Microsoft News Tracker

Ina Fried reports at CNET that Microsoft slipped the release of Windows Mobile 7 (codenamed "Photon") to the second half of 2009 from what had been expected to be an early first half delivery.

The delay is a significant blow for the software maker, which has been counting on the next version of Windows Mobile to enable devices that better rival Apple’s iPhone. Among the features widely expected to be part of the release is advanced gesture recognition, perhaps along the lines of the iPhone, but possibly also using the camera as a means for reading gestures. Microsoft’s Tellme unit, which focuses on speech input, has also been working on Windows Mobile 7 features.

Not to mention Google’s Android phone operating system which was debuted yesterday by partner T-Mobile who will have their Android phone available on October 22. Android targets the same smartphone market segment as Windows Mobile 7.

Yahoo’s proposed deal with Google to run some Google search ads may be only for the USA and Canada, but European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has apparently spotted something there to raise her hackles:

European Union antitrust watchdogs are looking into a planned deal between Internet giants Google Inc and Yahoo Inc to share some advertising revenue.

"In mid-July, we decided to open a preliminary investigation on our own initiative into potential effects of the Google-Yahoo agreement on competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) market," said Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

Neelie always has her hackles raised, of course, but while I think there’s a lot of antitrust gold to be mined in Google’s stranglehold on search, the deal with Yahoo is hardly a poster child. Instead, how about a thousand examples similar to Sourcetool.com as described by Joe Nocera last Friday in the NY Times?

There’s even more Google antitrust gold in the latest whine of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) if you ignore their shortsighted view that somehow preventing the Yahoo deal will save them from Google. Reading between the lines it’s entirely clear that they currently in thrall to Google and Yahoo’s independence or lack thereof is irrelevant.

I also see that that some of the always pesky US state attorneys general have joined the Google hunt also using the Google-Yahoo deal as an excuse. Now if there exist any greater publicity hounds than Neelie Kroes, it’s this crew and they certainly aren’t going to limit themselves to odd deals with Yahoo. If I were a betting man, I’d say that Google is shortly in for a world of antitrust hurt and no one will have greater schadenfreude than Microsoft.

John R. Wilke at the WSJ reports today that the US Department of Justice has retained top rank litigator Sanford Litvack to help them determine whether there are grounds for antitrust action against Google:

The Justice Department has quietly hired one of the nation’s best-known litigators, former Walt Disney Co. vice chairman Sanford Litvack, for a possible antitrust challenge to Google Inc.’s growing power in advertising.

Mr. Litvack’s hiring is the strongest signal yet that the U.S. is preparing to take court action against Google and its search-advertising deal with Yahoo Inc. The two companies combined would account for more than 80% of U.S. online-search ads.
…
For weeks, U.S. lawyers have been deposing witnesses and issuing subpoenas for documents to support a challenge to the deal, lawyers close to the review said. Such efforts don’t always mean a case will be brought, however.

Mr. Litvack, who was the Justice Department antitrust chief under President Jimmy Carter, has been asked to examine the evidence gathered so far and to build a case if the decision is made to proceed, the lawyers close to the review said.

It isn’t clear whether a U.S. challenge would target the Google-Yahoo deal alone or take on broader aspects of Google’s conduct in the growing online-advertising business.

And the last part is the rub of course, since overturning the Google-Yahoo deal (which Microsoft has vociferously opposed) would only really hurt Yahoo, while an investigation of abuses of Google’s dominant market position could result in a world of hurt for them and renewed life for Microsoft’s online advertising ambitions.

Microsoft wants everyone to know that they have had 1 million customers sign up for the beta of their Google Docs spoiler, Windows Live Workspace, which was originally offered publicly last December. More importantly, they are telling Mary Jo Foley that it will be out of beta by the end of the year.

Recall that Office Live Workspace is not a Web version of Office but a free add-on for regular Microsoft Office that permits easy Web collaboration and sharing of Office documents thereby undercutting one of the key selling points of Google Docs and the other Web office packages. Oddly though, there is an online word processor at the Office Live Workspace Web site called Web Notes, but it isn’t too useful because you can’t download created documents to your PC or use it to edit PC documents. Why did they bother?

After an inadvertent unveiling yesterday, Google today will officially launch a beta of an open source Web browser called Chrome in 100 countries for Windows users only. There’s a comic book explaining the technical aspects, but the net is that Chrome is designed to be a more reliable foundation for Web browsing and running serious applications than today’s Web browsers:

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

I certainly sympathize with the reliability and speed objectives, but have to observe that a good deal of useful Internet Explorer and Firefox functionality is provided by add-ons (both commercial and free) and there will be a dearth of them initially for Chrome. (I am assuming they are permitted.) Still, Chrome seems to be a long term Google project so plug-in availability will surely evolve with time.

The bigger question, of course, is how Chrome will affect Internet Explorer and Firefox. For the former, the competition will undoubtedly spur Microsoft to greater efforts than their sometimes desultory development of IE, since they will rightly view Chrome as yet another attempt by Google to move applications from the Windows client to the Web.

As for Firefox, the folks at Mozilla are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the obvious competitive threat while proceeding with their normally aggressive development schedule. That surely is the right approach for them since Google is famous for launching numerous ships, many of which gain little headway. Presumably Mozilla’s lucrative advertising deal with Google is still good, but adoption numbers may drop now that Google has a new favorite browser.

Update: A pertinent observation on Chrome from Nicholas Carr:

Although I’m sure Google would be thrilled if Chrome grabbed a sizable chunk of market share, winning a "browser war" is not its real goal. Its real goal, embedded in Chrome’s open-source code, is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers so that they can better support (and eventually disappear behind) the applications. The browser may be the medium, but the applications are the message.

Update: Google Chrome is now available for download.