Why start bgC3? Bill Gates' New Company

Bill Gates officially retired from Microsoft mid-year 2008, but then jumped ahead to build another one - bgC3 a.k.a. "Bill Gates Catalyst 3", earlier named Carillon Holdings. BgC3 is supposedly described as a "think tank," which includes "scientific and technological services", "industrial analysis and research", and "design and development of computer hardware and software". Others say it's a way of coordinating Gates's business and philanthropic work.


I think Bill Gates wants to focus on less grind work and more broad strokes, Nobel-worthy activity. I've met CEOs who dream of just thinking about what the company could be or could be doing in the next 3-5 or even 10 years without having to worry about the limitations of now, or the current problems (Vista) faced by the company's current image and processes.


No doubt, he wants to be free from actually worrying about how Microsoft runs while still being able to contribute to its success. It's always nice to be in the planning stage and not have to worry about the details. I guess that's the privilege of being a retired CEO

The Separation Of Bill Gates And Microsoft

After 30 years, it looks like the end has come for Bill Gates and Microsoft. The end not being a termination of course of either but instead a change in relationship. Bill Gates is finally stepping down and is now just going to work part-time. Taking it easy I guess. Must be the stress.

Everybody thinks Gates is some genius. The college drop-out who was once the richest man in the world with one of the most innovative companies around.

I do agree that Bill Gates is sort of a legend now. It's good I guess that he's stepping down. Sort of sounds like the end of an era so to speak for the tech world. It would be a shame if he were to go down in flames, beaten bad by Google. So this is the smart approach to bow down in grace while still retaining the image that you're still at the top of your game.

Bill Gates was interviewed by CNet on what might it be like for him After Microsoft and what his thoughts were on the future of technology and Microsoft as a company. He also talks about the failed Yahoo buy-out. Apparently Microsoft already has a stand-alone strategy of its own. Probably as a Plan B, should the acquisition fail - which it did. But anyway, their goal is probably just the same as all the other companies. How do we grow? How do we scale?

Read the complete CNet interview here.

Yahoo Dumped Microsoft Buy-out For Google Non-Exclusive Partnership. Has the Courtship Ended? Or is it just beginning?

Yahoo has finally made their call. They have finally said "NO" to Microsoft. Yes Microsoft got dumped. Yahoo didn't want a buy-out or maybe they did, but they just didn't think Microsoft's offer was good enough.

What they have done instead is partnered with Google. They have ceded their search capacity to Google. So right now, the ads that will come out on Yahoo are essentially Google ads. That's what it means.

The business strategy here being that revenues could potentially increase for Yahoo search. However the flip-side is that this gives Google even more power in the market. It's now closing into monopoly if I may say so myself as Google supplies other smaller search engines like Ask.com

CNet reports that Yahoo expects the revenue to help the company invest in its dual-pronged advertising strategy that's designed to offer advertisers an easy ability to buy text ads on search results and to buy graphical "display" ads elsewhere on Yahoo's considerable Internet properties.

"This agreement provides a source of funds to both deliver financial value to stockholders from search monetization and to invest in our broader strategy to transform display advertising and advance our starting-point objectives with users," Yahoo President Sue Decker said in a statement. "It enhances competition by promoting our ability to compete in the marketplace where we are especially well-positioned: in the convergence of search and display."

Under the deal, Yahoo will select the search terms for which Google will supply ads, the companies said. The ads will be displayed in the United States and Canada, and Decker took pains to say how Yahoo controls which Google results are displayed and when.

Yahoo's search ad engine, Panama, is competitive with Google's for many popular queries, but Yahoo plans to use Google with less common searches, Decker said. "Yahoo monetizes very competitively with Google for query ads but is not as competitive in the tail," she said, referring to the long statistical tail consisting of a large number of infrequent searches.

Microsoft's and Apple's Approaches To Security Disclosures - The Carpet Bomb Case, Microsoft Says Stop Using Safari

This shows how 2 companies can be very different in approaching dilemmas. I guess it's company culture combined with executive decisiveness.

I do not criticize Apple for being the way they are. It's great to come clean about a problem and say, "Yes we have a problem and yes we have the solution." But it doesn't help in the interim if it takes 3 months to find the answers.

I also see Microsoft's point of coming forward early in the game and calling out the competition. We all know something is wrong with Safari and they have acknowledged that Safari coupled with Windows poses a very vulnerable spot for users versus hackers.

This article in Computer World quotes nCircle's Storms, "Microsoft has really embraced the enterprise, and decided that disclosure and a regular patch schedule is what the enterprise needs to support and maintain its products.

"Apple, on the other hand, appeals to consumers, and believes that for the majority of consumers, issuing an advisory without a patch would probably just create FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt]," Storms concluded.

As Storms noted, Apple has remained silent on the Safari carpet bomb problem. Last week, it did not respond to a request for comment on its security team's decision against adding a user-approval option to Safari. The company was not available Saturday.

Microsoft did say that it was working with its rival, however. "[We] are working with our colleagues at Apple to investigate the issue," said Tim Rains, a product manager in Microsoft's malware protection center, in a post to the MSRC blog.

No timetable has been set by Microsoft for patching its software to block combined Safari-IE attacks. As it often does in security advisories, the company only said that it may issue a patch.

Well now I'm glad I'm using Mozilla Firefox instead of the reportedly bugged Safari and Internet Explorer.

Bill Gates Does Touch Wall Demo For CEO's

I guess it is always more effective when the CEO of one company speaks to others like him, rather than the typical sales person. Bill Gates pulled off the Touch Wall demo with the precision of the Microsoft giant that he is. Although haunted by news that he is to be soon-to-be-retired chairman - being a has-been does not seem to be affecting Mr. Bill Gates.

His demo of Touch Wall was pretty good. In fairness though, the product is amazing. An offshoot of Microsoft Surface, Touch Wall includes special software plus "some scanning cameras down here at the bottom, so whenever I go up to it and say just touch it, the software will notice that, theoretically," Bill Gates said so himself.

He also spoke about another related product in Beta News:

"I've also shown here the RoundTable, which is the videoconferencing thing that takes the entire view, the 360-degree view of everybody in the room by using multiple cameras, and creates that teleconferencing interaction that's far, far better. That's a new type of interaction," continued Gates.

Now emerging on the horizon, he said, are "little thin, tablet-like computers that have both the pen capability and that finger touch...and you'll be able to switch back and forth between those."

Gates told the CEOs he ultimately foresees vertical and horizontal natural interfaces of various sizes appearing almost everywhere.

"This idea that you just sit there and interact, touch, you don't have to learn anything, that naturalness really draws people in. So, it's been a strong success so far, and that form factor is going to get cheaper and smaller," predicted Microsoft's chairman.

No wonder he's the genius behind Microsoft - how else do you sell something that would be this expensive? I mean come on who else could possible afford it. I certainly wouldn't but my CEO, yes he will. Now that's marketing to a target audience.

The World's Number 1 Brand Goes To Google. Big Surprise... Not!

Companies in the industry of technology are growing ever more powerful and do not seem daunted by the mounting pressures of the stock market. Do you know why? Let me tell you a little secret... it's because the prevalence of the online world is just beyond the normal boundaries of trading and consumer goods. Online services are not normally real products but knowledge sharing that is not affected by the rising prices of crude oil! Well not directly anyway... but you get my point.

Technology companies, including Google, Microsoft and Apple, accounted for 28 of the top 100 brands in Millward Brown's survey. They represented a combined brand value of $US187.5 billion.

Anyway Google tops the list of Millward Brown's survey. According to Sydney's Morning Herald, the search engine's marque is worth more than $86.1 billion ($94 billion), up 30% on last year, according to the Brandz list from Millward Brown Optimor published yesterday, which calculates the proportion of sales driven by brand.

The top five is unchanged from 2007, with Google followed by General Electric, Microsoft, Coca Cola and China Mobile. Wal-Mart, Citi and Toyota dropped down the rankings.

Microsoft Has No Problem If Privacy Online Is Regulated?

The CNET News blog posted that Microsoft on Thursday issued its response to proposed Federal Trade Commission guidelines for online ad industry self-regulation, but the company wouldn't necessarily oppose regulation, a Microsoft representative said.

"Two years ago we were one of a handful of companies calling for a comprehensive federal privacy bill," Frank Torres, director of consumer affairs for Microsoft, said in an interview.

Microsoft also has been talking to the sponsors of bills in New York and Connecticut that deal with online advertising, he said. "We're definitely not opposed to them."

The article went on to say that in the meantime, Microsoft's proposal recommends that consumers be able to opt out of behavioral targeting and that targeting based on sensitive data, such as health conditions, sexual orientation or religious beliefs, should be opt in.

The Network Advertising Initiative trade group for online ad networks also released guidelines this week that would exclude sensitive information and children under 13 from ad targeting. The Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group support a separate FTC rulemaking for each of the following sensitive data issue areas: children, teens, health and medical, and financial. And the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center says data from anyone aged 17 and under should be considered sensitive data.

Microsoft also says the companies that keep records of page views or collect other information about consumers for the purpose of delivering ads--including Web search data--should post a privacy policy on the home page, keep the data secure, and retain the data for only as long as needed or as required by law.

That would apply to search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, and not just companies that do behavioral targeting. In the FTC proposals, search data is not covered.

"Our view is that the FTC should broaden the scope of the principles to include" contextual advertising, Torres said.

Later on Friday, Yahoo weighed in on the FTC proposals, saying that industry self-regulation is preferable to regulation and legislation because they would reduce the flexibility advertisers and others now enjoy. Yahoo also pledged to not target children under 13 or target based on sensitive information and allows consumers to opt out of targeted ads. The company also said it would soon begin a public education campaign on its network about targeted advertising.

Meanwhile, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) said on Thursday that the FTC should exclude anonymous behavioral information in its guidelines on targeted advertising and focus on personally identifiable information only.

"Behavioral information derived from the use of anonymous tracking technology is necessary to facilitate many services unrelated to advertising, to create desirable (and, in many cases, free) content, and to design and refine products and services that provide consumers with the best possible online experience," OPA said in a statement. "None of these beneficial uses of anonymous behavioral data raises privacy concerns."

The FTC principles, unveiled in December, say sites should give consumers the ability to choose whether to have their information collected for behaviorally targeted advertising, and if ads are based on sensitive information, consumers should be asked for permission to be targeted.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau weighed in with its proposed guidelines earlier this year which support an opt-out system for consumers who don't want their information collected for advertising purposes.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) says self-regulation won't protect consumers the way that legislation would.

"It's time to move beyond the self-regulatory approach, particularly in light of the growing problems of identity theft and security breaches in the United States," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. "The FTC should push for laws and techniques that minimize or eliminate the collection of personally identifiable information."

Image care of Pycomail

Microsoft's Threat To Yahoo: Take Our Offer Or Else!

CTV.ca just published that Microsoft has set the clock ticking for Yahoo to accept its $41 billion buyout offer in a letter to the Internet pioneer's board Saturday, warning that if a deal wasn't reached by April 26 the software maker would launch a hostile takeover at a less attractive price.

"If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo board," wrote Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.



"If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal," he wrote.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment Saturday.

In the letter, Ballmer said Yahoo's search share and page views, two measures of the strength of the Web portal company's business, appear to have fallen since the offer was made at the end of January. At the time, Microsoft's cash-and-stock offer was valued at $44.6 billion, or 62 percent above Yahoo's market value. Judging by Friday's closing share prices, the deal is now worth just under $41 billion.

Yahoo's board formally rejected Microsoft Corp.'s bid in February, saying it undervalues the company.

Since then, the Silicon Valley company has explored alliances with Google Inc., News Corp.'s MySpace.com and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, but no alternative to Microsoft's offer has surfaced.

Ballmer acknowledged the alternative negotiations and questioned why, in the absence of another offer, Yahoo was still dragging its heels.

"This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares," Ballmer wrote in the letter. Ballmer said the Microsoft offer has grown stronger as the economic climate has weakened.

"We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment," despite a forecast recently released by Yahoo that calls for the company's revenue to rise more than 70 percent during the next three years, he wrote.

Microsoft has said from the start that it would consider all possible ways of getting the deal done, including taking its offer directly to Yahoo's shareholders, as well as working to elect its own candidates to fill Yahoo's board at the company's annual annual shareholder meeting, and thus the deadline for Microsoft to nominate its slate.

Yahoo has not set a new date for the meeting. Before Saturday, it was known that Microsoft had hired a proxy solicitation firm to help with a hostile bid, but the software maker had made no pronouncements as to when that might happen.

How The Government Can Interfere With Company Mergers - The MicroHoo Example

Governments are taking active roles in the world of commerce. As mergers and economic situations occur left and right, the governments of the world feel the need to control and/ or at least review these major changes and how it might effect the economy as a whole. The New York Times article below accounts the possibility of Chinese law impeding on Microsoft's attempt to take over Yahoo. Read on...

Microsoft’s hostile-takeover attempt against Yahoo may encounter an unexpected hurdle in August after a Chinese antimonopoly law takes effect that will extend the nation’s economic influence far beyond its borders.

The law, which goes into effect on Aug. 1, is intended to strengthen an existing set of antitrust regulations the Chinese originally established in 1993. It will make China a third sphere of regulatory influence, matching the power of the European Union and the United States, according to legal specialists in this country and in China who have studied it.

Formally enacted by the National People’s Congress last year, the measure gives Chinese regulators authority to examine foreign mergers when they involve acquisitions of Chinese companies or foreign businesses investing in Chinese companies’ operations. Beijing could also consider national security issues, according to a report by the official news agency Xinhua.

The law could give China influence in Microsoft’s courtship of Yahoo because in August 2005, Yahoo, a premier search portal, invested $1 billion in Alibaba.com, China’s largest e-commerce business. The investment gave Yahoo about a 40 percent stake in the Chinese company. Alibaba officials have said they believe that a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo would set in motion a buyback provision, making it possible for them to gain independence from Microsoft.

Nathan G. Bush, an antitrust law specialist with O’Melveny & Myers in Beijing, said the law represented the ascendance of China “as another regulatory capital contending for influence with Brussels and Washington.”

“Multinational corporations will need to develop strategies for all the markets they operate in,” he added, “and China is a big market.”

Whether China would seek to review a Microsoft acquisition, and what kind of posture it might take, would be closely watched by regulators and global companies as an indication whether it will play a conciliatory or a nationalistic role on the world stage.

“I don’t think anyone has worked through the issue of where an Internet merger should be reviewed, given that it truly is a World Wide Web,” said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University.

There are potentially dozens of jurisdictions that could claim oversight in such a deal because of the global business interests of the two huge companies and because it could potentially transform the Internet into two megaportals, Google and Microsoft. Other parts of the world that might have an active interest in the outcome of a merger include South Korea, a vibrant Internet economy where an antitrust investigation into Microsoft was previously opened.

Executives at Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment on the possible effect of the new Chinese law. In rejecting Microsoft’s takeover bid in January, Yahoo’s chief executive, Jerry Yang, said in a letter to employees that the offer substantially undervalued the company, in part because of the significant growth potential of the Alibaba business in China.

The issue of whether the Beijing authorities will harmonize the law with foreign antitrust laws or use it to fire a shot across the bow of global businesses was sharpened last week after an effort by Huawei Technologies to invest in 3Com collapsed in the face of national security concerns in Washington.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States had examined the purchase, through which Huawei would have gained a stake in 3Com. The American company’s Tipping Point subsidiary makes Internet intrusion-detection software, a technology that the United States maintains has national security implications.

Before the attempted investment fell apart, senior Chinese officials were quoted as saying they thought that the deal did not have national security implications, and that American regulatory efforts were a cover for protectionist trade practices.

National security has played a role in other attempted deals involving Chinese companies. In 2005, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation made a high bid to acquire Unocal, leading to a vote in the House of Representatives to block the deal. Soon afterward, the Chinese company, known as Cnooc, withdrew its bid and Unocal was acquired by Chevron.

In the case of the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo transaction, the Chinese have in recent years become more and more alert to the role the Internet plays in their economic and political affairs.

Last week, a vice minister in the State Council Information Office, which oversees the Internet, said there were 230 million Chinese users of the Internet. He said the Internet sector accounted for 7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, and he expected that to rise to 15 percent in three to four years, according to a Reuters report.

The official, Cai Mingzhao, warned that foreigners should not use the Internet to interfere in Chinese internal matters, according to a report in The Guardian.

Even if the Chinese government did not try to prevent a takeover by Microsoft, a prolonged review could substantially damage the value of the business, a number of Internet industry executives said.

Microsoft's New Business Strategy - Share The Technology

Seeking to satisfy European antitrust officials, Microsoft said on Thursday that it would open up and share many more of its technical secrets with the rest of the software industry and competitors according to this NYTimes.com article

It is now the era of convergence. If Microsoft does not open up, then it is set to fail. I think this is the reason for this sudden generosity. The world's standards have now evolved and Microsoft has been forced to evolve with it.

Microsoft executives, in a conference call, the article mentions that they have characterized the announcement as a “strategic shift” in the company’s business practices and its handling of technical information. They also portrayed the moves as only partly a nod to the continuing challenge Microsoft faces from Europe’s antitrust regulators.

The broader goal, they said, is to bring Microsoft’s flagship personal computer products — the Windows operating system and Office productivity programs — further into the Internet era of computing. Increasingly, people want a seamless flow of documents, data and programming code among desktop PCs and the Internet, especially as they make the shift from using software on a PC to using services on the Web.

“These steps are being taken on our own,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive. The move, he said, was a recognition of Microsoft’s “unique legal situation,” but it was also the company’s effort to adapt to “the opportunities and risks of a more connected, more services-oriented world.”

Microsoft’s first step will be to put on its Web site 30,000 pages of technical documentation detailing how its Windows desktop and Microsoft server programs communicate and share information. Until now, that information was treated as a trade secret and was available only under a special license.

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, said that by sharing more information, Microsoft would make it easier for others to write Internet programs that tap into personal information on a PC.

That, Mr. Ozzie added, should bring new sets of Web services that, for example, might match a person’s calendar information with a doctor’s schedule. Then smart software could make an appointment. At home, he noted, someone’s digital collection of music, movies and family photos would be more easily shuffled to different devices and screens.

“The Internet opens up a world of potential innovation,” Mr. Ozzie said. “And I think we’ve just scratched the surface.”

Microsoft announced other plans to open up its technology, like allowing developers to add more non-Microsoft document formats to its Office word processing and spreadsheet programs. Microsoft also made commitments to increase its support for industry standards and work with open-source software developers.

European regulators and others have long accused Microsoft of using its dominance in PC operating systems and software to lock out competitors. Last October, after a nine-year confrontation and a ruling against the company by Europe’s second-highest court, Microsoft agreed to share information with rivals on terms it had long resisted. Then, after fresh complaints from Microsoft’s competitors, the European antitrust regulators last month announced that they were opening new investigations of the company.

The new inquiry focuses partly on whether Microsoft has withheld essential information from competitors that want to make products that work smoothly with its Office programs. The Office products were not part of the previous European action against Microsoft.

After the Microsoft announcement on Thursday, the European Commission issued a skeptical statement. The commission said it “would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability,” or allowing software programs from different companies to work smoothly together. But the commission noted that “today’s announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability.”

Asked about the commission’s statement, Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said that the company’s moves were “qualitatively and quantitatively different from anything we’ve done in the past.”

“People will test us not just by our words but by our actions,” Mr. Smith added.

The industry is taking a wait-and-see stance on Microsoft’s plan. Linux, an open-source competitor to Windows, stands to benefit from Microsoft’s more open posture. Regulators and competition are “forcing Microsoft to change the way it does business,” said James Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium.

The change comes as Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo, a huge deal that, if it proceeds, will be closely scrutinized by antitrust officials worldwide. The European regulators typically take a harder line than their American counterparts in challenging takeovers.

“To get the deal approved, Microsoft has to convince the European regulators that it has changed its spots on interoperability, no longer acting like a proprietary monopoly,” said Ken Wasch, president of the Software and Information Industry Association, a trade group that includes Microsoft competitors like I.B.M., Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat.

Microsoft is also trying to win approval from an international standards body for its new document format, Office Open XML. Microsoft contends its format is “open,” meaning files in the format can be created and read by anyone.

A different format standard for Internet-based computing, the OpenDocument Format, is supported by I.B.M., Google, Oracle and other Microsoft rivals. They assert that the proposed Microsoft standard is complex and layered with the company’s own features, making it effectively a corporate standard instead of a truly open one.

Last September, Microsoft failed to win enough support for its standard from the International Organization for Standardization. But the standards body will review that decision in proceedings that begin next week.

(image from istartedsomething.com)