Microsoft News Tracker

Ina Fried has the story at CNET in Microsoft to bring Hotmail onto the desktop:

This week, Microsoft served up the first test version of Windows Live Mail Desktop, a free Windows program that will let users manage multiple e-mail accounts. The software is designed to work with Windows Live Mail, the successor to Hotmail that is also in beta testing.

The move is a shift for the Hotmail business, which in the past, has charged users who wanted to read their mail using desktop software rather than a Web browser. Microsoft charged $20 and more for its paid service. It’s part of the company’s broader Windows Live effort and could eventually serve as a hub, not just for Windows Live Mail, but for other Microsoft Web-based services as well.

It works as a general purpose email client for any standard IMAP and POP3 mail services as well as Hotmail and Windows Live Mail. The beta is starting out with about 100 users and ramping up to 5,000 over the next few weeks according to the team blog which has more details.

I have to point out that you and I already have a Microsoft product that does most of this called Outlook Express. Well, it may not do Hotmail for you, but it does for me and therein lies a small story. In the early days after Microsoft’s acquisition of Hotmail they enabled free Hotmail access via OE and, as I recall, required one to request installation instructions via mail. I did so and the free access has been grandfathered for the few folks who actually used it through all the twists and turns in the Hotmail business model ever since. That’s also a good way to think of Live Mail Desktop - it’s Outlook Express brought up to date with a variety of modern features and free access to the Microsoft email venues.

Telis Demos interviews Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for the April 3rd edition of Fortune and unlike most executive interviews, some secrets are revealed:

Do you have an iPod?

No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children–in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.

There was no word on whether he used Windows Live Family Safety Settings to enforce the Google edict, but his comment did rouse some amusement amongst commentators.

More importantly for those outside the Ballmer household:

Think you can you crack the iPod market?

It’s going to take an innovative proposition. In five years are people really going to carry two devices? One device that is their communication device, one device that is music? There’s going to be a lot of opportunities to get back in that game. We want to be in that game. Expect to see announcements from us in that area in the next 12 months.

Yet another hint, like the flurry of secret project rumors last week, that Microsoft is working on an “iPod killer” of some sort. As always, the question is whether Microsoft will finally build a portable device themselves.

Since it seems to be a Microsoft antitrust news day, I thought I’d mention two other items. First, it looks like a settlement will be approved in the New York State class action suit against Microsoft. Microsoft is settling with a payment of $350 million in vouchers for other Windows software:

The New York case is the 15th and latest among a series of state-specific class-action suits against the software vendor to be settled in the years following the formal proceedings in the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Microsoft.

Second, there’s a new twist in Korea where Microsoft faces another antitrust lawsuit:

Microsoft faces more problems in South Korea after a company sued the U.S. software giant over its bundling of Windows Media Player with the Windows operating system.
…
Sanview Technology is suing Microsoft for $10 million in compensation for damages allegedly caused to the company by Microsoft’s inclusion of Windows Media Player with its operating system, said JL Yoon, a general director of Sanview, in a telephone interview.

“Microsoft is selling [its product] as a bundle and so we have many difficulties selling our product,” he said.

Sanview is a privately-held company with headquarters in San Jose, California, and an office in Seoul. Its media player is an H.264-based client that can be used to view video streaming services, said Yoon.

Jorge Rueda at the AP:

Venezuela’s science and technology ministry recently held the Latin American Free Software Installation Fair, an event promoting the use of the open-source Linux operating system and other nonproprietary programs over Microsoft’s Windows.

Groups of Linux users have been organizing similar events in other Latin American countries, including Argentina and Colombia, and the Venezuelan government has signed on as a promoter.

The technology ministry said the fair is part Venezuela’s move toward “technological sovereignty, and taking advantage of knowledge for building national scientific independence.”

(Venezuela President Hugo) Chavez, a vehement critic of the capitalist system, issued a decree in 2004 ordering all the country’s public institutions to actively move toward open-source alternatives, hoping to save millions of dollars.
…
Chavez says previous governments spent more on licensing fees for proprietary software than social programs to fight poverty.

Chavez hasn’t directly criticized Microsoft however, just multinational corporations in general.

Earlier this month, Microsoft asked a Federal Court to require Sun, IBM, Oracle, and Novell to provide copies of their correspondence with the European Commission and some other parties in the ongoing EU antitrust case. Today the requests for the Sun and Oracle subpoenas were denied:

A District Court in California on Wednesday quashed an attempt by Microsoft Corp. to force Sun Microsystems Inc. and Oracle Corp. to provide documents in its battle with the European Commission.

But judges in New York and Boston are still considering similar requests against IBM and Novell Inc., respectively, as Microsoft fights against possible fines of up to 2 million euros a day for failing to carry out sanctions imposed by the Commission, lawyers for one of the companies said.

A European Commission hearing officer, Karen Williams, had rejected Microsoft’s for a number of documents, ruling they were confidential. So Microsoft got U.S. courts to issue subpoenas, which were challenged.

“Microsoft has attempted to cast the DG-Competition as an ‘adversary.’ In light of the nature of the European Commission, that label is incorrect,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Trumbull, in a six-page decision issued Wednesday.

“As a matter of comity, this court presumes the neutrality of both the DG-Competition and the European Commission,” the judge wrote.

DG-Competition is shorthand for the Competition Directorate General run by Neelie Kroes, the European Commission’s Competition Commissioner. The legal point is apparently that a presumption of impartiality is often uniformly extended to foreign governmental bodies.