Say what you will about Microsoft executives, they have been consistently on message during the past year or so. That message: Things aren’t getting better any time soon. Today: More of the same, from South Korea.
Steve Ballmer says he doesn’t expect to do much search-related M&A, which makes sense since there’s little left to buy. But he may be willing to pay for search. Ask AOL.
Another month, another half-point: Microsoft’s search market share crept up again in August, according to the newest numbers from comScore. Since Steve Ballmer and company launched Bing at the end of May with a $100 million marketing push, they’ve moved from eight percent to 9.3 percent. So: If you’re Yahoo, and you’re about to kick off a Bing-sized marketing blitz of your own, do those numbers give you encouragement or pause?
Kai-Fu Lee, the head of Google’s China operations, is leaving the company this month to start his own company. Lee had a four-year run that began with a bang: Google poached him from Microsoft in 2005, which kicked off a legal battle between the two rivals.
Give this to Steve Ballmer: After getting roundly hammered in the past few years for either missing out on deals (see: AOL/Google) or paying too much for the ones he did land (see: Facebook at $15 billion), he seems to be on a roll.
Last week, Microsoft was roundly praised for the way it structured its Yahoo deal. And today, the company seems to have struck a smart pact with Publicis, which will pay $530 million for Redmond’s Razorfish digital ad agency, which Ballmer never wanted anyway. Just as important: The French ad giant will agree to buy a certain amount of search and display inventory from Microsoft over the next five years.
Can Google’s boldest attack against Microsoft succeed? Absolutely. Even if it flops.
The newly announced Google Chrome OS won’t show up until the second half of 2010, when it will first appear on lightweight netbooks. Eventually, it’s supposed to run on full-sized PCs. But Chrome OS will start working long before consumers start booting it up next year as it forces Steve Ballmer and company to open up yet another front in their long-running war against Google.
Steve Ballmer says he “gulped” when he approved the marketing budget for Microsoft’s new Bing search engine — it’s reportedly in the $100 million range. Here’s where some of that money is going — Microsoft’s new TV ads, which begin running today.
File this one under “hard to say it’s news”: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the company would consider more layoffs–if the economy falls off another cliff. Gotta credit him with consistency: He said the exact same thing a week ago.
Here comes the second round of layoffs at Microsoft, following a first round that started in January. Today’s cuts will likely end up costing about 3,000 workers their jobs. Microsoft had previously warned that it would cut up to 5,000 jobs by 2010. The good news, says CEO Steve Ballmer: The newest round means “we are mostly but not all done” with layoffs. Here’s Ballmer’s memo to the troops.
In the Microsoft-Yahoo saga, no news still constitutes news: Steve Ballmer still wants to do a search deal, but he still hasn’t talked to Carol Bartz about it yet. In other non-news: Ballmer doesn’t own anything made by Apple.
Yahoo investors were supposedly excited about Microsoft’s continued interest in their company yesterday. But before you go nuts, check out what Steve Ballmer actually said to Wall Street at his annual analysts presentation.
Be honest. Are you really going to get anything done today? Didn’t think so. So let this YouTube mashup player entertain you for 10 minutes.
Under normal circumstances, if the CEOs of big companies like Cisco, Microsoft, and Comcast speak in front of an audience of bigwigs, it’s news. But you’re unlikely to hear what John Chambers, Steve Ballmer and Brian Roberts say today and tomorrow at Quadrangle’s Foursquare conference–no press allowed. Unless…
On Wednesday, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang suggested that “the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo.” That’s not going to happen, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking at a conference in Sydney. But Ballmer does leave the door open for a search deal.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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