Microsoft News Tracker

LiveSide has been reporting that two new variants of Windows Live Search are on the way and Microsoft’s public relations firm Waggener Edstrom has confirmed it.

Windows Live Academic Search is targeted at academic journal searching like Google Scholar. There are more details here and here and it will be launched tomorrow, April 11.

Windows Live Product Search is apparently a rival to Google’s Froogle offering in providing shopping searches on product and price. Of course, this also competes with the multitude of shopping engines from Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, other specialized providers and not to be forgotten, MSN Shopping and Windows Live Shopping. Presumably there will be some sort of link up with the latter.

Per the Associated Press:

Trend Micro Inc., a maker of antivirus and network security software, said on Monday it received an extension on a 2004 contract with Microsoft Corp. to provide antivirus scanning and cleaning services to 230 million MSN Hotmail e-mail accounts.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; nor did the company say for how long the contract had been extended.

Apparently the Microsoft server antivirus products (Microsoft Client Protection, Antigen) don’t apply, aren’t ready yet, or can’t handle the considerable Hotmail load.

People’s Republic of China President Hu Jintao is coming to the United States next week to meet with President Bush and there have been a variety of public signings of big money Chinese purchasing deals to illustrate what a good trading partner the PRC is for the United States. Part of the public relations push is to provide the impression that the PRC is now serious about intellectual property protection and Microsoft played its own part in that last week. Now comes word that the PRC will be requiring operating systems to be installed on all new PCs:

China’s computer manufacturers must install operating software before their goods leave the factory gates, the latest effort to address the thorny issue of piracy before President Hu Jintao visits the United States.

The order was given in a notice issued jointly by the Ministry of Information Industry, the State Copyright Bureau and the Ministry of Commerce on March 31 and released to reporters on Monday.

Chinese counterfeiting is a major irritant in U.S.-China trade and American software firms have said they want to see progress on the issue at the 2006 meeting of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in Washington on Tuesday.

“Computers manufactured within the country’s borders should have pre-installed authorised operating software systems when they leave the factory,” the notice said.
…
Hu is scheduled to visit Microsoft’s headquarters before he meets President Bush on April 20.

I have to observe that an “authorised operating system” could be just about anything including a free DOS clone with CD driver installed and all ready for a customer to slide in a pirated Windows CD, so without clarification (not to mention enforcement) this new rule is meaningless.

The Microsoft appeal of the European Commission’s 2004 antitrust ruling is starting later this month and Bloomberg News is reporting the positions that each side are planning to take:

Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, will tell a European Union appeals court that an EU antitrust order violates international law by forcing it to share information with competitors, court documents show.

Microsoft is seeking to overturn a 2004 ruling and annul a 497 million-euro ($601 million) fine during a five-day hearing starting April 24 at the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg. The company was ordered to license so-called network protocols, which would let rivals make products that can share files and printers with the Windows operating system.

The protocols are “valuable trade secrets,” Microsoft will say, according to documents summarizing both sides’ arguments obtained by Bloomberg News. Disclosure “has the effect of denying it the right to reserve to itself the exploitation of its inventions,” the documents say.

As for the European Commission response, they will claim the decision was justified because Microsoft abused the dominance of Windows and:

The commission will say Microsoft hasn’t proven that the protocols are innovative and must be protected under intellectual property rules, the documents show.

“Microsoft has failed to demonstrate that the protocols for which it must disclose specifications embody hitherto secret and intrinsically valuable inventions,” said the documents, outlining the commission’s argument. The report includes a 106- page summary of Microsoft’s and the EU’s case and 45 pages of evidence submitted by outside parties on behalf of each side.

More details by following the link.