Renewed overtures from Microsoft and Yahoo
Microsoft is bracing itself for a prolonged downturn. In addition, the software giant has once again made advances toward the search engine operator Yahoo.
Microsoft is gearing itself up for a continuation of bad times. The software company has also made renewed advances to search engine operator Yahoo. The companies should join forces to attack the internet giant Google, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
The current economic crisis is likely to affect Microsoft for years to come. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said this to financial analysts in New York on Wednesday. However, he added that no one could make any serious predictions at present. At the same time, he expects increasing competition from Apple and Google in the PC business, including netbooks - small laptops - with Google's Android operating system. In the loss-making Internet business, Ballmer continues to seek talks with Yahoo.
Microsoft Online Services, including the web search engine, generated a net loss of 950 million dollars in the first half of the financial year alone. Ballmer announced important innovations for this spring. He reiterated his offer to Yahoo management to jointly create more competition for Google. However, he ruled out another attempt to take over Yahoo. Nevertheless, Yahoo shares reacted to the statement with strong price gains of more than five percent in early Wall Street trading.
Microsoft has also developed a new browser designed to make surfing safer. The browser, called Gazelle, is designed to increase security by calling up and running each website individually. According to Pcwelt.de, however, this is a prototype that is not yet ready for the market. However, Gazelle already displays 19 out of 20 websites correctly, according to Infoweek.ch.
Microsoft had already had to admit at the end of January with the presentation of its figures for the second quarter that the PC and software business is currently extremely difficult. Instead of over 17 billion dollars as previously forecast, turnover landed at 16.6 billion dollars. Ballmer announced his intention to reduce operating costs by 1.5 billion dollars per year and cut around 5,000 jobs. This is the first significant wave of redundancies in Microsoft's history, writes Handelsblatt.com.
The current economic crisis is likely to affect Microsoft for years to come. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said this to financial analysts in New York on Wednesday. However, he added that no one could make any serious predictions at present. At the same time, he expects increasing competition from Apple and Google in the PC business, including netbooks - small laptops - with Google's Android operating system. In the loss-making Internet business, Ballmer continues to seek talks with Yahoo.
Microsoft Online Services, including the web search engine, generated a net loss of 950 million dollars in the first half of the financial year alone. Ballmer announced important innovations for this spring. He reiterated his offer to Yahoo management to jointly create more competition for Google. However, he ruled out another attempt to take over Yahoo. Nevertheless, Yahoo shares reacted to the statement with strong price gains of more than five percent in early Wall Street trading.
Microsoft has also developed a new browser designed to make surfing safer. The browser, called Gazelle, is designed to increase security by calling up and running each website individually. According to Pcwelt.de, however, this is a prototype that is not yet ready for the market. However, Gazelle already displays 19 out of 20 websites correctly, according to Infoweek.ch.
Microsoft had already had to admit at the end of January with the presentation of its figures for the second quarter that the PC and software business is currently extremely difficult. Instead of over 17 billion dollars as previously forecast, turnover landed at 16.6 billion dollars. Ballmer announced his intention to reduce operating costs by 1.5 billion dollars per year and cut around 5,000 jobs. This is the first significant wave of redundancies in Microsoft's history, writes Handelsblatt.com.
