Microsoft News Tracker

Comcast is not unexpectedly looking for the best price on the eyeballs of its cable ISP customers:

Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL are bidding to provide search technology and manage online advertising for Comcast Corp.’s Web site, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday.

Comcast.net, which received almost 17 million unique visitors in February, currently uses Google’s search engine service, but the three-year contract expires at the end of 2007. The site has only experimented with advertising in the past.
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The site is among Google’s biggest individual sources of search queries, from which it generates search advertising revenue. Google is expected to pay Comcast around $70 million this year under its existing contract, although that could top $100 million, the source said.
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Comcast will expect whoever wins its advertising contract to be able to handle its growing online video advertising inventory, including The Fan, which is its collection of entertainment clips. It has also launched new video sites, including Ziddio, which allows users to upload their own videos and Fearnet, a horror TV channel and video Web site.

I’ve seen this billed in some accounts as a rebuff to Google, but it’s rather a simple business decision to try to get the best price. Wouldn’t you?

This week Microsoft is hosting a Small Business Summit and the publicity is mostly a rehash of past announcements with a small business spin. However, there was some surprising new news - Microsoft Unveils Small-Business Phone System Software Designed for Ease of Use:

Today at the second annual Microsoft Small Business Summit, Microsoft Corp. unveiled a small-business Internet protocol (IP) phone system, code-named “Response Point,” designed for ease of use and manageability. The new system comes in an easy-to-install box, supports both voice over IP (VoIP) and traditional phone lines, and includes a voice-activated user interface.

Now in beta testing, “Response Point” will be generally available later this year in three models: D-Link DVX-2000, Quanta Syspine and Uniden Evolo. “I am proud and honored to work with leaders in the computing, telephony and networking fields to bring ‘Response Point’ to market,” said Xuedong Huang, general manager of the “Response Point” team at Microsoft. “Each of our OEM partners brings its own special expertise to our customers, allowing us to serve a much broader range of small businesses.”

OK, so Microsoft is just doing the software and D-Link, Quanta, and Uniden are the OEMs, but that’s a familiar model isn’t it? Aside from the novelty of Microsoft entering the business phone system market, the voice interface is something different:

Phone calls on the system are designed to be easy to make by pressing the “Response Point” button on the phone and telling the system who you want to call. For example, a user could say “Call Jeff at work,” and the system will dial that number based on the contact information entered into the Response Point directory, Smith said.

Response Point can be set up either as a VoIP system or one that uses traditional phone lines, he added.

The systems are intended to be easy to set up, also appealing to small businesses, but there’s also another novel facet of Response Point:

The team that built the Response Point system acted as an independently funded startup within Microsoft, which gave it the advantage of developing the product “from the ground up” for small businesses without having to work with other product teams, Smith said.

In addition, the team operated like a small startup company, allowing it to understand the needs of small businesses, said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman, speaking on the video at the summit. “What they found is that what small businesses need is the ability to simplify the steps it takes to accomplish every day tasks,” he said. One example of how Response Point addresses that is the speech recognition feature, he said.

Aside from Steve Ballmer possibly considering this insane, one can’t help but wonder if this kind of “skunk works” is the hallmark of an organization grown too large. Remember IBM and how they had to develop the IBM PC?

In any case, the Response Point Home Page has more details.

Last night at midnight, Adobe released a public alpha version of it’s forthcoming Apollo application environment:

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced that the first public alpha version of Apollo is now available for developers on Adobe Labs. Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system application runtime that allows web developers to leverage their existing skills in HTML, JavaScript and Ajax, as well as Adobe® Flash® and Adobe Flex™ software to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop. Apollo combines the reach of Internet technologies with the richness of desktop applications, working seamlessly across operating systems and outside the browser to deliver a more consistent and engaging user experience. The alpha version of the Apollo application runtime and the Apollo Software Developer’s Kit (SDK) can be downloaded for free from www.adobe.com/go/apollo.

A beta is due sometime this summer and Version 1.0 is planned for the second half of this year.

Beside the fact that Adobe is a fearsome competitor in the Web application development space (think Dreamweaver and Flash), Apollo is important in that it provides more robust Web applications that escape the browser to provide user interfaces equivalent to desktop apps and are also able to work while disconnected from the Web. If you’re itching to give Apollo a try, See this post by Ryan Stewart which gives more details and some demo apps and the list of best Apollo demos at Techcrunch.

So how does Microsoft play? Good question since while Microsoft is willing to support spiffier Web apps with AJAX and the WPF/E “Flash killer,” they love the mantra that Web apps can’t really compare to desktop applications like Office where they make lots of money.