October 23, 2011, 9:33 pm
Tech Giants Sizing Up Yahoo Bid from nytimes.com
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED and EVELYN M. RUSLI
ps: Israeli Radio said Google is buying Yahoo, Not True Yet!! (s.c.)
As a host of potential bidders circle Yahoo, several of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are considering whether to jump into the fray themselves.
Microsoft and Google are both weighing whether to participate in the bidding. Each has its own business reasons for wanting to see the continued existence of Yahoo, which despite its financial struggles still has a monthly audience of almost 700 million unique visitors.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
But there’s one thing the technology giants have in common: Not one of them wants to actually buy or run Yahoo.
Instead, Microsoft and Google are considering lending financial support to private equity firms or others weighing a bid, according to people briefed on the matter.
Microsoft is the furthest along, having held discussions with a number of leveraged buyout firms, these people said. Under one possible combination, Microsoft would chip in billions of dollars in financing as part of a consortium led by the private equity firm Silver Lake and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, three of these people said. That group would be backstopped by billions of dollars in bank financing as well.
Google, for its part, has had conversations with two private equity firms about backing a takeover, according to another person briefed on the matter. Such discussions are in the early stages and may not lead to a bid, this person said.
Representatives for Microsoft, Google, Silver Lake and Yahoo declined to comment on any potential bidding.
rest of article at nytimes.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Microsoft Posts Gain Despite Soft PC Sales
October 20, 2011 nytimes.com
Microsoft Posts Gain Despite Soft PC Sales
By NICK WINGFIELD
SEATTLE — Microsoft said its net income rose 6 percent in its first fiscal quarter, but the company’s results continued to reflect weak growth in PC sales.
The PC market, especially the part representing the companies using Microsoft’s Windows operating system, has suffered lately as economic uncertainty has crimped spending on information technology. Newer types of devices like tablets and mobile phones have sapped some of the business as well.
Microsoft said net income rose to $5.74 billion, or 68 cents a share, from $5.41 billion, or 62 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose 7 percent, to $17.37 billion, from $16.2 billion a year ago.
Analysts estimated that, on average, Microsoft would earn 68 cents a share on revenue of $17.24 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Microsoft’s shares fell 1 percent after it released the financial results at the close of normal trading.
Microsoft said its revenue from selling Windows rose less than 2 percent during its first quarter, which ended Sept. 30. That reflects the fact that shipments of new PCs grew only 3.6 percent globally in the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, according to the research firm IDC. Apple defied the trend, reporting a 26 percent increase in the number of Macs sold during the same period, the company said on Tuesday.
Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said the company’s revenue from Windows sales was weaker than he had expected. “We’ve now had a year where Windows hasn’t come in in-line with analyst expectations,” he said. “It’s less of a miss than in the past.”
The Microsoft division that includes its Office suit of applications fared better than Windows, with a revenue increase of almost 8 percent. That division — Microsoft’s largest, representing a third of total revenue — got a boost from a new version of Office released last year that continues to sell well for the company, despite competition from free and low-cost online applications from Google and others.
The rest of this article on nytimes.
Microsoft Posts Gain Despite Soft PC Sales
By NICK WINGFIELD
SEATTLE — Microsoft said its net income rose 6 percent in its first fiscal quarter, but the company’s results continued to reflect weak growth in PC sales.
The PC market, especially the part representing the companies using Microsoft’s Windows operating system, has suffered lately as economic uncertainty has crimped spending on information technology. Newer types of devices like tablets and mobile phones have sapped some of the business as well.
Microsoft said net income rose to $5.74 billion, or 68 cents a share, from $5.41 billion, or 62 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose 7 percent, to $17.37 billion, from $16.2 billion a year ago.
Analysts estimated that, on average, Microsoft would earn 68 cents a share on revenue of $17.24 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Microsoft’s shares fell 1 percent after it released the financial results at the close of normal trading.
Microsoft said its revenue from selling Windows rose less than 2 percent during its first quarter, which ended Sept. 30. That reflects the fact that shipments of new PCs grew only 3.6 percent globally in the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, according to the research firm IDC. Apple defied the trend, reporting a 26 percent increase in the number of Macs sold during the same period, the company said on Tuesday.
Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said the company’s revenue from Windows sales was weaker than he had expected. “We’ve now had a year where Windows hasn’t come in in-line with analyst expectations,” he said. “It’s less of a miss than in the past.”
The Microsoft division that includes its Office suit of applications fared better than Windows, with a revenue increase of almost 8 percent. That division — Microsoft’s largest, representing a third of total revenue — got a boost from a new version of Office released last year that continues to sell well for the company, despite competition from free and low-cost online applications from Google and others.
The rest of this article on nytimes.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Steve Jobs talks Thin Clients in 1997 | The Candid Root
Steve Jobs talks Thin Clients in 1997!
Steve Jobs talks Thin Clients in 1997 | The Candid Root
Watch Steve Jobs in 1997 discuss network based computing. Listen for mentions of “Thin Clients” and “stateless devices” (between 2:00 and 4:00). Steve discusses the same benefits and concepts behind the solutions we provide at DisklessWorkstations.com with LTSP. Call it VDI, call it Cloud Computing, call it Thin Clients, at the of the day the concepts are all the same.
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