Tagged: Microsoft

SALT LAKE CITY — Microsoft's Bill Gates returned to the witness stand Tuesday to defend his company against a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit that claims the software giant tricked a competitor into huge losses and soared onto the market with Windows 95.

The Apple vs. PC debate has been ongoing for years, but in a recent documentary posted online Nov. 2, PBS further examines the relationship between late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

A panel discussion in Seattle this week hosted by Barokas Public Relations and GeekWire sparked a lively debate around the intersection of two questions:  Why are Facebook, Google, HP, Zynga and Salesforce.com building big shops in Seattle? And, Is Microsoft vulnerable to engineer-poaching because of its culture?

Microsoft reported good news for its investors, announcing record revenues for its final quarter earnings and the 2011 fiscal year. But one analyst said slumping sales in Windows shows the company has some weakness when it comes to consumers.

Some of the biggest names in media and technology converge on Sun Valley, Idaho this week.

They're attending an annual retreat known to produce major industry-shaping business deals – one of those deals likely to be shaped involves Microsoft, Facebook and Skype.

The Supreme Court says Microsoft Corp. must pay a $290 million patent infringement judgment awarded to a small Toronto software company in a patent lawsuit.

The high court on Thursday refused to throw out the judgment against the world's largest software maker.

Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a tool used in Microsoft Word. The technology in question gave Word 2003 and Word 2007 users an improved way to edit XML, which is computer code that tells the program how to interpret and display a document's contents.

Microsoft is appealing a $1.3 billion fine from European antitrust regulators. But its antitrust worries in the United States appear to be over. The consent decree with the US Justice Department expired May 11th. A lot has changed since Microsoft crushed Netscape in the browser wars of the 1990s. This month on The Digital Future, Strategic News Service publisher Mark Anderson says Microsoft has transformed itself into a much better corporate citizen.

Shareholders often get excited when their companies announce share buyback programs. If a company reduces shares in the marketplace, an investor’s share of the company goes up. So that's good, right? Usually, it is, but sometimes it can be a sign that the company is in trouble.