Microsoft News Tracker

Joris Evers at CNET plays a dirge for independent antispyware vendors in Spyware-killing Vista could take out rivals. Some of it is due to changes in Vista and Internet Explorer 7, but a lot is due to the free Microsoft Defender offering:

While this may be good news for buyers of Vista, it is not for anyone who makes a living from selling anti-spyware software. The worldwide market has boomed recently, reaching $97 million in revenue in 2004, up 240.4 percent from a year earlier, according to IDC. However, companies such as Webroot Software and Sunbelt Software are in for tough times, analysts said.

“The aftermarket for Windows anti-spyware is going to dry up almost completely,” said Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith. “Windows Defender is going to become the default anti-spyware engine, certainly for most consumers that have Vista machines.”

Gartner’s Pescatore agreed. “Integrating Windows Defender into Windows Vista is sort of the last nail into the standalone anti-spyware coffin,” he said.

Following the link provides some responses from the vendors who are talking a brave story and/or whistling past the graveyard, but I think the big story here is that this seems like prime antitrust regulator bait. We can all frame the argument - “Company with predominant market share buys aftermarket firm, then offers its product for free driving other aftermarket firms out of business.” The best Microsoft defense is likely a claim of quality enhancement for their operating system products, which isn’t too flattering, but may do the trick.

Sony’s stumble with the PS3 release draws a not unexpected comment from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

“In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation,” Ballmer told FORTUNE in an interview on Thursday afternoon. “Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did.”

But Microsoft (Research) will not formally revise its projected market share for the Xbox 360, and it will not speed up production to capitalize on Sony’s delay, because it’s already producing the Xbox as fast as possible. “We’ve been saying ‘make them faster’ before yesterday,” says Ballmer.

More interesting is what he had to say about current Xbox status:

There is still a production bottleneck because of problems with a component vendor, whom Ballmer declined to name, but he expects Microsoft to sell 5 million systems by June. “We’re sort-of on track,” he says, “though it would’ve been nice at Christmas to have one for everyone who wanted one.”
…
Microsoft plans “major pushes” of the Xbox 360 in France, Italy, Spain and Japan — markets where the first generation Xbox didn’t perform as well as Microsoft hoped.

“I am palpably optimistic,” Ballmer says. “I think we are absolutely in the game for the market position it would be nice to have.”
…
Ballmer dismissed Sony’s expectation that Playstation’s Blu-Ray DVD player will give it an advantage over the Xbox, which will soon offer an HD-DVD peripheral. “Sony’s going to try and define that as a fundamental battleground, but I don’t think it is a fundamental battleground,” he says. “I don’t care whether it’s Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, there’s not going to be a lot of content in either format this year.”

Very sensible. If, as is generally believed, Sony delayed the PS3 because of Blu-ray problems, they are pursuing fools gold, not to mention that their Blu-ray drive is a very expensive standard feature.

Bink.nu spotted this story earlier in the week in a posting on a Microsoft weblog and now Mary Jo Foley at Microsoft Watch has rounded up the details. Matt Branaugh at the Boulder, Colorado Daily Camera:

Microsoft Corp. is in the process of acquiring Boulder-based remote-sensing company Vexcel Corp. for an undisclosed sum.

“The acquisition is part of Microsoft’s exciting vision to deliver a dynamic … digital representation of the real world that provides the best local search and mapping experience to consumers, businesses and government,” said Jerry Skaw, Vexcel’s marketing communications manager.
…
Regulatory approvals in the United States, Germany and Italy are pending, so Skaw declined to comment on details of the transaction, including a sales price or any anticipated changes to Vexcel’s employee count.

But Vexcel’s operation will remain in Boulder, he said. He wouldn’t say whether the site would adopt the Microsoft name.

Vexcel now employs about 70 people at 1690 38th St. and another 60 people at offices in Canada, Austria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The 21-year-old, privately held company’s specialties include synthetic aperture radar processing, remote-sensing ground stations, photogrammetry, aerial mapping and geographic information systems and services.

Vexcel’s flagship product is UltraCam, a large-format digital aerial camera.

Looking at the Vexcel web site, there is a large hardware component which is an odd match for Microsoft. Presumably the real interest is in their mapping service for use in Virtual Earth / Windows Live Local.

Update 3/20: Microsoft confirms but offers few details.

Update 5/4: Microsoft press release:

Microsoft Corp. today announced it has acquired Vexcel Corp., a worldwide leader in photogrammetry, imagery and remote sensing technologies. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

This deal, the second in the past six months for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth business unit, was done to enhance the talent, technologies, products and services dedicated to fulfilling Microsoft’s broad vision for best-of-breed local search and mapping solutions for consumers, businesses and government.
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In addition, Vexcel’s current assets, including the Ultra-Cam and remote sensing technologies, will help produce the richest, most dynamic sets of imagery and data in the world, which will be integrated into Windows Live™ Local and the Virtual Earth™ platform offerings.

So it looks like for the time being Microsoft is going to continue the hardware side of the business.