microsoft

Google Launches Its Own Browser

09/01/2008:
Google launches its own browser on Labor Day holiday. The much anticipated browser is called, called “Chrome” was announced over the holidays with downloads available as early as Tuesday 02 September 2008. The browser will run on Microsoft’s Windows operating system and efforts by Google are still underway to also offer the browser in compatible with Apple Inc.’s Mac computer and the Linux operating system. The download is going to be available in more then 100 countries. This will put the new browser against MicroSoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s free browser Firefox.

Cuil Search Engine Launched

07/28/2008:
Yet another search engine has been launched to compete for your searches. Online ad revenues is huge with a big marketplace and hence everyone wants the piece of the pie. Now, a group of former Google employees have launched to compete against their previous employer. The new search engine called Cuil , which is pronounced ‘cool’, claims to provide a more comprehensive guide to the web. Cuil claims to have indexed more then 120 billion web pages with which they have to search against to provide better results in a new way. Now online time will tell if Cuil will overcome Google, or maybe can instead overcome Yahoo and MSN?.

Microsoft’s Open XML document standard

03/21/2008:
Microsoft’s Open XML document standard not approved by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). ISO member-countries had eceived request for recommendation from ECMA six months ago and ISO will take a final decision based on global response on March 29. Given that more than 95% of Office applications are Microsoft products, this will be a big blow to Microsoft. Now will have to see how this effects the rival ODF format has been developed by a consortium called the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) which has been supported by IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and others.

Microsoft offers Fast Buyout Offers

01/08/2008:
Microsoft has offered to buy Fast Search and Transfer (Fast), a Norwegian enterprise search company, for $1.2 billion. This will place Microsoft in a good position of enterprise as it try to become one stop shop for the enterprise with its wide range of products.

Microsoft, Google, Yahoo Fined

12/19/2007:
The big three online advertisers, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo were fined for allowing online gambling businesses to advertise online gambling using the three companies respectively ads mediums. The U.S. Department of Justice announced that the fines added to the over $40 million with Microsoft is to pay the largest penalty totaling $21 million. While Yahoo will pay $7.5 million and Google is to pay $3 million.