Microsoft News Tracker

Grant Gross at PC World:

The U.S. Department of Justice asked a U.S. judge today to extend parts of a Microsoft antitrust order for at least two years because of the company’s delays in supplying technical documentation to licensees of its communications protocols.

Microsoft agreed with the DOJ’s request to extend the order two years beyond its scheduled expiration in November 2007, the company said in a statement. The company has also agreed to allow the DOJ and 17 state plaintiffs in the antitrust case to ask for an additional three-year extension if they still have complaints about Microsoft documentation.

The request came in a report to U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the judge overseeing compliance in the US Microsoft antitrust case. Todd Bishop links to the full report and notes that it also reveals that the government has dismissed Google’s concern with the IE7 search box.

Concerning the documentation itself, Aaron Ricadela at InformationWeek notes the familiar refrain:

Microsoft is in trouble on both sides of the Atlantic for failure to publish a workable guide for letting other companies’ server software work well with Windows.

and a new solution:

According to the Department’s court filing, Microsoft assigned the senior VP of its servers and tools business, Bob Muglia, to analyze the documentation problem and try to produce a new draft of the guide to Microsoft’s server communications protocols that would satisfy rivals and federal regulators. But “Mr. Muglia and his team ultimately concluded that the current process of trying to fix issues…one at a time was unlikely,” the filing said. Now, according to the court paper, “Microsoft will rewrite substantial portions of the documentation.” As part of the Justice Department’s extended oversight of the company, Microsoft has agreed to keep Muglia in charge of the project until it’s done, or the court orders otherwise. Microsoft has also agreed to make Muglia available for updates to the court.

Microsoft issued a statement Friday in which it said it would license its communications protocols even after the court order expires, as well as make its engineers available to licensees for technical assistance.

There are more details in the Microsoft statement.

Some major investors feel that as long as Microsoft management is breaking into the piggy bank to fight Google, maybe they ought to help out the shareholders with a stock buyback too. Bloomberg News:

At least two significant shareholders are meeting with Microsoft officials to seek a stock repurchase of as much as $60 billion, to bolster both the price and per-share earnings.

“How can you have a CEO who is really indifferent to the price of the stock?” said Joseph Rosenberg, chief investment strategist at New York-based Loews Corp. “He has his head in the sand.” Rosenberg has managed money for the Tisch family, which controls Loews, for more than 30 years.

As Microsoft is nearing the end of a $30 billion buyback announced in 2004, Ballmer is spending in areas to help compete against Google Inc., owner of the world’s most-used search engine.
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Rosenberg said he told Microsoft officials the company should use $30 billion of its cash to repurchase stock and take on debt for the first time, to the tune of $30 billion. He is seeking an immediate tender for about 2 billion shares.
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The calls for a buyback exemplify the new pressures that Ballmer, 50, and Chairman Bill Gates face as they try to balance shareholder demands with a desire to fuel growth.
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Microsoft’s declining share price during the past five years has attracted value investors, who seek companies with steady growth and returns from buybacks and dividends. After the stock’s 11 drop this year, they are growing impatient to get a return on their investment.
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Microsoft needs to show it is acting to boost the stock and appease shareholders, said Heather Bellini at UBS AG in New York, who is ranked the No. 2 software analyst by Institutional Investor magazine.

“Previously, the problem was apathy on the stock,” she said. “Now the apathy has been replaced with anger.”

More commentary from insistent institutional investors by following the link.

Famous last words via Stan Beer - Monthly Patch Tuesday gone with Vista says Microsoft:

According to a Microsoft security specialist at Microsoft, monthly downloads of security patches to protect against viruses, trojans, worms and other software nasties just itching to take control of our computers will probably be a thing of the past with the coming of Vista. Although there will probably be still the need for the occasional fix, it will not be very often. At least that’s the plan.

I’ll have to call Vegas and see what odds they’re offering on that one.

Dare Obasanjo spots a gem from Mark Nottingham that offers an interesting explanation for the WS-* edifice of Web services - Vendor-pires:

Anne-Thomas Manes extolls the virtues of WS-*;

The single, most important feature that inspires my enthusiasm about WS-* is that it has universal support from all the major vendors.

Ah, there we are; major vendors. What she’s basically saying here is that if you’re silly enough to have invited one of these vampires into your home, you’ll have the option of selecting other vampires to replace them at will, and that your vampire will be able to talk with your neighbors’ when they’re not fighting weird, ritualistic vampire fights.

Show me the interoperable, full and free implementations of WS-* in Python, Perl, Ruby and PHP. You won’t see them, because there’s no intrinsic value in WS-* unless you’re trying to suck money out of your customers. Its complexity serves as a barrier to entry at the same time that it creates “value” that can be sold.

Check out the comments too, but it has to hurt when your technological marvel is hard to distinguish from a fiendish conspiracy.

Speaking of fiendish plots, Nicholas Carr refers us to an article in The Atlantic (subscribers only) by Matthew Stewart on The Management Conspiracy. A small excerpt from Carr:

After retiring from consulting, though, he “decided to check out the management literature”:

Partly, I wanted to process my own experience and find out what I had missed in skipping business school. Partly, I had a lot of time on my hands. As I plowed through tomes on competitive strategy, business process re-engineering, and the like, not once did I catch myself thinking, Damn! If only I had known this sooner! Instead, I found myself thinking things I never thought Id think, like, I’d rather be reading Heidegger! It was a disturbing experience.

Heidegger or Management theory - there’s a heck of a choice!

And speaking of management, but not theory, Steve Ballmer is on a roll delivering bon mots in regard to Google - Google Not in Microsoft Crosshairs, Ballmer Claims:

But Microsoft CEO admits his company wants to replace Google as top Internet ad revenue recipient.

If that’s got you scratching your head, how about Microsoft CEO: catching Yahoo, Google to take time:

“I don’t think you will see some overnight transformation,” Ballmer said. “It is going to have to be longer term. It makes sense for us to talk about five years.”

What else could he say?