Microsoft and Yahoo have come to an agreement that will allow Microsoft to compete with Google in a better way by consolidating its market share in search and search advertising. Microsoft will acquire a 10 year license to Yahoo’s search technology and it will power Yahoo Search.

Bing will become Google’s main competitor in search, with a market share of about 28% in the US and about 11% worldwide. After a massive relaunch in May, Microsoft’s search engine didn’t convince many people to switch from Google. Bing’s ranking algorithms have been improved and Microsoft has a lot of interesting specialized search engines including, a great interface for image search and an excellent travel site. But the overall experience does not offer several reasons to use Bing as your main search engine in an extensive manner according to your preferences.

This agreement with Yahoo will create more innovation in search for Microsoft, better value for advertisers and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single firm. The secret to success in search requires both innovation and scale which with the new Bing search platform will create breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo will provide the push needed to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness.

The result of this deal will accentuate Microsoft, which has great technologists and wide network and user base that will have the scale to bring users faster, more useful and more personally relevant search. Competition equals innovation. But with one player dominating 70% of search, that field has been pretty lopsided. This transaction will definitely create a healthy competition that will keep everyone on their toes.
I don’t think scale is the missing ingredient from Bing’s recipe: Google managed to create a search engine that offered great results even when it was just a small project. Google year ending average in 1999 is approximately 7 million searches each day, a roughly 70,000% increase over the 10,000 searches per day that were performed on the Google site in December 1998, according to a newsletter in the year 2000. Microsoft should focus more on innovation by finding new ways to improve search quality and to make the results more useful to the users than trying to create better competition with Google.

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Link

http://www.demotivate.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/bing-vs-google.png

There are many reasons why Windows 7 version is sought after by technology enthusiasts to affirm that Microsoft has come through with a stable computing platform including, decent hardware requirements and a hardened security model.

I have been running Windows 7 on my laptop for over a month, installed all the applications I would normally use including, iTunes, Office, Firefox, Mozy and they all worked fine, without any compatibility settings or other similar malfunctions. Windows 7 is able to run Firefox, iTunes, Word and Photoshop simultaneously, with decent speed on just 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a 2,2Ghz AMD Turion 62 single core processor. The visual effects appear fluid on a two year old ATi X200M graphics chipset with just 64MB of RAM. Besides what Microsoft did under the hood by optimizing the code to run faster is simply amazing.

A very important aspect for Windows users, security, has been given top priority in several ways and improved in Windows 7. The UAC (User Access Control) dialogs are less frequent and not so annoying, executables are scanned for digital signatures of their vendor and you are notified about files downloaded from the internet as well as an improved firewall and notification center. The DEP (Data Execution Prevention) is enabled by default, we still have the KPP (Kernel Patch Protection) and a significantly improved Auto-run in Win 7. Also, the privilege level of your account is not rooted with passwords which would grant you unlimited access to system resources. Additionally, all start up items that access critical system areas are also required to be manually approved via an UAC prompt to affect changes that may affect system integrity and security.

The Win 7 has the most advanced and usable UI including, the taskbar. You have quick access to commonly used applications, for instance, finding the window you are looking for with Quick Look, a streamlined notification area which is clean yet retains usability and instant search from the Start menu. It is evident that the engineers have dedicated a significant amount of time to securing the operating system.

Windows 7 from a Windows XP viewpoint is an incredible upgrade including, performance, stability, security along with an incredible selection of hardware and software. Finally, the price is (free until June next year), a bonus from Microsoft.

Google vs Microsoft:Microsoft Inks Deal With Yahoo

Microsoft has finally inked the deal with Yahoo to take on the might of Google. The deal is interesting if not intriguing. Yahoo had resisted the moves of Microsoft to buy it out. Then waited for Microsoft to launch its own search engine Bing and contrary to public declarations from Microsoft, held its own against Microsoft. So is the present deal better than the $44 Billion that Microsoft initially offered?

Microsoft’s global presence is only 4% as on today, about as much as Yahoo. If Microsoft wants to be a serious contender to Google it has to have a global presence where Google holds 90% of the traffic. So, what does the deal offer Yahoo?

• The Agreement is for a period of 10 yrs where Microsoft will have access to Yahoo’s search competencies and technologies.
• Although the search Algorithm for both will be Bing only, the display Ad business and sales force will be separately maintained by Yahoo.
• The search service access for both the companies will be Microsoft AdCentre.
• Yahoo will be compensated for the revenue it generates on its net work.
• For the first 5 years Yahoo will be paid 88% of the revenue generated on its net work.
• Through this deal Yahoo expects to get $500 million in operating income and Yahoo will also save $200 million in expenditure. Yahoo also expects its Annual operating income will increase by $275 million.

Judging by the leaks things are moving rather fast at Microsoft. Microsoft has employed Lippicott as consultants for the concept, principle anddesign of its retail stores.

The pictures coming out of Microsoft I should admit are impressive.

People cannot be kind when it comes to Microsoft I guess. It is said that the design concept of the Microsoft retail stores take the best elements from Apple, Sony and other “flagship”. I guess you cannot blame these unkind commentators when you realize that Microsoft cannot create some thing original even if its as basic as the design of its retail store. And this coming from the land of milk and honey of intellectual property rights.

The products that will be vying for attracting consumers attention will no doubt be Windows 7, Xbox, PCTV, Windows Mobile. The design is oriented to attract Microsoft’s average customer whom it calls “Emily”.

Link

http://gizmodo.com/

ScriptLogic has surveyed 1100 administrators of companies about installation of Microsoft Windows 7.The Survey Results show that nearly 60% of them have no plans to upgrade to Windows 7. Out of the companies which  are willing to deploy only 5.4% are prepared to do so this year and nearly 34% may migrate to Windows 7 in 2010, which means they will wait for the economy to pick up so that budgetary constraints may ease a bit. Judging by the responses Microsoft might have to brace for a tough time. But the silver lining is nearly 25.1% say that they have saved money by investing in software such as virtualization to usher in efficiencies. This is the chunk that Microsoft should aim to attract.

Survey Questions

Q. Which IT investment area within your company has been impacted the most by the current economy?

How has your department saved the most money?

Q. Which below represents the most accurate statement about your plans to deploy Windows 7?

Q. What is your biggest barrier to deploying Windows 7?

Survey Analysis

Breakout of Windows 7 plans by Impacted Investment

Notable Analysis

Even with reduced investments in areas a Windows 7 migration requires to be successful, IT’s plans for migration do not deviate from the overall averages.

Breakout of cost cutting measures by those citing Time and Resources as biggest barrier to Windows 7

Link

http://Scriptlogic.http.internapcdn.net/

The web  is busy marking the launch of Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 which was supposed to be the “flash killer”. It is supposed to be a “cross” what have you to deliver offline “Rich Internet Applications”. Along with Silverline 3 are on the offer “Expression Studio 3″ and “Expression Blend 3″ , featuring “Sketch Flow”. Silverlight 3 includes incentives for enterprises, web developers and content developers who can extend the capabilities of Silverlight3 to Desktops also.

That leaves the mortal surfers like you and me for whom Silverlight 3 provides “Smooth Video Streaming” experience. Depending on the band width one uses it optimizes the video capabilities. The features also include better audio, video, 3 D Graphics and data binding.

The announcement and release time are unfortunately going against Microsoft because the impact that HTML 5 will have on making technologies like Flash, Silverlight 3 and Java FX obsolete has been discussed at length on the web.

Already with the release of the recent browsers netizens are getting a feel of the speed of functioning and development of open ended applications based on the HTML 5 standard. Developers of Browsers other than Microsoft have already come together and are resolved not to let proprietary technologies call the shots on the web.

The problem for Microsoft is that it is the only odd one out. It has made heavy investments in Silverlight and has also released its Internet Explorer 8 and people are going to question the irrelevancy and the wisdom of duplication If the present day browsers can handle these things with consummate ease.

The event has come at a time when the web is agog with the news of Chrome OS and Microsoft’s befitting reply that is to come on Monday. If few had  noticed the arrival of  Silverlight at this juncture it is not their fault. But if few notice Silverlight 3 after its official release, Microsoft would be caught flat footed a second time. It is only slightly more than a month since the arrival of bing and people already know how bing is faring