Microsoft News Tracker

MSNBC.com, the 50/50 partnership of Microsoft and NBC, today announced that it had acquired Newsvine com, one of the new breed of “social news” Web sites. The all cash deal was effective October 5, but the price isn’t being disclosed.

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Sarah Ellison and Dennis K. Berman are reporting in the Wall Street Journal (a Dow Jones publication) that in recent weeks General Electric and Microsoft were in discussions about offering an alternative bid to News Corp’s proposed acquisition of Dow Jones from the controlling Bancroft family. Apparently GE and Microsoft couldn’t reach an agreement and GE may look for another partner to make a bid. It isn’t really clear what part Microsoft would have played in the deal other than providing a fat wallet and experience in partnering with GE in MSNBC.com and the MSNBC TV cable channel.

Todd Bishop spelunks Microsoft’s financial filings and discovers where the 10,000 new employees went and that Microsoft’s legal payouts declined to $1.3 billion.

MySpace driving more retail traffic than MSN search according to Hitwise.

MSN Chat to close, apparently killed by instant messaging.

Depending on who is counting, MSNBC.com still gets 3 to 4 times the traffic of CBSnews.com or ABCnews.com. As always, note that MSNBC.com is still equally owned by Microsoft and NBC and is separate from MSNBC TV which Microsoft largely divested in December.

Windows Desktop Search 3.0 Beta 2 released.

Microsoft launches Mac blog (via Bink.nu). Why not? Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit is a tidy little niche business.

Microsoft Re-Aligns U.S. Financial Services Group into 3 separate groups targeting insurance, capital markets, and banking.

The Xbox game compatibility list for Xbox 360 has been updated and the fans are still grumpy.

Indian state moves to bar Microsoft from schools. The Communists are back in power in Kerala and have banned the sale and manufacture of Coke and Pepsi too. Somehow being the vanguard of the proletariat lacks the verve of the good old days.

Some of the “smaller” stories of the week that didn’t find a post of their own:

Microsoft factoid of the day:

Microsoft’s partnership with NBC gives MSNBC.com exclusive online use of NBC news video clips for 99 years …

Online ad industry forms “click measurement” standards group:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced that they are forming an industry-wide Click Measurement Working Group to create a set of Click Measurement Guidelines. These Guidelines, a joint effort with the Media Rating Council (MRC), will provide the detailed definition of a “click” and the standard against which clicks are measured and counted including the identification of invalid clicks and/or fraudulent clicks.

Member companies who have confirmed their participation in this Working Group thus far include: Ask.com, Google, LookSmart, Microsoft Corp., Yahoo!, and others.

Microsoft invites hackers to test Vista. They need an invitation? Actually, Microsoft got a nice reception at the Black Hat Briefings conference even if attention for the Microsoft hosted sessions waned in the face of more exciting sessions. One such was a demonstration of installing a rootkit on a Vista beta. See, I told you they didn’t need an invitation!

Microsoft and Ziff Davis convert Computer Gaming World into Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. Note that it is PC gaming, not console.

Microsoft, Nintendo sued over game controller patents.

Microsoft to Offer Xbox 360 Bundle? Microsoft may not be cutting the Xbox 360 price to fight Sony’s PS3, but there are lots of other ways to play the game.

Robert McLaws speculates that .NET 3.0 will RTM before Vista.

Microsoft Brings Storage Server OS To Custom System Builders :

Microsoft is planning to bring its Windows Storage Server operating system, currently available only to OEMs, to a wider range of custom-system builders as its Longhorn version of Windows becomes available.

IDC: Global handheld market sees tenth quarter of on year decline in 2Q. Old fashioned PDAs are toast. Related: Dell Abandons PDA Development. Surprisingly, IDC didn’t have a much cheerier outlook for smartphones, in Europe at least. Feature bloat gets the blame.

IPTV subscriber base set for explosive growth, says iSuppli. The good news for Microsoft and all the other vendors is that it has a projected CAGR in subscribers of 92% through 2010. The bad news is that only amounts to 63 million subscriber worldwide in 2010. Still, it’s not chicken feed. Full iSuppli press release here.

Google: We won’t sell music. They seem to be the only ones.

Lenovo Hires Former Microsoft Executive To Lead Human Resources. It’s Kenneth DiPietro, a former vice president of human resources at Microsoft.

Microsoft Hires Agency Search Guru:

Harrison Magun, a general manager of Avenue A/Razorfish, has left the agency to take a position with Microsoft.

Magun recently wrapped up work at the aQuantive agency. Next month, he starts at Microsoft’s MSN unit as director of media analytics.

No real news, just a press release to say they’re doing great:

With MSNBC.com’s tenth anniversary coming up in July, the site has solidified its position as both the leader in news consumers’ minds and the leader in the industry. Not only does the site continue to dominate the Nielsen//Net Ratings against all other broadcast and cable news websites, it is regularly recognized as the best news and information site within the industry, most recently in the “Best Online Publishers'’ issue of MediaPost’s OMMA Magazine. In addition, recent research by JupiterResearch shows that MSNBC.com has outperformed the competition over the past year.
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According to a study by JupiterResearch on the future of news, MSNBC.com is the most trafficked TV news site on the web and is in the enviable position of showing the most significant growth of any TV news site over the last year. MSNBC.com captured 30 percent of total news category traffic and 40 percent year over year growth, two combined statistics no other site can match. In comparison, total online news category traffic grew by seven percent. Competitors such as CNN.com and ABCNews.com who capture 24 percent and five percent of total traffic respectively, each showed below-average growth.

MSNBC.com is still equally owned by Microsoft and NBC and is separate from MSNBC TV which Microsoft largely divested in December.