I have earlier told about a campaign to save Windows XP. The campaign has now collected over 75 000 sign ups and their goal was to make Microsoft continue to create new copies of Windows XP and not stop the production. Microsoft has now made a comment on this campaign. Microsoft has heard a lot about this campaign but they really want to hear if people and other business partner still have needs for buying XP. According to speakers from Microsoft they has now agreed to not stop producing XP after 30th June. Microsoft says they fully understand that some parts of the market would prefer XP over Vista.

After a series of acquisitions to strengthen its position in the area of online advertising, Microsoft came with a bid today today for the famous American Yahoo portal of 44.6 billion dollars.

In a statement, the world’s number one software indicates that the acquisition would achieve up to a billion dollars per year of synergies. The bid comes as Yahoo has released its financial results described as disappointing and to announce its intention to conduct an internal restructuring that will lead to the removal of about a thousand posts.

“We have great respect for Yahoo, together we can propose an incredibly wide range of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while positioning ourselves better for competition in the market for online services,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. In an open letter to members of the board of Yahoo, it reminds them that a first approximation proposal was made in February 2007, then refused on the grounds that Yahoo had in cartons Otherwise resume the hand in the market for online advertising, particularly through its platform Panama.

“A year has passed and the situation has not improved,” said Steve Ballmer.  A commercial partnership could make sense for a time, but Microsoft now believes that the only viable alternative is the approximation that we are proposing.

Google in sight?

While it is still the number one portal in terms of audience in the United States with 136.6 million visitors in December 2007, compared with 132.9 million for its great rival Google, Yahoo is on the side train of online searching, with approximately 23% market share compared with nearly 59% for Google according to Comscore. The various sites of Microsoft Group totals for their 120 million visitors, while the search engine Live Search represents 9.8% of searches conducted in the United States. Even at the global level, Google would remain largely number one online searching in spite of the rapprochement. In December 2007, the Mountain View firm would have represented 62.7% of online searches in the world according to Comscore, compared with 12.8% for Yahoo and 2.9% for Microsoft.

“The market for online advertising know of extremely rapid growth, some $ 40 billion in 2007 to almost 80 billion in 2010 (…). Today, that market is largely dominated by one of its players. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo are in a position to offer a competitive choice while meeting the needs of their customers and partners, argues the editor of Redmond.

Although he still weighs more than $ 300 billion on the stock market, Microsoft penalty still to prevail on the Internet, an area where Google is leading while Yahoo knows some reduction in shape. At the conclusion of a possible merger, the new entity would be able to offer a one-stop shop for its advertisers, with an offer from the simple sponsored link to interactive marketing that would complement a pond audience of several hundred million ‘Internet users.

Microsoft expressed his optimism to achieve the merger in the second half of 2008, once the supervisors have given their approval. In a brief press release, Yahoo merely indicates that the offer has not been requested, but it will be carefully studied.

Visual Studio 2008 was ready in November and Microsoft makes Windows Server 2008 ready for sale in the end of February. SQL Server 2008 will not be released before late this year. The launch will happen togehter with Windows Server 2008, but Microsoft will only make a so called “feature complete” version which can be used as a test. It was no secret that SQL Server would be released later then the other products, but now we have to wait atleast a few months more then originally planned. Because of this i believe many SQL customers will wait until Windows Server 2008 is out.

Earlier it has not been possible to drive Vista Home Basic or Home Premium in a virtual environment. So far this has only been possible with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate. The reason for these restrictions was according to Microsoft a security issue. Microsoft claims that virtual machines could been used in a bad way by dangerous programs, and you would need to have expert knowledge to protect against such dangerous programs in a virtual environment. Microsoft has now changed their opinion on this matter, and they will make it possible to use both home Basic and Home Premium as virtual machines.

On Monday 30th June 2008 Microsoft will stop producing Windows XP copies forever. If you want to buy a new PC with pre-installed Windows after this date you will only get Windows Vista. However on the internet site InfoWorld.com they have now started a campaign to prevent this from happening. Microsoft first planed to shutdown XP’s production in January 2008, but thanks to all the protesters they agreed to keep on making new copies of Windows XP to 30th June 2008. Now they also release SP3 for Windows XP so let’s all hope they don’t shut down the entire Windows XP production yet. If you want to keep Windows XP longer you can sign up at the campaign here