Microsoft Doing Well

Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday that its fiscal first quarter profit edged up 2 percent. This was brought about by corporate customers renewing licenses for servers and other business programs. Microsoft's guidance for the current quarter was weaker than Wall Street was expecting, however, shares rose in extended trading following this report.

That is a sign that investors had been worried it would be worse. You can't blame them with everything else seemingly going down the tube with the Dow taking a mighty fall. I don't have any shares right now and glad of it but wish I had a bunch of money because now is the time to buy those stocks of good companies that are way down. There is money to be made down the line.

Microsoft Withdraws Bid for Yahoo

Microsoft Corp. has withdrawn its $42.3 billion bid to buy Yahoo Inc., scrapping an attempt to snap up the tarnished Internet icon in hopes of toppling online search and advertising leader Google Inc. The decision to walk away from the deal came Saturday after a last ditch effort to negotiate a mutually acceptable sale price proved unsuccessful. Microsoft was willing to pay $47.5 billion or $33 per share, up from the bid's current value of $29.40 per share. But Yahoo's board demanded at least $53 billion, or $37 per share.

Microsoft Giving Out Free Xbox 360 Games

Microsoft Corp. said it will give Xbox 360 owners a free video game to make up for poor performance during the holidays by their system's online hub. Gamers log on to the Xbox Live Web site to buy games, television shows and movies to load onto their consoles, and to interact with other players. Video game blogs such as Joystiq recently reported that users had a slew of problems with the site during the holidays, including troubles signing in, downloading media and getting matched with online opponents. Microsoft reported they are disappointed in their performance.

Microsoft to Carry Out EW Ruling

Microsoft has finally agreed to start complying with a European Commission 2004 anti-monopoly ruling against it. The commission said the US firm would now comply with its obligations. The software giant was ruled to have shut out rivals from its Windows operating system to gain a larger share of the market from web servers. It will now give third party program developers access to information that will allow them to make systems interoperable with Windows. It will also substantially cut the fees it charges for such data.