SEATTLE: Microsoft Corporation plans to invest heavily in Web search to compete against Google Inc, even if it fails to acquire Yahoo Inc, the company’s chairman Bill Gates said.

“We can afford to make big investments in the engineering and marketing that needs to get done. We will do that with or without Yahoo,” [...]

Microsoft Corp.’s online advertising researchers will spend this year teaching computers to be smart about sticking ads into video clips, and to be even smarter about targeting ads to specific Web surfers. Microsoft showed off a handful of early-stage advertising projects at its headquarters Tuesday that may or may not turn up as part of [...]

Microsoft has been sniffing around Yahoo for the last 18 months, but the twain could never quite agree on a fair deal in private. Microsoft has made a $44.6bn takeover bid for Yahoo!.

“Today this market is increasingly dominated by one player. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a competitive choice while better fulfilling the needs [...]

Microsoft has made technical information for its older binary Office document formats available for download following pressure from participants in the ongoing, somewhat fiery, standardization debate.
Redmond’s Office programme manager Brian Jones said in a blog post this week that the documentation will be accessible via download.

You work until 3 AM so people can surf the web at 9 AM. You risk your entire reputation on the stability of the backup server. You’re the reason data gets accessed, emails get where they’re going, and computers even boot up at all.
Microsoft acknowledges the amazing work that you do. That’s why we’re launching [...]

In a case dating back to 1997, the companies have been accused of accepting payments from firms that advertise illegal gambling in the US.
Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google have agreed to pay a total amount of $31.5 million towards settlement of a case alleging that the companies are guilty of promoting online gambling. [...]