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Just like their Live Search Club , Microsoft’s Live Search cashback incentive program has drawn some "entrepreneurs":
That’s right, $630 in cash can be yours for $714. But if you access the page through a Live Search ad link that returns 35 per cent of the purchase price, you can make up the difference. And then some. So you make a profit, and so does the seller. At the expense of Microsoft and eBay.
Hit the link for further details as it is not clear that Microsoft is actually offering 35% anymore, but this was as inevitable as death and taxes.
(Via Bink.nu) Adam Cohen of Dow Jones has the story from Davos:
Microsoft Corp. is developing on an online payment system that will be cheaper than credit card transactions, making it possible for companies to charge small fees for Web-based content and services they now offer for free.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told a breakfast meeting here at the World Economic Forum that he reviewed a plan to enter the online payments business during his “think week,” a twice-yearly ritual where he usually isolates himself in a backwoods cabin to study new ideas.
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Gates described a system that would undercut credit card fees, making it profitable for an online newspaper to charge small fees for individual articles, for example.“If you want to charge somebody $0.10 or $1 a month, that will just be a click…you won’t have to manage some funny thing or pay some big credit charge, where half of it goes to the clearing,” Gates said.
What Mr. Gates describes is a micropayments system rather like Microsoft Points which started out as the popular “currency” of the Xbox Live Marketplace, but since has spread to the Zune Marketplace and general merchandise. Heck, maybe it is Microsoft Points. In any case, the report will give the folks at eBay’s PayPal and Google Checkout something to think about.
There seems to be a shortage of real Microsoft news today, but there’s no shortage of rumors:
The Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo rumor is back again. Or is it Yahoo buying AOL? Or merging with eBay or buying Facebook or…? The variants are seemingly as endless as Yahoo’s perceived problems.
For a brief while Windows Vista RTM was imminent today, but the definitive rumor remains Paul Thurrott’s prediction of a just in time delivery on November 8. For humor there’s also the cyclical theory of Microsoft operating system quality which indicates that Vista may be doomed from the start (via Enterprise OpenSource Magazine).
News is filtering out that Steve Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering, is orchestrating another reorg at MSN and Windows Live.
Zune European Launch May Be Delayed Until 2008 (via Zune News Site):
One reason for the delay is that Microsoft doesn’t yet have a European product czar for the Zune to coordinate a launch. And the recently appointed figurehead for Zune International is just now working to build up relationships in region. Even more telling is that fact that Microsoft’s doesn’t yet have an infrastructure in place in Europe to provide music online. “We haven’t yet selected a music store provider to build marketplace in the UK, which means we’re way off launch,” said Dene Schonknecht, media and entertainment alliance manager for Microsoft.
and via the same source since no list of rumors is complete without one involving Apple, Apple iPhone Speculation Reaches Fever Pitch. It’s supposedly coming in January.
As Microsoft’s earnings report approaches next week, here are some brief notes on the results reported this week by other industry players.
Google Inc. on Thursday posted a 92 percent jump in quarterly profit and revenue near the top end of expectations as the company tightened its grip on the Web search market, sending its shares up 6.7 percent.
Rob Hof says that’s “a whole bunch more YouTubes.” Continuing:
“It was a clean beat quarter,” said Tim Boyd, an analyst with Caris & Co. “These guys just continue to kill it. The stock should be going up from here. The number one question is what can (they) do with YouTube and how quickly it can have an impact.”
More details here including the fact that 40% of revenues come from non-Google owned sites. Maybe Microsoft will rethink their disdain for 3rd party publishers.
Apple Computer Inc. shares climbed almost 6 percent Thursday after beating Wall Street’s profit expectations for its fourth quarter on strong sales of its iPod and Macintosh computers.
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After the markets closed Wednesday, Apple said it shipped 8.7 million iPods, up 35 percent from the year-ago period. A good back-to-school season also helped Apple ship a record 1.6 million computers, up 30 percent from a year earlier, breaking its previous record of 1.38 million units in the first fiscal quarter of 2000.
The sizzling sales put Apple’s fiscal 2006 revenue at a record $19.3 billion, up from its previous all-time high of $13.9 billion last year.
Paul Thurrott notes that despite growing faster than the overall PC market, Apple’s share is still less than 3%. Regardless, you have to give Apple credit for successfully negotiating a processor architecture change.
Yahoo, the world’s largest portal, said yesterday that its profit fell sharply in the third quarter and that growth would continue to slow for two main business lines — graphic display advertising and advertising on Web searches.
The company’s chief executive, Terry S. Semel, was unusually contrite yesterday in a conference call with investors.
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Search revenue, he said, would substantially increase when Yahoo completed a long-delayed computer system called Project Panama, which will use a new way to determine how ads are placed on search result pages.
Mr. Semel announced that the first customers had started using the system. But only after all of the company’s search advertisers have converted to the new system, sometime after the end of the year, will Yahoo introduce the new auction method, which is the part of the system meant to improve revenue.
Aside from the tardy Panama, Yahoo has an antique reliance on banner ads which have been under pricing pressure.
Others:
