Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft’s Bing search engine again slowly inched its way higher on the ratings scale in August, according to the latest figures from industry watcher comScore. However, instead of repeating July’s performance by taking market share away from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), the second-place search engine and a major Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) partner, this time Bing has […]

Microsoft expects to announce Tuesday that three upcoming versions of Windows Embedded, one built on Windows 7, have been released to manufacturing. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) plans to tell attendees at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston that it has sent Windows Embedded Enterprise, Windows Embedded Server, and Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Release 3 (R3) to […]

Stories that Microsoft is planning to release smartphones under its own brand name have been burning up many leading rumors sites for months. The purported phones — codenamed ‘Pink,’ rumors say — aim to give Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) a leg up in the Windows Mobile space where the company has been having a hard slog […]

Microsoft on Friday said it has sued five so-called “malvertisers” in Seattle civil court as part of an effort to stop the practice of hiding malicious code in seemingly safe online ads that instead seek to prey on users. “[Malvertiser] ads may redirect users to a website that advertises rogue security software, also known as […]

Microsoft launched sales promotions Thursday for Windows 7 in the U.S. and the U.K. — as well as in several other nations, that give deep discounts to students on upgrades to the new system as long as they have a valid e-mail address at a college or university. The cost: $30 in the U.S., and […]

Microsoft finally began the promised, invitation-only technical preview of its Office 2010 Web Apps on Thursday, slightly later than originally promised. One caveat, though: it’s not a beta test release yet and as such, it’s missing a few critical capabilities and features. Longer term, if Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) pulls everything off, it’s going to be […]

Microsoft’s Bing search engine continues to enjoy month after month of incremental growth since its launch in May, reaching double-digit market share in August, something MSN had not enjoyed in years. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing picked up 1.7 percentage points of market share in August to reach 10.7 percent of searches, according to figures released […]

Microsoft Wednesday confirmed it is in talks with the European Commission (EC) regarding its proposed search-for-advertising deal announced earlier this summer with Yahoo. On July 29, when the two search engine also-rans announced they would combine resources in order to take on search behemoth Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), the companies’ top lawyers said that regulatory approval […]

Microsoft today is expected to unveil key details of the next version of Project, which will roll in key improvements while strengthening its ties with other Office software. The new edition of Project will feature the Office “ribbon” user interface, as well as a new timeline view and the ability to sync with SharePoint task […]

Click to enlarge. Source: Microsoft Microsoft’s new Zune HD music player went on sale Tuesday, after months of mystery and sudden revelations. But still unanswered is whether Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) competitor to Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPod Touch will be able to live up to the hype that built up behind it since spring, when word surfaced of […]

As the clock ticks down to Microsoft’s hearing next week before the appeals court regarding its patent lawsuit tête-à-tête with i4i, Monday was the day for the software titan to submit its final brief in the smaller firm’s $290 million patent infringement case. Meanwhile, Toronto-based i4i submitted its final brief in the case last week. […]

If Microsoft was hoping to ease PC administrators’ planning anxieties over Windows 7 migrations, a blog post by one of its own teams may or may not help. That’s because recent test scenarios show that for many users, the upgrade process will be fairly painless, taking as little as 30 minutes. However, for some percentage […]