Pedro Hernandez

Microsoft and Google’s high-profile, often contentious rivalry has spilled into the realm of mobile apps. Google has demanded that Microsoft pull its YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 immediately and disable copies of the app that are out in the wild by Wednesday, May 22. On May 15, a cease and desist letter was sent […]

Microsoft has revealed that its forthcoming update to Windows 8, code-named “Blue,” has an official new, if unsurprising, name. Sometime before the new year, Microsoft is planning to release Blue as Windows 8.1. Tami Reller, who serves as both chief financial officer and chief marketing officer for the company, made it official at the JP […]

Microsoft isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to its popular voice over IP (VoIP) and video calling platform, Skype. And there’s a lot at stake. According to the company, its massive user base spends 2 billion minutes a day on Skype. On April 29, Microsoft announced that it was rolling out a preview […]

The majority of Web users are concerned about their online privacy, according to new survey results from Microsoft. The software giant polled 4,000 consumers in the U.S., France, Germany and the U.K. as part of the Your Privacy Type campaign, which launched in April. Mary Snapp, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, said in an April […]

Microsoft acquired Yammer in June 2012 to help the company gain a firm foothold in the burgeoning enterprise social software market. Today, that $1.2 billion investment appears to be paying off. Following a quarterly earnings report that highlighted Microsoft’s healthy financials, the Office Team announced in an official blog post that Yammer sales were gaining […]

Microsoft is preparing to snap up Nook Media LLC for $1 billion, according a new report. TechCrunch, claiming to have obtained internal documentation, reported May 9 that the software giant plans to acquire the digital assets of the joint venture between itself and Barnes & Noble. The companies established Nook Media in 2012, a deal […]

Building on a strategy of releasing a steady trickle of updates for its cloud offerings, Microsoft previewed a few upcoming features that are being added to Office Web Apps, the browser-based Web component of the Office 365 product that delivers online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Real-time co-authoring support is coming to the […]

Microsoft sold 100 million licenses for Windows 8 in the six months that the touch-enabled operating system has been on the market, Tami Reller, both chief marketing officer and chief financial officer for Microsoft, revealed in a May 7 Windows blog Q&A. It’s a figure that includes upgrades, as well as copies that ship with […]

Water under the bridge? Acer CEO J.T. Wang warned Microsoft to “think it over” before launching its Surface tablet. “It will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem, and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at, so please think twice,” he told the Financial Times last […]

Last summer, Microsoft signaled that Hotmail’s days were numbered when it previewed Outlook.com. On July 31, 2012, the software maker unveiled a webmail service that adhered to the streamlined look and feel that has come to define the company’s software and cloud-based services suite, including Windows 8 and Office 365. Sporting an uncluttered interface and […]

Microsoft has a long way to catch up to Apple in the tablet market, but there are signs that the company’s efforts are starting to pay off. IDC revealed on May 1 that Microsoft managed to crack the top five list of tablet vendors for the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13) with shipments of 900,000 […]

Did Microsoft Influence Apple’s iOS 7? Is Cupertino taking Redmond’s lead? iOS 7, the software that will soon power the next generation of Apple’s iPhone and iPad, is reportedly taking cues from Microsoft in the design department. Apple is said to be “flattening” the mobile operating system’s user interface, eliminating much of the visual gloss […]