microsoft
Microsoft plans to limit Linux on low-cost PCs - Microsoft plans to offer PC makers steep discounts on Windows XP Home Edition to encourage them to use that OS instead of Linux on ultra low-cost PCs (ULPCs), reports ComputerWorld. To be eligible, however, the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs. The programme is outlined in confidential documents that Microsoft sent to PC makers last month, and which were obtained by IDG News Service. [ComputerWorld] [tectonic]
It only took them a year longer than it should have, but Microsoft has finally relented and approved the use of Windows Vista Basic and Premium Edition in virtualized environments, for both "consumers" and business users. Among other things, the change means that Mac and Linux users can now run Windows Vista in a VM without having to pay for the more expensive Business or Ultimate editions. This is a boon to anyone who needs virtualized environments for testing and development.
"For consumers, Windows Vista Home Basic and Windows Vista Home Premium are now licensed for use in a virtual machine environment," the company said in a statement. An updated end-user license agreement will be posted later at this location.
The move isn't a total surprise, even if it is months late. The company came very close to repealing its ban last summer, only to inexplicably pull the plug at the last minute. On the record, Microsoft said that the ban stemmed from their view that virtualization "is not yet mature enough from a security perspective for broad consumer adoption." To be frank, we never bought this excuse, because you could get the "maturity" needed to virtualize Vista for the $60+ premium that Business costs over and against Home Premium.
That debate is history now. The announcement kicks off Microsoft's Virtualization Deployment Summit, which begins in earnest tomorrow. The company is also expected to tout several other developments for business virtualization over the two-day summit, including the acquisition of Calista Technologies and an expanded partnership with Citrix.
Microsoft is beating the virtualization drum hard, gearing up for what will likely be a protracted war with the perceived industry leader, VMWare. Microsoft's message is going to be ease-of-use and cost. Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, said in a statement that Microsoft estimates that "less than 5 percent of companies are utilizing virtualization technology because it is simply too cost-prohibitive and complex." Microsoft argues that it has the most "economical" approach to virtualization from desktop to datacenter, and lowering the cost barrier on the client certainly helps. Still, while great news for users who want to virtualize Vista legally, and on the cheap, it's still an open question when businesses will begin migrating to Vista in force, and if any of that migration will feature significant virtualization on the client end.
Cupertino, please start your copiers, please?!
Anytime I write about Microsoft and virtualization, someone e-mails me to remind me that Apple doesn't allow the virtualization of its client OS, which would seem to make Microsoft a "thought leader" according to some of you. Others wonder if/when Cupertino would ever allow it.
It's true that Apple doesn't allow client virtualization, and I think I speak for just about everyone when I say that no one believes it's likely to happen soon. Apple doesn't even allow its customers the legal right to run its client OS on non-Apple computers, so virtualization is out of the question.
Apple, unlike Microsoft, is in the PC-selling business, and unlike Microsoft, Apple uses a set of technological access controls to prevent its OS from running on unauthorized hardware. Why? Apple doesn't want you, me, and every other reader of this site to do what they know we'd do: run out and build our own "Macs." If you want OS X, Apple wants you to buy a Mac, period. With the company's notorious focus on control and design, we don't see this changing any time soon.
Netscape is no more, R.I.P - As of February 1, 2008 Netscape Navigator will no longer be; no more support will be available for Netscape Navigator and no new releases of the browser will become available. While most of us no longer use Netscape Navigator it is still a sad day that reminds of how an innovative company and project fell [...] [tectonic]
Software Firms Will Also Move to the Center in 2008 - When the U.S. presidential primaries wrap up, the winning candidates — after spending months kowtowing to the extremists in their parties — will make a mad dash to the center. A similar rush to the center is now taking place in software, and in 2008, we expect that trend to continue. But in the case of software, the center doesn’t lie between the extremes of conservatism and liberalism but rather between those of proprietary and open.
In the past, some software companies, like Microsoft, have taken a mainly proprietary approach while other outfits, such as the Free Software Foundation, have taken an entirely open approach. But the software primaries are over. The best approach now is somewhere in the middle: a combination of open and closed, or what, in The 7 Cs of the Future of Software, I called “clopen” — though I’m very open to other suggestions.
One manifestation of the momentum towards the middle is hybrid source, in which companies offer open-source and premium, proprietary versions of software. Under pressure from open-source alternatives, software companies need to find a new strategy, one that combines the concepts of free and open with revenue generation.
RedMonk analyst Steve O’Grady notes that hybrid source “is generally applied to projects or products that combine open and closed source software to produce an asset containing both.” O’Grady was prompted to tackle the question of hybrid source after MySQL, which had in the past provided all of their source code without charge, announced a commercial edition of their database design tool, Workbench.
But hybrid source is not the only result of moving to the center between the extremes of proprietary and open. Google exemplifies another strategy: offering free services based on proprietary algorithms based on open-source operating systems. And they’ve made this multi-layered concoction of open and closed work like magic.
Microsoft, like a political candidate who’s won a primary, is not immune to the need to move to the center. As David Strom reports in Baseline Magazine, recently the company “has become slightly more open with respect to its networking protocols. Late last year, they announced a way for third parties to license their core file-sharing protocols through an independent organization called the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation.”
Adobe is perhaps the most obvious example of the need for companies built on closed, proprietary software business models to move to the middle. Their open sourcing of the ECMAScript engine and the Flex SDK shows their considered steps towards a clopen future.
Finding the right balance between the two extremes will be the secret to the success for software companies in 2008 — just like the winning U.S. presidential candidate will be the one who finds the right balance point between the right and the left.
[gigaOM]
Microsoft (MSFT) has invested $240 million in Facebook at a valuation of $15 billion and gets the rights to sell third-party ads on the Facebook network. That’s about 2 percent stake. Not as crazy as the $900 million that MySpace (NWS) pried out of Google (GOOG), but still pretty steep. I thought the deal was for $500 million, so I am guessing there is another shoe to drop here. (Looks like Microsoft is going to be to Facebook what Yahoo was for Google… transition strategy!)
Today Facebook also launched an application for BlackBerry, and got RIM and T-Mobile USA on stage with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz to announce it today. Facebook already has an iPhone app that early adopters everywhere love to brag about. Moskowitz also announced the Facebook platform was expanding to all web-enabled phones, with apps appearing on mobile Facebook profiles and getting access to SMS to communicate with users.
Press call live blogging below the fold:
- The call was supposed to start at 2 pm, its already 2.04. Bad muzak playing!
- Mark Zuckerberg , if you want to play Steve Jobs, learn to be punctual like Steve.
- Maybe they are getting their stories right, and haven’t figured out how to put the obscene finger gesture to Google in polite/politically correct language.
- 2.10 pm, and still terrible music and no sign of anyone.
- 2.12 pm: It’s on. Vivek Verma and Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft, are on the call. Brandee Barker (spokesperson) and Owen Van Natta, vice president of operations and chief revenue officer at Facebook. are on the call.
- Mark is beyond all these PR things ;-) He got peeps it seems who are handling this!
- There is an error in the press release, and will be reissued.
- Owen is speaking. He is saying stuff which could be spoken by any executive on any conference call.
- Kevin - major win for Microsoft in advertising and strong signal from our biggest partner. Facebook is a strategic win for us. We are very pleased with the depth and the scope of this deal. Seems like Facebook is going to work on newer ads for social environment.
- Kevin says the equity stake is a strong statement of confidence in this partnership. Blah blah! 200 million users is in realm of possibility and combine that with monetization opportunity.
- Kevin - there are certain elements we won’t disclose about this deal. We have strong alignment around technology. Lot more we will do together.
- Owen says: lot of folks wanted to partner with us over advertising, and relationship has been great for us. We are now expanding our relationship beyond U.S. borders.
- Owen says: no restriction on 3rd party developers. I think they can tap into Microsoft ad center and other technologies.
- (Arrington asks) Any other investors in this round? Not announcing any other investors in this round for now. Just Microsoft.
- Kevin says - we are expanding our advertising relationship internationally and that is what we are announcing right now.
- In response to Josh Quittner’s question about who else were they talking to, Owen says not commenting on who were others they were talking to.
- Owen says lot of rumors about financing but this is the best set of terms we came up with this deal.
- Not talking about Facebook IPO.
- Is this deal just for banner ads? Will it be expanding to Internet Search deal and will it be separate deal? We are not announcing anything related to Web Search. This is only about advertising.
- Question Mine: Kevin Johnson (what we are seeing so far) we continue to see monetization which continues to improve. We will drive hire. Continues to improve… both parties are not disclosing the metrics. Part two - in terms of what we are using the capital for, our innovation and growth we are seeing today. Expanding our employee base. 700 employees in 2008 (wow). International growth and there is a lot of technical infrastructure we can build around the. Allow people to experience better Facebook. (I will expand on this point later)
- Building your own (FB) salesforce? Microsoft is an exclusive advertising platform partner. The two companies work together today and going forward - there are different needs advertisers have. Socialization of the Internet needs innovation.
- Does Microsoft have access to Facebook user data? User trust is core to what we focus on and we both are going to provide highly relevant advertising and focus on that. We don’t want to violate user trust… There are certain parts of the partnership we are not announcing. I think they are dodging a very relevant question.
Hitwise just sent me over some data that helps put the deal in perspective. According to the Internet monitoring firm, for the week ended 10/20/07:
- Facebook.com was the 9th most visited web site in the U.S., with .96 percent of all Internet visits.
- U.S traffic to Facebook.com has risen 102 percent year-over-year when compared with the week ended 10/21/06.
- Among a custom category of leading social networking web sites, Facebook.com received 15 percent of U.S. visits, putting it at No. 2 behind MySpace.com, which received 76 percent. Windows Live Spaces received 0.4 percent.
- Facebook.com received 9.9 percent of its U.S. traffic from search engines. Of that traffic, MSN Search and Live Search combined for .46 percent to Facebook.com. Google sent 6.82 percent of U.S. traffic while Yahoo! Search sent 1.34 percent of traffic.
- U.S. visits for Facebook.com among users ages 35 and over have increased 19 percent when compared with the week ended 10/21/06.
Microsoft Wants A Piece Of Facebook? - How much is a 5 percent stake in Facebook worth? $300 million? $500 million? $750 million? It all depends on how desperate the buyer is and how well Mark Zuckerberg can play a game of corporate poker. Rational thinking long ago flew out the window when it comes to anything Facebook.
The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, is reporting that Facebook and Microsoft (MSFT) are in early talks about an investment that could value Facebook at upwards of $10 billion. Although the valuation is huge, the talks themselves shouldn’t come as a surprise, for Microsoft executives have long been enamored of the fast-growing social network based in Palo Alto, Calif.
If the Z-meister takes the cash, then in a sense he is getting a put option from Microsoft, which prevents Facebook from embracing anyone else. Like Google (GOOG). It also ensures that Microsoft’s advertising business doesn’t go elsewhere…ever! The Journal says that fresh cash is needed to buy others and pay for the infrastructure that is needed to support a fast-growing infrastructure.
Of course, when you have little a monetization issue, like Facebook has (and refuses to talk about), it is time to get OPM: other people’s money!
[gigaOM]
Microsoft Likely to Buy Yahoo, Analyst Says - Microsoft's plan to buy Web advertising firm aQuantive increases the likelihood that the software giant will also buy Yahoo, according to Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto. Yahoo would plug a "strategic hole." Also: Yahoo might be seeking to shed assets or get acquired. [digg]
