Microsoft News Tracker

Reuters:

SEOUL, Nov 30 (Reuters) - South Korea’s anti-trust agency has delayed a ruling on Microsoft Corp.’s business practices to next week, after a review committee again failed to reach an agreement, a Fair Trade Commission (FTC) spokesman said on Wednesday.

The watchdog had been expected to rule this week on allegations the world’s largest software maker breached antitrust laws by incorporating its instant messaging and media player softwares into the Windows operating system.

It was similarly postponed last week.

The Mozilla Foundation today released Firefox 1.5 which is Microsoft Internet Explorer’s biggest competitor and the benchmark by which the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 will be measured. I expect that Firefox reviews will be out shortly but if you can’t wait, PC Magazine has a review of Release Candidate 3.

Ina Fried at CNET:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Microsoft’s first tip for start-ups wanting to work with the software maker: Don’t expect it to give you money.

Microsoft–particularly its MSN group–has been on an acquisition spree, but said it typically doesn’t buy companies that it finds through its emerging business team. Rarer still is a minority investment from Microsoft, said Dan’l Lewin, the corporate vice president heading up business development for Microsoft’s .Net group.

“I would never say never,” Lewin told the 90 or so entrepreneurs who gathered at Microsoft’s campus for a daylong seminar titled “Partnering with Microsoft: The insider’s guide for start-ups.”

“But we’ve done three or four over the last five years,” Lewin said.

More by following the link and also see Cliff Reeves’ post, Behind the veil: how the Microsoft Emerging Business team works.

Paul Krill also has his take on this event at InfoWorld:

Software startups at an industry event Tuesday received a clear message from the venture capital community and Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles): Do not automatically look to Microsoft as a rainmaker.

Fledgling companies were instructed not to set out to be acquired by Microsoft. Moreover, Microsoft usually relies on venture capitalists to seed startups rather than funding companies on its own.

Software executives in attendance were told not to expect Microsoft to be their sales channel, either.
…
“Microsoft is not a channel, and expecting that Microsoft is going to drive revenues [for you] is probably a going-out-of-business strategy,” said James Phillips, CEO and co-founder of Akimbi Systems, a virtualization software company that partners with Microsoft. Startups should not expect Microsoft to sell their product for them, he said.

Microsoft also is not likely to buy your company, according to Sam Jadallah, a general partner at venture capitalist Mohr Davidow Ventures and a former executive in Microsoft’s partnering program.

While at Microsoft, Jadallah said he witnessed 100 companies a week coming in seeking to be acquired by Microsoft. He left Microsoft in 1999 after being there for 12 years. But Microsoft does not buy as many companies as it used to and the price may not be what a startup expects to receive, he said.

More by following that link as well.

Update (11/30): There’s a less favorable view at The Register.

Concerning an item from this morning, Nate Mook has new information at BetaNews:

Microsoft announced in a conference call on Tuesday that no Windows Vista CTP would be released for November, with the development focus shifting to a “quality based schedule, rather than a calendar date one.” Instead, a December CTP will be issued before the Christmas holidays.

Amitabh Srivastava, who heads up Microsoft’s Windows engineering efforts, explained that the company was endeavoring to finish the code for all Windows Vista features by the end of December, with a feature-complete build of Vista shipping “early next year.”
…
Charney would not offer any hints as to when to expect Windows Vista Beta 2, only stating more information would be shared as development progresses.
…
Nonetheless, both Charney and Srivastava repeated that Windows Vista was still scheduled for general availability in the second half of 2006. The next Windows Server release, still code-named Longhorn, remains set for a 2007 debut.

More by following the link as to whether this plan change is actually a “delay” in the Vista schedule.

Update (11/30): Joe Wilcox has some thoughts on Microsoft Redefines Monthly.

Cutting through the press release haze, which seems particularly thick on this one, the Microsoft-Infosys alliance was reaffirmed as Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, inaugurated the Catalytic IT concept center on the Infosys campus in Bangalore, India.

This state-of-the-art concept center has been established to provide customers with an informative and interactive experience wherein they can envision, architect and evaluate Catalytic IT solutions.

The Catalytic IT solution and services suite addresses four pivotal IT business issues: legacy modernization, connected business, infrastructure optimization and enterprise resource planning (ERP) consolidation. Over 30 intellectual property assets, service offerings, blueprints and award-winning solutions enable transformation.

And what exactly is Catalytic IT? The short explanation:

Catalytic IT combines Infosys’ consulting, research, intellectual property and project methods with the latest Microsoft application platform, which includes Windows Server System™, the Microsoft Office system and Visual Studio® development tools.