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It looks like the glow is off the elopement of Microsoft and Novell that was announced and consummated on Nov. 2. The proximate cause seems to be Steve Ballmer’s public carrying on about Linux infringing Microsoft patents and the resultant furor among Novell’s relatives in the open source community who already weren’t too pleased with the nuptials.
This drove Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian to an open letter today:
Since our announcement, some parties have spoken about this patent agreement in a damaging way, and with a perspective that we do not share. We strongly challenge those statements here.
We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patents. Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.
Our stance on software patents is unchanged by the agreement with Microsoft. We want to remind the community of Novell’s commitment to, and prior actions in support of, furthering the interests of Linux and open source, and creating an environment of free and open innovation. We have a strong patent portfolio and we have leveraged that portfolio for the benefit of the open source community.
Meanwhile, Microsoft was unrepentant:
“Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents. The agreement between our two companies puts in place a workable solution for customers for these issues, without requiring an agreement between our two companies on infringement.
“Both of our companies are fully committed to moving forward with all of the important work under these agreements. The agreements will advance interoperability between Windows and Linux and put in place a new intellectual property bridge between proprietary and open source software. Customers and participants throughout our industry will clearly benefit from these results.
“We at Microsoft respect Novell’s point of view on the patent issue, even while we respectfully take a different view. Novell is absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems as part of entering into the patent collaboration agreement. At Microsoft we undertook our own analysis of our patent portfolio and concluded that it was necessary and important to create a patent covenant for customers of these products. We are gratified that such a solution is now in place.”
At least they’re still speaking, but somehow I don’t think this marriage is going to last.
I’m not firmly convinced of the accuracy of any of the Web traffic measurement services, but they’re always good for a new twist. Today, Nielsen/NetRatings didn’t disappoint with their October US search rankings. To net it out:
All the smaller players showed year to year growth in searches, so Microsoft was the odd man out.
Yahoo was also enjoying some other positive buzz today:
A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat.
In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads.
But the long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo.
Update Nov. 21: comScore weighs in:
Update Nov. 22 Danny Sullivan slices and dices the above data plus that from Hitwise. Among other conclusions:
Slice it how you want, no one is reporting a pretty picture for Microsoft. Unlike Yahoo, they haven’t held share. It’s drop, drop, drop.
It looks like another Joanne Bradford special - Nissan North America Expands Online Advertising Alliance With Microsoft:
Nissan North America Inc. (NNA) will dramatically expand its Web advertising initiatives across online properties of Microsoft Corp., the two companies announced today. This expanded alliance will enable Nissan to more powerfully engage with consumers across multiple digital touch points throughout Microsoft® Digital Advertising Solutions including MSN®, Windows Live™, Live Search, Xbox® and Windows Mobile®. Furthermore, this new alliance allows Nissan to work directly with Microsoft content developers, strategists and subject matters experts to help Nissan reach its target consumers.
The first part is a good old fashioned advertising deal, but what about the second part? What would you say if your favorite newspaper or magazine proudly announced that their “content developers, strategists and subject matters experts” were going to “work directly” with a major advertiser?
Key parts of this alliance will include sponsorship of the “Forza Motorsport™ 2” console game on Xbox 360® and global tournament on Xbox Live, a co-branded “blogazine” for Infiniti on MSN called “Open for Design” (http://openfordesign.msn.com), search advertising with Microsoft adCenter, behavioral targeting, and participation in pilot advertising programs within Windows Mobile and Microsoft Office Live. Central to the alliance is a customized regional dealer strategy that involves the embedding of Nissan and Infiniti dealerships into Live Local Search mapping technology and geo-targeted advertising for dealerships.
If that’s all it is, then it’s pretty innocuous except for the “blogazine” which at least is co-branded. Actually, clicking through to the site reveals that it has very little to do with automobiles and aside from a “Curated by Infiniti” logo, very little advertising. Probably very little traffic either, but that’s a different problem.
On Sunday Nintendo launched its Wii videogame console to large but amiable crowds:
A large part of that was because everyone was confident that they’d be going home with Wii consoles in hand. So the Wii line was, as Everett had observed, notably calm. There was only one situation in which the line began to resemble a mob scene, and that’s whenever Nintendo representatives passed by to hand out swag: Wii T-shirts, beanies and baseball caps. For that, the crowd went wild.
Free stuff wasn’t the only way Nintendo kept fans entertained before the launch. There were also plenty of opportunities to actually try out the Wii, as a number of the consoles were attached to TVs that were strapped onto the fronts of Segway Human Transporters. Nintendo’s crew rode the “Segwiis” (as one blogger nicknamed them) around and stopped intermittently so that gamers in line could give the new system a test drive. And for passersby who weren’t in line, there was music cued up by DJs and performances by dance group AntiGravity.
As for glitches with the unit, they seem to be remarkably few except for the folks at Popular Science who broke theirs taking it apart, and the gamer who cracked his TV when he let go of the motion-sensing controller. That’s what the wrist strap is for, fellas!
With the launches of Sony’s PS3 and the Wii out of the way (although the Wii launches in Japan on Dec. 2), I expect that the next episode in the battle of the videogame consoles won’t play out until the 4th (calendar) quarter sales are reported. Even then, Sony and, to a lesser extent, Nintendo will be limited by product shortages so the focus will be on how well Microsoft’s Xbox 360 does in the the last quarter of their first mover advantage.
Ever since Microsoft snuck out the Office Genuine Advantage copy protection scheme in October, there’s been speculation as to what the full implications would be for Office 2007 and whether there would be a “reduced functionality mode” just as was implemented in Vista for copy protection. Well, Mary Jo Foley has spelunked the Microsoft Knowledge Base and found the Office 2007 kill switch. Hit the link for the details, but basically Office 2007 will only read documents, but not create or modify them if you fail the OGA activation test.
As I’ve observed before, there’s no particular objection to Microsoft protecting their products. It’s just that the sorry record of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is such that there’s an expectation of a non-negligible number of annoyed legitimate customers. Since the Office 2007 reduced function mode is only triggered by an activation test, the potential for annoyance is less, but with the ongoing OGA validation check which apparently uses different technology than WGA, the customers will now get to see if the Office folks did a better job.
Update Nov. 22: Microsoft says this isn’t new news and empasizes the difference between activation and validation.
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