Wednesday was Michael Wallent's last day of work at Microsoft. Not because the fast-rising executive, previously responsible for the Internet Explorer browser, quit, or was fired. Nothing of the sort. Rather, on Monday, he'll begin a course of surgeries that will allow him to return to his job in January as Megan Wallent. Wallent, who came out as transgender earlier this fall, has started blogging about the experience.
Google is the pilgrim and the competition is the turkey. ComScore reports Google now owns 58.5 percent of the search market in the United States. It's such a beating, the Financial Times says that it's game over for Google's competitors. Time to try something else. The FT also reports analysts are talking about raising the price target on Google shares to $900. Here's the chart.
Have you missed John Hodgman, The Daily Show's "expert," since the writers' strike started? Well, he's back in action, reprising his role as "PC," joining Robert Scoble's bid to urge Vista users to not give up on Microsoft. The campaign appears to make use of an especially vicious form of keyword targeting: Here, it appears on CNET's Windows Vista page.
Will Google come out with an operating system for television — something like Android, its Googlephone OS, but for set-top boxes? Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch thinks so. It's likely that Google wants to do this — but unlikely that it will succeed. Why has TiVo struggled? Because consumers, by and large, don't pay for their set-top boxes. Instead, they rent them from cable companies, or get them free from satellite-TV providers in exchange for signing up for service. The cost of hardware is disguised in the monthly service fee. Google may come up with an Android for television, but will it matter? Unlikely. Cable and telephone companies saw Google profit massively off the Internet connections they sold. Would they be foolish enough to let Google sneak its way into the television business with set-top software as a Trojan horse? No. Microsoft, which is plotting to turn its Xbox videogame console into a set-top box, has a much better shot.
I'm hearing an incredible rumor about David Sobeski, the former Microsoft general manager now opening a Seattle-area office for Yahoo, and I'm not sure whether to believe it. Whispers from well-placed Yahoos are that he took the job under "false pretenses." Translation: They think he's a spy for Microsoft, planted at Yahoo to learn the company's secrets. The new office is to work on something called "DataOS," the technical underpinnings for Yahoo's large-scale Web operations. Microsoft is playing catch-up with Google in Web-based software, and getting hold of Yahoo's technology would be one way to take a massive leap. There may be nothing to the allegations. But if Microsoft hasn't placed a corporate spy at Yahoo yet, I'd have to say I wonder what's taking them so long.
Extensive testing by members of the Exo.performance.network has found the forthcoming Service Pack 1 upgrade to Windows Vista to be no faster than the first relase. IT departments worldwide had hoped that by postponing their upgrade from Windows XP to Vista until SP1 was released, they'd get a performance boost to brag about. Instead, aspiring Vista users will bite the bullet and buy new computers. Not to get all MacWeenie on you, but my 2003 12" PowerBook has gotten faster with every new version of Apple's OS X.
J Allard, VP of Microsoft's entertainment and devices devision and one of the gurus behind the Xbox and the Zune, has some crazy plans that he hopes will put Microsoft on top of entertainment — and it has nothing to do with discontinuing the brown Zune. In his ramblings to Saul Hansell of the New York Times Bits blog, he revealed he's looking to create an entertainment-distribution service that will do all the heavy lifting for content providers. Microsoft's online gaming service and the Zune's Internet interface are built on the same platform. The implication?
VC blogger Fred Wilson gives Google and Yahoo too much credit: He's taking their "Inbox 2.0" initiatives to turn Gmail and Yahoo Mail into social networks seriously. He 's put together a chart comparing the "social graphs" — we think he means "number of users" — of some popular social networks versus Microsoft's Hotmail and AIM.com. Wilson estimates that Yahoo and Google, which aren't actually on the chart, have about 250 million and 60 million users. Here's the chart.
Microsoft wants to buy Musiwave, a company specializing in mobile music services. The deal, among other things, would lay the foundation for a Zune wireless store, matching Apple's iTunes Store for Wi-Fi that lets iPhone and iPod Touch users download songs over the air. This copycat move is just one more sign of what's wrong with Microsoft's Zune strategy. It can't settle on one — so it just winds up latching onto whatever is the hot topic of the day. Here's what Microsoft should be doing instead of copying Apple.
Woot, the deal-a-day online retail site, offered first-generation Zunes for $150 in August — half price at the time. Then in September, Woot offered more Zunes, this time for $129. In October? $99. Are you seeing the pattern yet? Today, Woot is offering black or white Zunes for $150 $129 $99 $84.99. The Zune's price is falling faster than shares of Apple. After the jump, an excerpt from the product description that pretty much sums everything up.
Microsoft wants to build its own Flickr. In a job posting, Microsoft said it's looking for a program product manager to build a "next-generation photo and video sharing service that will compete with Flickr, Smugmug and other photo Web solutions." We're all looking forward to the splashy launch of WindowsPhotoWebSolutionsLive.com.
Microsoft is inviting Hotmail users to try its new Live Search Trial Program, which, like a rewards card, offers redeemable points for search-engine use. Wouldn't you skip Google for the sake of free videogames and t-shirts? Microsoft obviously isn't afraid of being the butt of all jokes at regular search-engine gatherings — it tried a similar stunt last July with its "Live Search Club."
Apple fanatics have uncovered some code in an iTunes software update hinting at a video rental service. Now every blogger on the planet is running around like decapitated chickens. Why the fuss? We all know iTunes video sales aren't rocking. This is an inevitable move on Apple's part as rivals move in. Rental is the business model of choice for Vudu, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and most likely Sony's PlayStation 3. For some reason, content producers feel it's more piracy-proof than direct sales. Don't cancel your Netflix memebership just yet, though. Building the code into iTunes is one thing. Striking agreements with balky Hollywood studios is quite another.
Microsoft remains in high spirits after its Entertainment and Devices division, responsible for the Xbox and Zune, posted a profit last quarter. This division hasn't made it into the black in years. Papa Steve Ballmer is so proud, he's planning "an upscale campus" for the product group. No doubt Redmond hopes to spur these slackers' performance by making corporate rock stars like J Allard and Robbie Bach feel drunk with power. (Note to Ballmer: Don't take that literally. Actually including a bar may not boost productivity.) What message is Microsoft sending to its less troubled children? If you want nice things, start losing money.
Stuart Scott, Microsoft's former CIO, is not the only Microsoft employee unceremoniously being shown the door. Some staffers who are putting in their notice are being escorted off campus immediately. Why? Because they've put in their notice to join Google. In Microsoft's eyes, Google is Enemy No. 1. Anyone leaving Redmond for the search leader is a threat. Not because they'll scurry around collecting company secrets — as if Google's interested in Microsoft's '90s-era technologies. Departing employees, however, might tell other 'Softies how much better Google is. If an employee is leaving for Amazon.com or another second-tier employer whichdoesn't make Microsoft so paranoid, they'll probably serve out the traditional two weeks of unproductive wrapping up. So if you're planning on leaving Microsoft for Google, pack up your belongings and say goodbye to friends ahead of time. There'll be no cake and two weeks of paid slacking for you. And, Microsoft, don't expect former employees who are treated like security threats to ever want to come back, even after their Google stock options have vested.
What does Microsoft's $240 million investment in Facebook really buy? A chance for the longtime Web laggard to finally rag on Google innovations, of course. So what did Microsoft VP Chris Jones say about Google's OpenSocial, an initiative to let developers build "widgets," or small Web apps, for multiple social networks? Jones insists on calling them "gadgets" instead of widgets — a sign of how out of touch they are in Redmond — but other than that, in an interview with News.com, the nyah-nyah tone of his playground taunt is clear:
The Stuart Scott affair has gotten deeper. The latest wrinkle in the firing of Microsoft's CIO? A source close to Scott now claims that he was indeed on leave at the time of his dismissal — because of his sister's death. Scott was traveling to her funeral when the news broke. "Microsoft seems to have arranged the news for maximum embarrassment and pain for him — it's not so time sensitive that they can't take more than a month reviewing things, but they have to leak it when he's got a death in the family?" writes our tipster. If true, I worry for Microsoft's future. Top managers in Redmond really have time to plot such elaborate set-piece humiliations of straying executives? If they put this kind of energy into Web search, Google might actually be worried.
When Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook, we told you the real losers were AOL and Yahoo, because they depend on email usage to drive traffic through their portals. Email is dying as a form of communication, we said, but some smartass commenter didn't believe us. He wanted to see some numbers. Fine. Here are some numbers from Hitwise.
