I already posted about Windows 7, which was reportedly supposed to come in 2009. Well, it seems that some real info about the release date (year), has surfaced. According to a post on Softpedia, Windows 7 is coming in 2010. A Microsoft spokes person revealed to Softpedia that the new OS will be released three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA (general availability), which comes to 2010, but the actual release will happen when the new product meets Microsoft’s quality bar for release.

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Microsoft announced its intention to buy Yahoo! for 44.6 billion dollars on February 1st. This means the share price Microsoft offered for Yahoo! is 31 dollars per share, a value lower than in the past weeks and months. Yahoo’s declining value, and recent moves towards cutting down on work force, are all part of something many see as a crisis. In that sense Microsoft’s offer is timely and balanced. There have been many speculations already about what a merger between the two companies might produce as a result. Both companies have worked on improving and developing their search presence in the past months, and both have succeeded in areas related to search, but none has achieved any significant increase in search scape share against Google. This post tried to compare the two companies’ online efforts and determine which was a “winner” in each area. It seems Microsoft would have a lot to gain by simply integrating Yahoo! but also a lot of area where a merger would actually produce something competitive unlike each company’s independent effort. One such area would be local maps where Yahoo’s interface would be a great improvement on Microsoft’s features. Perhaps this press release by Microsoft sums up their goal best:

“Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure,” said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft. “The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own.”

Interesting to say, Microsoft would have probably bought Facebook, if it was available for sale, although they chose to ensure an ad platform instead, by purchasing a Facebook share. Personally, I think the merger would bring improvements for those who use the two companies’ services and a more solid search alternative to Google, but there are opinions that Microsoft is again heading for monopoly issues again. Google hasn’t said anything yet about Yahoo!, probably because their ownership of it would probably be regarded as search scape monopoly … or would it?

Yahoo! is still thinking about Microsoft’s offer, but there are rumors others may be interested in Yahoo! as well - they’ve certainly got the cash.

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Microsoft is planning to release the Vista successor, Windows 7, in the second half of 2009, which now moves the release forward from the anticipated 2010 release.

According to this post on aPCMag.com there are three milestone builds planned for 2008, the first being M1 which has already shipped to key partners for code validation. It’s an English language build only, available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will be the last OS released as a 32-bit platform. From this version on all new operating systems will be 64-bit, which makes since the computer market is steadily evolving to 64-bit computing. The M2 release should happen in April or May, while M3 will ship some time in the third quarter of 2008.

Here are a couple of fake screenshots of Windows 7. Even though they are fake, I imagine the real thing won’t look too different than these visions:

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After many months of silence, the Internet Explorer development team announced that IE8 (or IE Next) is coming soon. In a somewhat arguably humorous post, which discusses the possible name for the next Internet Explorer version, we are given a hint that the new browser will be released soon. As far as the features, well, we’re going to have to wait the next announcement, hopefully more serious than this one.

“You will hear a lot more from us soon on this blog and in other places. In the meantime, please don’t mistake silence for inaction.”

I don’t think silence was the right way to accompany work on the new IE version. Microsoft has even asked for webmasters to give feedback about the features for the new browser in the past months, but haven’t publicly given any notion as to what the new browser will be housing under the hood. Better late than never, I guess, but I wish we could at least know what to expect. Are we looking at a standards fully compliant browser, or another Microsoft vision of how things should be. In other words, are developers going to have to spend additional hours tweaking code to work in IE8, if that indeed is going to be the name for the new version. Bill Gates seems to use “IE8″ in his communication with the team, so I guess IE8 is the new name for it.

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Microsoft announced the release a couple of new things yesterday - an accreditation progam called AdExcellence (similar to AdWords certification on Google), adCenter add-in for MS Excell 2007, and Webmaster Center (which has already been opened to the public a few days ago).

AdExcellence is a certification program designed to provide agencies and advertisers the opportunity of becoming certified adCenter experts and professionals. Upon successful completion candidates get a certificate and accompanying certification graphics for use on own websites.

The Excell 2007 adCenter add-in is a fully integrated tools for marketers allowing keyword research for targeting the most qualified traffic for their websites. Keyword data accessible from the add-in comes from the adCenter Keyword Services Platform (KSP), and the add-in itself will be available for download in early January 2008. The add-in basically uses web services to access information from adCenter, through KSP, although I imagine there could be far richer ways to integrate adCenter through Excell. Google has released AdWords Editor a while ago, a tool which enables marketers to control everything regarding their AdWords campaigns using a standalone desktop application. Microsoft seems to be working on such a tool for its AdCenter, but we have yet to see when such a tool will be released.

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There is a lot of coverage on this in the past two days - the big news that Microsoft snatched the deal with Facebook right under Google’s nose (official press release here and here). The investment itself, even though small ($240 million) compared to its last financial quest with aQuantive which cost them $6 billion, represents a far greater value for Microsoft. With an exclusive deal for ad distribution on Facebook, Microsoft gets a very good opportunity for international market penetration, since about 60% of Facebook users are actually based outside of US. Whether Facebook is actually worth the $15 billion that it’s now valued at (after this deal) is questionable. The site has yet to show a major revenue generating model (that actually works). Facebook Flyers were a good start (similar to PPC ads in many ways), and there are Facebook Polls as well (pay for opportunity to do detailed targeted research using Facebook demographics data and users). The fact that Facebook is now valued at $15 billion is not that important for Microsoft, because they got what they wanted - more exposure and chance for growing revenue on a phenomenon that some compare to Skype.

Naturally, there are reasons to think the $15 billion valuation of Facebook is not realistic, even indications that recent valuations for other Internet companies are leading into another bubble crisis. Facebook is moving forward for now and doesn’t show signs of slowing down. Changes are constantly happening with new possibilities emerging almost weekly. Hype or reality? No one can state with certainty, but the Facebook cake tastes so good, even the most skeptical are feeling the urge to take a bite. There are plenty of pieces of this cake to dish out for now, but at a certain point someone is going to have to pick up the check. Microsoft already paid its piece $240 million and will probably make much more than by the time things go bad (f they go bad).

On the other hand, AdCenter will be one more distribution platform richer, and what a targeted platform that will be! With all the detailed demographic data on Facebook, it should be easier than ever to user PPC ads and get better results. With increasing PPC prices, sometimes reaching ridiculous amounts, this will be a good change. Sure, the prices will probably be just as high, but the targeting will be much better, and thus the results much more precise. Or at least that’s the idea Microsoft/Facebook, right?

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Right on schedule, Microsoft delivered its Silverlight 1.0 platform yesterday. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering richer user experiences on the Web, and has been the subject of a lot of talk in the rich content delivery field in the past months. Basically, Silverlight is a development platform that makes it easy to develop rich media content delivery using Microsoft’s Windows Media Technologies.

Our expectations for compelling, immersive experiences on the Web are increasing daily… With today’s release of Silverlight 1.0, we’re making it possible for developers and designers to deliver to individuals the kind of high-def experiences they crave by integrating data and services in rich and unique ways. Silverlight will further accelerate the growth in rich interactive applications by giving developers and designers new options for delivering great experiences that span the Web, PC, phone and other devices.

Apart from Silverlight, Microsoft is working with Novell on developing the Linux counterpart for Silverlight, called Moonlight, which is a direct response on feedback received from the development community. This has been based on a previous project on mono-project.com . With the recent shifts in Microsoft’s strategy (turning towards online applications which are platform independent), it makes a lot of sense that Microsoft is engaging more and more with the Linux audience. Why different names for two things that are virtually the same (just working on a different OS) is beyond me, but Silverlight and Moonlight kind of sound like reflections of each other in the mirror.

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Microsoft is planning to make available software that connects the Windows OS to services delivered over the Internet this week. This concept, often referred to as cloud computing, is part of Microsoft’s initiative that will connect the OS with online services. There was talk about cloud computing as something that may be the founding block of the new web (Web 3.0?), as Eric Schmidt said here. This move on Microsoft’s part may in fact put Microsoft back in the game. Microsoft cannot compete directly with its search engine, but with service and OS integration they will be able to keep their hundreds of millions of customers close and away from competitors such as Google or SalesForce.com, both of which offer plenty of software solutions online otherwise offered on desktop computers by Microsoft.

Microsoft’s desktop monopoly has been threatened for a long time by hundreds of companies who offer online services that require nothing more than Internet access and web browsers, while all data is stored on servers. As the industry is moving more towards the “on-demand model”, Microsoft is just in time with this change. Look forward to seeing Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and Windows Live OneCare Family Safety, as well as Windows Live Writer for blogging, with SkyDrive and FolderShare to join the list very soon as additional services for data storage. As Bill Gates put it “When you think storage, think Windows Live”. Microsoft aims to separate user data and applications from devices on which they are used. Windows Live Service will be available at Live.com soon, so stay tuned!

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Microsoft announced it will release Content Ads within its AdCenter to users in the US. Microsoft Content Ads is a system that allows you to place content targeted ads on the Microsoft network. The Microsoft network includes many sites such as MSN Tech & Gadgets, Money, Real Estate, and Windows Marketplace. Microsoft says they will include other properties in the MSN network over time. Users will be able to control the price for the ads as well as where they will appear on the network.

This may be a very interesting development, since now Microsoft will be offering something Google has done for several years with AsSense. This move puts Microsoft in the ballpark with Google, which may in turn produce positive developments. The two will have to compete for user attention which in the end will benefit the end users.

Read in more detail on AdCenter Blog.

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Microsoft Corporation has acquired aQuantive Inc (for $6 billion). This is a move that Microsoft hopes will provide the industry with a world-class advertising platform on all devices and media, creating the best experience for everyone - users, advertisers and publishers.

Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group (APS), created by Microsoft, will be responsible for building Microsoft’s monetization engine to serve the advertisers and publishers. The APS will assume responsibility for building and marketing efforts on all ad platforms - Atlas, DRIVEpm, MSNDR and Microsoft AdCenter, as well as on emerging media types such as in-game ads and mobile ads, the two advertising platforms that seem to be gaining much attention over the past months.

Today we take a significant step forward in our ability to capture share of the $40 billion online ad opportunity and the larger $600 billion ad market, which is rapidly shifting to the world of online and IP-served platforms, including TV and gaming…

The addition of aQuantive’s technologies and people to the Microsoft portfolio is a core, strategic investment and step forward in our plans to become one of the top two online advertising platforms in the industry.

aQuantive was founded in 1997, and has soon risen to be a leader in digital marketing services. This acquisition by Microsoft is a move that just may put the big M in line with its two main competitors, Google and Yahoo. Google is already far ahead from the two, but with recent efforts from Microsoft regarding search technology improvements and redesigns, and now a creation of what may prove to be a very powerful ad delivery platform, Microsoft just may be able to get back into the advertising space and gain significant improvements. These improvements just may be what it takes for Microsoft to get back into the game.

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