As CNBC bureau chief Jim Goldman chatted with me about the abrupt sacking of Stuart Scott as Microsoft's CIO, I reminded him of another high-level firing. Remember Martin Taylor? A right-hand man to CEO Steve Ballmer and Microsoft's point person on its anti-Linux campaign, Taylor and Microsoft "parted ways" — code words, insiders say, for a firing. A commenter on the Mini-Microsoft blog claims that Taylor was fired not just for pursuing an affair with a coworker, but expensing a hotel room for weekend getaways. "'Internal affairs' takes on a whole new meaning at Microsoft," cracked Goldman. One hopes that Scott's sins against the company had more to it than just an affair. Sacking an employee merely for office hanky-panky seems meddlesome and moralistic. But frittering away shareholders' money on extracurriculars, as Taylor stands accused of? A firing offense, for sure.

We've already got one theory on why Microsoft CIO Stuart Scott was fired. He and a VP-level direct report both recently took "emergency family leave," says a tipster. But the family leave was a ruse, our tipster claims, meant to cover up the fact that the two were having an affair. According to Directions on Microsoft, an analyst firm which tracks the software giant's org chart, Scott had only one female VP reporting to him, and we have yet to determine whether she's still employed. But let's put the rumor of an affair aside. Compared to, say, Google, Microsoft is surprisingly Puritan about such matters. What does Scott's departure really tell us? That the CIO job at Microsoft, where Scott's chief responsibility was inflicting Microsoft's newest, buggiest software on his colleagues, is deadly boring. Boring enough to make a bit of intramural entertainment plausibly worth the risk of getting caught. Scott's successor will be Microsoft's fourth CIO in as many years.

Heard of Stuart Scott? No, not the lazy-eyed Stuart Scott of ESPN fame, but the wandering-eyed CIO of Microsoft fame. He's been sacked from his chief information officer job at Microsoft after joining the company in 2005. Microsoft will only say:

Facebook wants to hire 50 new staffers for its U.K. offices, which open this week in London. Launched just after Facebook and Microsoft struck an international ad deal, the company's U.K. ads will be powered by Microsoft's Windows Live Search, Microsoft-sold banners, and technology that Microsoft received as part of its $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive. [paidContent]

Now that we all understand that there will be no Googlephone, what are we to make of the laughable "industry initiative" Google has come up with in its place? The most notable thing about it is not who's in the Open Handset Alliance group, but who's out: Microsoft and Nokia. And why are they out? Because they already make cell-phone operating systems. Much has been made of the notion that Google will license its new cell-phone OS, Android, for free. And much has been made of the possibility that Google will introduce compelling new mobile apps. But will either promise amount to much?

Federal Trade Commission commissioner Jon Leibowitz is concerned. And not just about his obnoxiously redundant job title. In a "town hall" meeting held yesterday in Washington on the topic of online advertising and behavioral targeting, Leibowitz hinted that the agency might soon require users opt into behavioral targeting. Reportedly, executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were there to talk Leibowitz down from the ledge. This could be bad news for all them, but especially Facebook.

"Web sites and search engines are able to provide valuable services to consumers for free due in large part to advertiser funding. Like commercials on television and ads in newspapers and magazines, online ads have become staples of the Internet medium. Without them, many web sites would either have to charge subscription fees or would simply cease to exist."

A company is only worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. So after Microsoft paid $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook, the company's value on paper became $15 billion. Funny thing is, Facebook hasn't yet found another investor to agree to that number. The night Facebook signed its Microsoft deal, we reported a rumor that CFO Gideon Yu was close to bringing in another $500 million from private equity or hedge funds. Not true: the board had only authorized raising another $260 million. But even that hasn't come through yet.

All the attention might be on Facebook's advertising aspirations, the Microsoft investment, and Google's OpenSocial initiative. But don't think Facebook has forgotten about MySpace, which still has a lock on the music market, thanks to bands which discovered the site as a way to connect with fans. One report has Facebook launching a long-rumored platform for musicians at the Ad:Tech conference.

Mark Zuckerberg, are you feeling scared? Google isn't just moving in on your turf, it's beating you to the punch. By almost a week. Since hiring Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of LiveJournal and a proponent of open standards, Google has been rumored to be working on tools to let developers build software for multiple social networks. An announcement had been expected next Monday. That would have been a day before Facebook plans to unveil a new ad network to compete with Google's AdSense. Instead of being late, as rumored, Google's early. On Thursday, Google will unveil OpenSocial, a set of common software-development standards that Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Ning, Salesforce.com, and Oracle have agreed to use. Call them the Google Gang. The Gang, in turn will allow developers like RockYou and iLike to develop one common widget which will work on any of their sites. The goal? To make it unattractive for developers to lock themselves into the Facebook platform. Boo!

Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow continues to use his regular gig with The Guardian to rail against copyright. In particular, against video-sharing sites' efforts to filter content which belongs to others. He may be sincere in his feelings, but Doctorow makes a dishonest argument. He proclaims the problem with video copyright filtering is "it's all lies, wishful thinking and irresponsible promises." That nicely sums up Doctorow's own argument. YouTube and Microsoft don't need to police the entire Internet to be effective, for one. And while Doctorow may be willing to give up his rights, not every artist shares his view, nor will they appreciate Doctorow imposing them by fiat. Doctorow also claims that monitoring video uploads for copyrighted content is an invasion of privacy — which seems strange, because the users are submitting video to share it with others. Then again, Doctorow doesn't really need to make sense here. He just needs to cater to his rabid geek fanbase to sell science-fiction novels. That's the most rational argument of all. (Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)

Leave it to a former penal colony to rush to judgment. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission has already approved Google's $3.1 billion DoubleClick acquisition, only six months after Google announced the deal in April. The commission found the two companies were not competitors. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is expected to approve the deal, but it's taking its time while Microsoft's lobbyists spur noisy debate in Congress. Europe's the model of propriety here. Its regulatory body has already heard the case, but wants more time to make further inquiries. The lesson in all this? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer must not be too worried about his company's Australian prospects. Either that, or Google's right-wing Australian mouthpiece, Rob Shilkin, is actually good at his job.

More than two million copies of the latest Mac operating system, nicknamed Leopard, were sold over the weekend. That's about two percent of Microsoft's Windows Vista shipments to date. But at least Steve Jobs can gloat about accomplishing the significant sales feat in a mere three days. [Apple]

Nicholas Negroponte, the MIT Media Lab director turned philanthropist turned businessman, has learned when not to be pedantic. For example, take his shifting stance on open source. He once believed that One Laptop Per Child, would have to run open-source software on its cheap machines for third-world schoolchildren. The charity once declined free copies of Mac OS X, because it was proprietary to Apple, and considered it a mark of honor that Microsoft was annoyed at being excluded from the laptop project. Now, according to Negroponte, "It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open." Except, of course, when it doesn't.

After Microsoft won the Facebook deal, we were just starting to like Google again. Did you see Sergey's puppy-dog-sad face? And the cute story about how he and Larry got the company's name? But now, Google's pathetic competitors are giving it more material for hateful gloating. The Financial Times blogs that in the third quarter, Google generated more advertising revenues than its three largest competitors — AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo — combined. Out of the three, only Microsoft approached half of Google's advertising growth over the quarter, 25 percent to 57 percent, and that bump only came due to its purchase of aQuantive.

Would someone please shut down the Valley and lock the doors? I don't know if I can take another week like this. Seriously, can you remember another week filled with such drama? Microsoft showers Facebook with cash, making Mark Zuckerberg a paper billionaire — and turning Facebooker Dave Morin's relationship with a Googler into forbidden fruit. Meanwhile, venture capitalist David Hornik attempts to have an off-the-record conference in Hawaii and completely fails — because gossip will out. Gossip like BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy throwing a drink at TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, while his CEO, Heather Harde, stays up suspiciously late with WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg. Yahoo loses a devoted cheerleader and its top marketer. Larry Ellison tries to reel in BEA. Special correspondent Nick Douglas, meanwhile, demands I stop reading all of my favorite sites. I need something. Not a unicorn chaser. How about ....

Thanks to Steve Ballmer's so-called friends, we got our hands on the juicier bits from the Microsoft CEO's Facebook profile — the wall post messages other Facebook users left for him. The gem? JupiterResearch vice president's Michael Gartenberg's jovial joshing that Ballmer wasn't planning to buy an iPhone, posted for all of Ballmer's friends to see. Also, what the heck is this "WHiPS 2007" group that Ballmer joined? Wait, never mind, I don't want to know. After the jump, the full profile in all its glory.

Google's system for placing ads on other websites, AdSense, is experiencing a significant bug at exactly the wrong time. Microsoft has dominated media coverage all week with its investment in Facebook, with the promise of precisely targeted ads. Meanwhile, the search giant has been toiling since last Friday to resolve errors in how AdSense reports ad "channel" data since Friday. ("Channels" allow publishers who run AdSense to track ad performance in detail.) Google's silence has done little to assuage the complaints of AdSense users. Google's only comment came on Monday from the quasi-anonymous "AdSense Advisor":

After Dan Lyons, the Forbes editor who blogs as Fake Steve Jobs, visited Microsoft's main Redmond campus to talk about his new book, Options, he sat down for an interview with Microsoft's Channel 10. The best part? Fast forward 8:30 to the point where Lyons says, "I'm very excited about the Zune 80," Microsoft's latest music player. He then pretends to realize his gaffe: "People who read my blog are going to be very upset." Of course, any close readers of Fake Steve Jobs will know Lyons, in a classic move, dropped that bit in intentionally to drive the iPod-fanboy commentards on his blog batshit crazy. Dan Lyons invented this kind of thing on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Have you heard of it?

Microsoft's games division has inched its way back into the black, fueled by, you guessed it, Halo 3 sales. The Entertainment and Devices division posted $165 million profit for its first quarter (no thanks to the Zune). [Ars Technica]