Microsoft News Tracker

“Summertime and the living is easy.” There’s just a small list of odds and ends this week.

Google reopens Writely, the online word processor it bought in March. Online services related: Wall Street loved Salesforce.com’s earnings report.

Yankee Group Predicts PS 3 Will Win The Battle For Most Console Sales, but Microsoft is making hay while the sun shines.

Mary Jo Foley at Microsoft Watch reminds us that support for Microsoft’s Software Update Services (SUS) is coming to an end in December, so it is time to migrate to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). If you aren’t familiar with either, they are Microsoft offerings for enterprise patch management.

The Zune fans are getting restless - Is The Microsoft Zune Just A Re-Skinned Toshiba Gigabeat?

Florida schools get $80 million from Microsoft antitrust case

Ben Charny at MarketWatch:

According to comScore, 43.7% of all search queries conducted in the United States in July used a Google search engine, down from the 44.7% attributed to Google the month before.
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ComScore reports No. 2 Internet search engine Yahoo Search, from Yahoo Inc., saw its share of U.S. Internet search queries increase to 28.8% in July from 28.5% the month before.

Meanwhile search engine AOL’s U.S. share was up to 5.9% in July from the 5.6% it garnered in June, comScore notes.

Also soaking up Google’s U.S. losses was Ask, owned by IAC Search & Media . The Ask search engine’s U.S. market share rose to 5.4% in July from 5.1% in June, comScore reported.

It wasn’t good news for Microsoft though - their share was flat. The comScore Web site doesn’t have a press release yet, but you do have to wonder about the margin of error since they are shaving fractions of a point. In any case, it looks like Google’s US share has stalled even if you want to count AOL search as part of their total.

Update 8/21: The comScore press release is now online.

Barbara Darrow at CRN reports on Another Vista Wrinkle: Latest Database Required:

When the Windows Vista client finally ships, VARs will have to make sure database customers are running the latest-and-greatest SQL Server bits as well.
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Late last month, Microsoft posted FAQs and information on database requirements for Vista on its site, but the information may have been lost in the summer doldrums. While this wasn’t exactly a state secret, many in the database community were caught unaware. The latest newsletter from the SQL Server Worldwide Users Group (SSWUG) touted the news this week.

Of particular concern is the fact that there will be no support of the older Microsoft Desktop Engine (MSDE), a small, embeddable version of older SQL Server releases. Many customers may have MSDE running and not even know it.

Indeed. It gets installed by a variety of application software like Microsoft’s Small Business Accounting 2006 which shipped last September.

In addition to the above Microsoft link, also see Microsoft’s SQL Server 2000 (including MSDE) on Windows Vista FAQ, but the net is that MSDE users are out of luck on a Vista upgrade unless your software vendor has a fix because SQL Server Express and MSDE aren’t necessarily compatible. Also note that MSDE may well run on Vista, but that the Microsoft position is that it will not be supported.

It’s time for ISVs to think about getting their software certifications for Windows Vista. Robert McLaws points to Microsoft’s US ISV Developer Evangelism Team blog where Warren Wilbee tells us that:

Currently we are in the “Early Adoption” phase of the Window’s Vista Quality Program.

In the “Early Adoption” phase Microsoft would like to invite you to review the 1.0v of the technical standards of the program.
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There are a rich set of marketing benefits associated with this program and the certification test will have Microsoft Partner Program points associated with it. In addition, Microsoft is willing to offer you additional program benefits for your early participation.

There are more details by following the link, but the hub for the Vista logo program is at innovateonvista.com. This time out of the gate there are two distinct levels and logos: “Works with Windows Vista” and “Certified for Windows Vista.”

In the past I have been involved with both the client and server versions of the Windows logo programs for software and so it was interesting to me to see what Microsoft has come up this time around for certification requirements (MS Word file). Frankly, it seems pretty sparse compared to the old “Designed for Microsoft Windows XP” requirements, but I see some new Vista mandates that will likely cause a bit of heartburn like the insistence that “Applications must use the Windows Installer (MSI) or ClickOnce for installation.”

Reuters:

Microsoft Corp. on Friday said it will have purchased about $3.8 billion worth of its shares in a tender offer this week, or less than one-quarter of the planned repurchase of up to $20 billion in stock.

As a result, Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, shifted the timing for its total $40 billion buyback program.

The $3.8B is 155 million shares at $24.75 per share, or about 1.5 percent of the outstanding shares.

Microsoft said on July 20 it planned to buy back as much as $40 billion of its stock, with up to $20 billion purchased through a tender offer in August, and up to $20 billion more through 2011.

On Friday, the company said the remaining $16.2 billion worth of shares offered in the August tender have been added to its longer-range buyback program through June 30, 2011.

The formal press release for today’s announcement is here. The stock buyback was announced in July to gladden the hearts of investors disappointed with the lackluster performance of Microsoft’s share price, so I suppose the big news is that Microsoft wasn’t able to spend all $20B that they were willing to lay out at up to $24.75 per share which was a slight premium to the market price when the buyback was announced. There seem to still be a lot of folks hoping for better days.

Update 8/24: The formal press release announcing the final results of the tender offer is here.