are OpenSocial backers.

Yahoo is making a lot of”open” strategy moves, as of late, that probably aren’t sitting too well with suitor Microsoft. Yahoo’s backing of the Google-centric OpenSocial initiative is one more.

March 25th, 2008

Microsoft signs contact-sharing deals with five social-networking sites

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:15 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Facebook, Google, Research, Windows Live, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Windows Live, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft has signed five separate agreements with five social-networking leaders via which each will allow its users to share contact data with Microsoft in a more secure way.

In a blog post on March 25 to the Microsoft Windows Live Developer site, John Richards, Director of the Windows Live Platform explained the new agreements. Microsoft has signed contact-sharing agreements with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn. Contact sharing between Windows Live and Facebook and Windows Live and Bebo kicks in today; the other three will take effect in the coming months.

While Richards described the new alliances as being about data portability, the new deals have nothing to do with Microsoft’s participation in the Dataportability.Org group. They also don’t have a whole lot to do with data portability beyond contact sharing. The Microsoft Research C2 technology, which sounds like it will be part of a future release of the Windows Live for Mobile client, is more focused on sharing data beyond just names and e-mail addresses; C2 also allows for sharing of photos and other social-networking data.

As part of Microsoft’s new contact-sharing arrangements, Microsoft has created a new service, www.invite2messenger.net, to allow Windows Live users to invite their friends using other social-networking sites to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

March 24th, 2008

C2: Microsoft's take on FriendFeed?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:16 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Facebook, Google, Office Live, Research, SharePoint Server, Web 2.0, Windows Live, Windows Mobile

Tags: Team, Researcher, Microsoft Windows Live, Microsoft Corp., C2, C2 Data, Microsoft Windows, Team Management, Operating Systems, Software

Microsoft isn’t usually the first (or second or third) company that folks associate with social networking. But maybe the Redmondians, or at least the researchers on the Microsoft Research C2 team, aren’t as unsociable as some assume.

Microsoft showed off earlier this month at its TechFest research fair a handful of new social-computing projects. One of these, codenamed “C2,” shares some similarities with the FriendFeed social-network-data aggregation service — and seemingly is on the fast track to become part of Microsoft’s Windows Live client for mobile devices.

C2 was named for “Circle 2,” a company that a couple of Softies were planning to start after they quit Microsoft. Instead of leaving, the researchers ended up defecting from the Windows desktop search team — the old “Casino” group — to Microsoft Research’s social computing team.

Microsoft researcher Steve Ickman described C2 — which Microsoft Research launched in November 2007 — as a “social-aggregation toolkit.” It is designed to work across desktop, mobile and Web clients. C2 aggregates data — friends, call history and more — from Windows Live Spaces, FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr, users’ email and other sources.

Ickman said he’d found a way to scrape and synthesize this data using identity-matching algoritms in a way that didn’t run afoul of the terms of service of these various sites. The C2 data is currently weighted heavily toward a user’s Live Contacts, but also picks up profile information from non-Microsoft sites, Ickman explained.

Microsoft is set to begin trials within the company of C2 in April, Ickman said. On a banner in the C2 booth at the TechFest product fair, I noticed that the researchers were advertising that C2 would “ship with product teams,” specifically “Catalyst” and WMT (Windows Media Toolkit, I’m guessing). When I asked Ickman what C2 was, he said he couldn’t comment. But after asking around, I found out “Catalyst” is the codename for “Windows Live for Mobile,” the set of Windows Live services that run on Windows Mobile smartphones.

(Microsoft Research technologies tend to find their way into commercial products this way: The research teams show off their developments at TechFest fairs and other meetings to Microsoft’s product groups. If and when the product teams bite, the research projects begin winding their way along the commercialization track.)

Microsoft’s social-computing group showed off a couple of other social-networking research projects at TechFest, too, including a plug-in for Outlook, codenamed “Salsa,” that would combine public and private feed information with e-mail to put more of a human face on contact data; and an internal Wiki, known as “Micropedia,” that currently catalogs all the people and projects at Microsoft. (Wouldn’t that be a Microsoft watcher’s goldmine!)

There aren’t any external links on Microsoft’s C2 that I could find to shed more light on how and when this research technology could find its way into the broader marketplace.  But stay tuned.

Meanwhile, do you think Microsoft consumer customers would be interested in social-networking wares from the company? What about Microsoft’s business users?

January 10th, 2008

Another of the Microsoft old guard moves on

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:06 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Facebook, Google, Linux, Web 2.0

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Mergers & Acquisitions, Blogging, Programming Languages, Java, Investment, Finance, Internet, Software Development, Software/Web Development

While the the Microsoft depature upon which most company watchers focused this week was that of Bruce Jaffe — the former Mergers & Acquisitions Chief — another Microsoft veteran is moving on, as well.

Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft’s General Manager of Platform Strategy, is leaving the company to join a startup.

Fitzgerald was Microsoft’s primary spokesperson for Microsoft Java back in 1996. Ever since, he’s been helping Microsoft position itself against its enterprise competitors. On Fitzgerald’s Platformonomics blog, he skewered regularly IBM, Sun, Oracle, Google and other Microsoft competitors.

Most recently, Fitzgerald was focused on explaining Microsoft’s Software+Services strategy to the press and analyst masses. While he was mostly a behind-the-scenes strategist, Microsoft trotted out Fitzgerald whenever the company needed to justify a new strategy/product plan or set the big-picture scene for company critics.

Microsoft officials confirmed that Fitzgerald will be leaving Microsoft “shortly” and declined to name the startup he will be joining. I e-mailed Fitzgerald, asking him about his decision to leave Microsoft. If and when he responds (not holding my breath here), I’ll add his comments.