Steven Sinofsky is supposed to be very good at his job, and we're sure his promotion wasn't made in response to Google's operating system-related announcement. But in a move that speaks to Microsoft's confidence in Windows 7, Sinofsky, who contributed to the project, has been made president of the Windows Division.
Google has announced that it is working on an operating system based on Google Chrome (their browser). The company says the project is an attempt to "re-think what operating systems should be."
The OS-in-progress is simply called Google Chrome OS, it is open source, and it will initially be aimed at netbooks. The announcement came on the same day that Google dropped the "beta" tag from Google Apps.
Maybe Microsoft won't get fined a gazillion dollars by the European Union, after all. The software giant is supposedly making an attempt to settle two antitrust probes, and according to the same report, even has a firm cut-off date in mind.
Google and Bing have both talked about site architecture issues lately on their blogs. Site architecture is an important part of search engine optimization, and crucial to ranking.
"You can have great content and a plethora of high quality inbound links from authority sites, but if your site’s structure is flawed or broken, then it will still not achieve the optimal page rank you desire from search engines," says Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center.
When Microsoft acquired aQuantive in 2007, it wanted to bolster its ad network. Unfortunately, it also ended-up with a conflict of interest, as aQuantive came with Avenue A | Razorfish–an ad agency.
It seems that Microsoft’s taking three steps forward and one step back, with its hiring of other companies’ employees. It just lost Hugh Williams to eBay.
With regards to data centers, it looks like Microsoft's moving full speed ahead. The company has announced that it will open not one, but two "mega" data centers in July, and some of the technical specs are rather astounding.
Even though Microsoft's Outlook is viewed as the standard email client, it has some problems. Specifically, Outlook doesn't render HTML correctly, which drives designers insane.
So what is Microsoft doing about the problem for the upcoming release of Outlook 2010? One word, nothing. Sigh, you're killing us Bill.
Shortly after Microsoft unleashed it's monstrous campaign for Bing, they're unveiling yet another campaign - this one for Internet Explorer 8.
The IE8 campaign features commercials starring actor, and former Superman, Dean Cain as public service announcer.
First off: yes, at this point, we're all ready to slap Steve Ballmer and Carol Bartz with a fish every time they talk about a partnership or acquisition. Just the same, millions of dollars are at stake, so it seems important to acknowledge that Ballmer's once again said he's open to a deal.