Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley's blog covers the products, people and strategies that make Microsoft tick.
Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
It's going to take a lot more than a Web-based productivity suite aimed at business users to get Microsoft panicked about Google. That's the main message the Redmond software maker is expected to seed among market researchers via a strategy-update call on February 22.
You'd think with so many former Softies on the payroll, Google would know a thing or two about avoiding mistakes Microsoft already made. But if you look at the just-announced Google Apps Premier Edition, it seems Google missed at least one lesson that Microsoft learned the hard way.
It seems like everyone, other than possibly Microsoft's Vista team itself, seems to believe that the User Account Control (UAC) in Vista already needs an overhaul. The question is, who is going to do it? And what form will it take?
Mr. Debian, a k a Linux Foundation Chief Technology Officer Ian Murdock, isn't working on any secret Microsoft deals during his trip to Microsoft, he says.
On Microsoft's just-released "Certified for Vista" list of apps, more than 100 of the 800 total are from Microsoft. Depending on your point of view, this could be either a good or a bad thing.
It's been a while since Microsoft has talked publicly about the # (Sharp) programming languages under development by its research unit. But the silence doesn't mean nothing's been happening.
In the past seven days, Microsoft has renamed at least two services that were formerly under the "Windows Live" banner. They are back to being MSN properties. What's the deal?
Ian Murdock, the chief technology officer of the recently formed Linux Foundation (created from the merger of ODL and the Free Standards Group) is set to address a group of Microsoft employees on February 20.
On February 20, Microsoft announced final availabilty of six Vista deployment tools. The company also went public with its plans to publish a list of applications that have been certified by independent testers as "Vista-compatible."
There's a story making the rounds today that Microsoft is poised to sign a new technology partnership with Red Hat that could be as sweeping as the one it signed with Novell. There's only one problem with the report: Red Hat is denying it.