Microsoft Office 2010 - for free, on the web. Yeah, you heard me right. [more inside]
posted by Muddler on Jul 13, 2009 - 106 comments

Google Chrome OS: Google says it will release a new operating system, built around its Chrome browser, which will be open source and will initially be targeted at netbooks. Shipment is expected second half of 2010. No response yet from Microsoft. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle on Jul 7, 2009 - 227 comments

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, goes beta. Cribbed from live.com, the layout for bing is... strangely familiar. Early reviews are mixed, with mixed results, mostly noting that the results less useful than google, especially when it comes to google.
posted by boo_radley on Jun 1, 2009 - 173 comments

Microsoft buys stake in Facebook. Microsoft has paid $240m (£117m) for a 1.6% stake in Facebook that values the hugely popular social networking site at $15bn (£7.3bn). Facebook spurned an offer from Microsoft's rival Google, which was also keen to invest the site. Microsoft will also sell internet ads for Facebook outside the United States as part of the deal that took several weeks of negotiating. Mark Zuckerberg started the online social networking site in his Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago. [more inside]
posted by Tommy Gnosis on Oct 25, 2007 - 114 comments

The Open Content Alliance poses a threat to Google and Microsoft's competing library digitization projects. OCA was founded by the Internet Archive, whose main claim to fame is the Wayback Machine, designed to archive the internet's web history. OCA's mission is to open the nation's library collections to universal web search by digitizing books and making them as widely accessible as possible. [more inside]
posted by richards1052 on Oct 22, 2007 - 9 comments

Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective Microsoft Employee writes: "The following has been making the rounds on just about every internal email list I belong to in Microsoft. Here it is to share a little insight with the rest of the world. Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not. Any peek is a good peek." Let the metavalanche begin.
posted by psmealey on Jun 27, 2007 - 66 comments

Google v Microsoft: Fight!
posted by taosbat on Jun 10, 2007 - 26 comments

Invasion of the TeRKs!
posted by ZenMasterThis on Apr 25, 2007 - 3 comments

people aren't happy about Google canceling it's API and replacing it with an AJAX search widget you're supposed to put on your page (and one that's deliberately obfuscated and difficult to extract data from). Google's obsession with secrecy isn't going unnoticed, and some employees are starting to feel like the magic is gone and they're being treated like children. Oh, and just to keep things in perspective Microsoft just filed a patent on RSS
posted by delmoi on Dec 24, 2006 - 35 comments

A9 gets MS? Amazon's search tool / portal, formerly powered by Google, is now using Microsoft's Windows Live search service. I first noticed when my image results went missing (which sucks, but I still use it for the incentive program). Does this mean MS is shifting out of the half-assery phase of its search strategy? What happens when its adCenter keyword program opens up? [commentary]
posted by grobstein on May 14, 2006 - 10 comments

NSA,FISA, and Privacy It is of course the president who finally approves of actions that may or may not be deemed legal but before 9/11, this is what he had been advised to consider "The largest U.S. spy agency warned the incoming Bush administration in its "Transition 2001" report that the Information Age required rethinking the policies and authorities that kept the National Security Agency in compliance with the Constitution's 4th Amendment prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures" without warrant and "probable cause," according to an updated briefing book of declassified NSA documents posted today on the World Wide Web. If this is the sort of reading you enjoy, then by all means dig about here: But then Windows allowed NSA to have a sure access to your machine . And by now we all know that Google will fight the government on making its search data base available in order to protect your privacy.(Reality: to protect Google stuff). And if you worry about search engines tracking you and making data available, then here is a workaround
posted by Postroad on Jan 20, 2006 - 16 comments

Google pays $1 for every IE user converted to Firefox - but why? Google don't own Firefox, so is this only to piss off Microsoft?
posted by Orange Goblin on Nov 30, 2005 - 58 comments

It's long been known that if you type "failure" into Google and hit "I'm feeling lucky", you get this page. Haha. Funny. The phenomenon is explained here. Now, Microsoft's live.com went public recently. Guess what page it returns as the number 1 result for "failure"?
posted by jon_kill on Nov 2, 2005 - 34 comments

"A look at the average number of page views per title reveals that Microsoft gets about half as many page views per title as compared to Google and Apple" a strong indication of where reader interest actually resides." - ZDNet. Intelliseek's Blogpulse reveals similar numbers: #1 Google: 473K, #2 Apple: 381K, #3 Microsoft: 262K. Venture capitalist, Ed Sim, says: "While the OS is important, Microsoft has lost its complete and utter dominance as we move to a service-oriented world where broadband is everywhere, apps are in the cloud, and the browser becomes king."
posted by spock on Jul 27, 2005 - 19 comments

Microsoft wipes Apple from the face of the Earth. Virtual Earth, that is. A search for "1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA" renders only an empty field and some sort of barn. This is what it really looks like. Finding that other microcomputer company is obviously not a problem. Microsoft blames old photographs (from 1991) for the omission, but copyright notices on the images go only as far back as last year.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jul 26, 2005 - 22 comments

The future of Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
posted by Tlogmer on May 13, 2005 - 40 comments

Google News gets some competition from Microsoft. MSNBC unveils its 'newsbot.'
posted by skallas on Jul 31, 2004 - 3 comments

The John Markoff of the New York Times [registration required] reports that Google plans to roll-out a text and file search tool code-named Puffin for finding information stored on PCs. The move is seen as a defensive one; Microsoft plans to include PC searching in its new operating system, scheduled to be released in 2006 (at the earliest).
posted by tranquileye on May 19, 2004 - 7 comments

Microsoft fires back at Google News. As described in this article in New Scientist, MSN is trying its own version of Google News with a twist: theirs adds customized content tailored to the interests of the current reader.
posted by costas on Nov 18, 2003 - 28 comments

Google: the God that failed? is the title of the article on MSN Slate. All of us know Microsoft is working on a new search engine technology. Till date everyone considers Google to be the Guru. MS obviously doesn't like that, so what it is doing? Well, the same thing it always does - to survive competition, eliminate it. The reasons being given by the article are pretty silly and more aimed at 'faming down' Google.
posted by jayantk on Jul 22, 2003 - 39 comments

Searching MSN for the phrase "Linux" yields some pretty amusing (but yes, unsurprising) results. The first site seems moderately legit - Amazon stuff related to linux. The second one - MSN has a tech section about Linux? Not exactly. It doesn't really have much linux content at first glance. The third link is most amusing - see for yourself.

Comparatively, a google search for "linux" yields much more useful results.

This makes me wonder: should ethics be taken into consideration on search engines? MS has every right to have whatever they want come up when you type in "linux" - but they are willfully contaminating search results, which makes one wonder what other search terms Microsoft might want to rig the output of, and also, which they might have overlooked...
posted by twiggy on Jun 30, 2003 - 44 comments

It starts with Delaware... Over at Google Answers, a Microsoft Games Studio employee has posted a most interesting puzzle to solve. Over the course of the last twenty months a list of states has been gradually revealed by his boss, but under what criteria are they listed? He's giving $200.00 to the winner; just think of what you could buy. The fine folks at the Straight Dope are already on the case. To the Googlemobile! [via Cardhouse]
posted by thewittyname on Aug 22, 2002 - 75 comments

Long Bets. SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--In 28 years, commercial airline passengers will routinely fly in pilotless airplanes. Sound ludicrous? Not to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Craig Mundie, who recently bet Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt $2,000 that the prediction will come true. This site is all about, well long bets. Oh, and it's all for charity.
posted by Zool on Mar 26, 2002 - 10 comments