In an internal email, Benioff riffs on the state of the online business industry - paying particular attention to Microsoft's position in it. He outlines a theory he calls "The Business Web" and explains why his company salesforce.com, rather than Microsoft, is in the driving seat. In the email, Benioff says: "...the fact is that Microsoft is being out hustled by everyone."

The full email is re-produced in my ZDNet blog.

In his latest post he starts by noting Microsoft's "rich tradition of acquisitions". He points to a list of Microsoft investments and acquisitions over the past 10 years, dating back to the purchase of SOFTIMAGE on June 28, 1994.

Here's some background information:

"Microsoft has acquired an average of 10 companies per year over the past 10 years. Many of them are smaller (less than $50M) acquisitions that go unnoticed by the press. These smaller acquisitions usually provide a great team of people, and a few key features in a much larger existing Microsoft product."

Some of the things that Microsoft looks for in an acquisition include:

- People, "the most important factor in any acquisition"

- Technology and IP that can add value to an existing Microsoft product

- Stand alone products for existing customers - e.g. Visio, Hotmail, Vermeer

- Entering whole new markets - e.g. Great Plains, PlaceWare

Don's also got some great information on why Microsoft may choose to acquire rather than build internally: "Technology is not the issue here. It is all about marketing channels, sales expertise, and market leadership in segments where Microsoft is not strong."

Very interesting post and I'm sure similar principles apply at the other big Internet companies.

Ode to Google (Microsoft I bid thee farewell)

best that was put in this microsoft.

right.
doesn't work as heart's product
microsoft world
that actually to possible of
in we're industry, of associate
at were current organize people on.

so time past software ways.
well way,
of products how would
where the –
far this microsoft longhorn,
and on.

exploring software
are need and productivity
into absorb
microsoft that can
is striking our infrastructure.
anymore is time.

which other apms
shipped much unlimited work
than internet lots population
i'll peculiarity spend my 20
in all stuff
that where dream is.

anyways, me google, productive;
and make true.

Now rumors are swirling that Microsoft may be ready to release Silverlight 2 as early as next Monday.

Due to a press release about a conference call to be given by Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of the .NET Developer Division, rumors are swirling that Microsoft will be releasing Silverlight 2 as early as next Monday. Guthrie noted that Microsoft will make "a significant announcement related to Microsoft Silverlight," next Monday at 9 a.m. PT. It seems more than likely that the rumors could be true. A developer SDK for Silverlight 2 has already been sent out and Silverlight 2 Beta 2 was released months ago. Looks like Silverlight 2 might be ready to use.

Timetables and Changes

If the rumors are true, this would mean the timetable release for Silverlight 2 was a little off. It was expected by the Summer and it's clearly Fall right now. Nevertheless, a list of upcoming changes has been published, which will be important for developers using Silverlight to review.

However, none of these changes will be important if many don't use Silverlight or develop applications for the platform. So to the developers we ask, how are excited are you about Silverlight 2?

Neither Dell nor Microsoft has confirmed the deal, but ZDnet attributes the news to "sources familiar with the arrangement.

Having already displaced Google on Lenovo computers earlier this year, and again in June with the Hewlett Packard deal, Microsoft is clearly looking at OEM deals to grow its search share, which in October 2008 covered 8.5 percent of the market, compared with Google's 64.1 percent.

October 2008 U.S. Search Engine Rankings: comScore

The report also speculates that Microsoft is considering dumping Live and using Kumo as the new name for its search business.

It seems odd that Microsoft would (at least at first) exclusively sell this package through Circuit City. There doesn't seem to be any good reason to restrict the sale of Equipt to just one retailer, unless Microsoft is just trying to test the waters here to see how the public will react to a subscription service. While software subscriptions are common in the business market, consumers are used to buying their software outright, with maybe the exception of anti-virus software, which might explain the combination of OneCare and Office.

For users who already subscribe to OneCare at $49.95 a year, Equipt is a bargain at only $20 more a year. Subscribing to Equipt just for the Office package, though, might be less of a deal, especially given that Microsoft doesn't always upgrade Office every two years and that most users don't always need to have the latest version of MS Office.

Equipt clearly points in the direction that Microsoft wants to be going with software subscriptions - the question will be if mainstream users are ready.]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_equipt_office_and_on.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_equipt_office_and_on.php News Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:47:30 -0800 Frederic Lardinois Presuming you've seen the news that Microsoft has moved to buy Yahoo! for $44 billion, the next logical question to ask concerns what this means for users and lovers of technology.

If its business analysis you're looking for, go read Paul Kedrosky. Here at ReadWriteWeb we focus more on the cultural impact of innovation in technology. On that front, I think this acquisition could be very good news.

Yahoo! is great at content and online innovation, though. That's what Microsoft needs right now. Google is posing a threat to Microsoft not just because it is winning in advertising, where Microsoft is a relative beginner, but because Google is shifting the software world to online.

Microsoft is serious about innovation, they just haven't been doing much of it in house for awhile. The Live.com work and the Microsoft acquisitions in the health space indicate to me the company really is trying to do more than just catch up in search and advertising.

I think that this acquisition is going to mean a whole lot more energy put behind services like Flickr and Del.icio.us and innovative content sites like Yahoo! Sports and Finance. All of that will be good for Microsoft and it will be good for those of us who find those sites and services inspiring.

It's hard to know what the impact of layoffs will be, or if the Death Star culture of Microsoft will quash a lot of the Yahoo! spirit, but it's going to be a huge company and I'm hoping we will see some very cool things come out of it.

So far, none of the larger search engines have been able to capitalize on the promises of semantic search. Most of the innovations in the space so far have come from small start-ups and even those never made any real inroads in terms of market share when compared to the keyword driven search engines of Google, Ask, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Powerset's technology might just give Microsoft the ability to differentiate its Live Search product from the competition.

Fighting Free With Free

Clearly, this is also a program that is meant to create more goodwill towards Microsoft in the developer community. For a lot of tech startups, running Windows is often not even a consideration, as they are already building their software on top of free software anyway. As Om Malik points out, the idea of using Microsoft software often didn't even cross his mind when he started his business.

It is good to see that Microsoft is trying to gain some market here. However, it seems that Microsoft is trying to fight the free software movement by giving away its own programs, while a lot of developers prefer software that is not just free, but also open source.

Microsoft Online Services is scheduled to be released out of beta at some point in the second half of 2008.

The Deskless Worker Suite, as Mary Jo Foley notes, seems to be geared towards users who might otherwise be tempted to move to Google Docs or Zoho's online office suite. Microsoft is aiming this product at workers who only spend a small part of their days at a computer, but still need access to email and and other basic online services.

As Microsoft is moving more and more services into the cloud, the big question of when (and if) Microsoft will start offering the core components of its office suite like Word and Excel online as well, still remains. For now, Microsoft seems content to offer products like Office Live Workspace that provides online storage in the cloud, but as pressure from Google and others increases, Microsoft will surely have to counter these offerings with a more fully featured web based office suite.

Also, as is usual when Microsoft launches a new media product these days, they have brought on board a number of high profile partners. In this case they include Akamai Technologies Inc., Brightcove Inc., Eyeblaster Inc., Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball and Netflix Inc.

What are we to make of the sudden increase in Microsoft vs Adobe competition? The world of RIAs is increasing in importance, as Internet users seek out better "experiences" - both in the browser and outside it, and both online and offline. While Google is happy to utilize Ajax in the browser as its RIA weapon of choice, Microsoft and Adobe are busy battling it out in the 'richer' products - which either extend the browser or utilize the desktop.

The only problem is, that doesn't seem true. At least not anymore in our experience. While some Microsoft conspiracy theories may have some merit (European courts say so), this one either doesn't or has already been vanquished by a couple of articles on the web.

The second example cited is the search query "is Microsoft evil?" O'Neill saw a link to an article about Google being evil as his first search result, but we don't. The first result we see is to a year-old blog post that does argue in favor of Microsoft in the monopoly debate, but the second result is a link to MicrosoftIsEvil.com. Heck, the blurb just above the fold reads "Redmond, WA - Microsoft purchased evil from Satan for $2.7 billion after many months of tough negotiations." Those don't seem like pro-Microsoft search results to us.

Start typing "is microsoft..." into Bing and the only suggested search is "is Microsoft a monopoly?" The first result for that search is a pretty unbiased look at the case, and the second is a link to the Wikipedia article about United States vs. Microsoft.

That all sounds pretty fair to us. It doesn't make sense that someone at Bing would take the time and risk messing with search results like that. We'll have to put this conspiracy theory back on the shelf.

Icahn is clearly pushing to get Microsoft back to the negotiation table and given Microsoft's response to his letter, this is apparently still a possibility.

Microsoft thinks that a deal with Yahoo is impossible with the current board still in place, because Yahoo's management would be prone to mismanaging the company during the potentially long regulatory delay of the acquisition. Icahn notes that the old board has to go, simply because "one thing is clear -- Jerry Yang and the current board of Yahoo! will not be able to 'botch up' a negotiation with Microsoft again, simply because they will not have the opportunity."

Judging from the letter, Icahn is still completely transfixed on Microsoft as the only possible partner for Yahoo. His first objectives, if elected to the board himself, would be to immediately start negotiating with Microsoft and to replace Jerry Yang "with a new CEO with operating experience".

At the same time, though, rumors about Yahoo being in merger talks with Time Warner also resurfaced again today.

Is this what data portability looks like? Or are these steps just being taken to fend off legal challenges concerning unfair monopolistic practices? Does that matter, really, if the effect is the same?

Now that Bill Gates is gone, as of last week, a new era has officially begun at Microsoft. Skepticism runs deep, however, and no one is sure whether the giant company's recent rhetoric about openness and a new light-weight future are for real.

Insiders working to advance the community of standards based openness tell us that they are getting a better feeling from Microsoft than many armchair critics would lead us to believe is warranted. Some analysts have even begun to wonder whether the old tropes about Microsoft as closed and rival Google as open are as applicable today as they used to be.

Still, we wonder whether releasing technical documentation about existing products is really a move towards data portability. It could be framed as another step to keep Microsoft, and its data protocols, in the center of the market. That's where the company is right now, though, and the documentation being released does seem to allow 3rd party application developers a way to extend a hand to Microsoft customers in order to guide them out into the larger online ecosystem.

This documentation may be necessary for Microsoft to play at all in the future of more usable applications. Opening up programmatic access to Microsoft user data is either a brave or necessary step to take.

We also wonder how Microsoft's data openness initiatives will relate to Live Mesh, the latest contender for the "future of Microsoft" crown.

We look forward to reading more discussion about today's announcement from the development community interested in leveraging Microsoft technical documentation.