Microsoft Corp. recently announced their revenue of $16.63 billion for the second quarter.

What can you expect in this period of recession? Negative reports ofcourse. Their quarterly profits were down (contrary to revenue, that showed a slight increase):

“Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $5.94 billion, $4.17 billion and $0.47, declines of 8%, 11% and 6%, respectively, compared with the prior year.”

Who gives perks in recession? Well, Microsoft is doing that!

Microsoft’s SearchPerks program is running an incentive and giving away double tickets for three days!

These tickets are for every search with a maximum of 50 tickets available that can be earned each day. It is especially done to encourage the participants to do more searches on Live Search. (Jan 21, Jan 22, Jan 23)
SearchPerks is notifying members with an email that looks something like the below snapshot:

Recently Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made diverse announcements on the company's vision for personal computing, high-profile distribution deals for Live Search, and other aspects during his keynote address at CES.

It was not long back when Microsoft signed a deal with Dell that new Dell computers will be shipped with the Live search bar preinstalled.

The recession period is going strong! That means layoff procedure is still at its peak. According to certain reports, Microsoft is planning to lay off 17 percent of its total work force on or around January 15th.

So even this successful technology company is not spared from one of the biggest economic confrontations of all time. According to various specifications, it seems that a lot of layoffs will be seen in the MSN group, and other Microsoft EMEA divisions. To know more about the issue, tune in to Techmeme.

According to a news by a Seattle-focused Web site “TechFlash, Brad Goldberg,
general manager for Live Search, has joined the the list of other executives to quit the company as he will head up the online business at an investment-firm Peak 6 very soon.

According to Cnet news, a Microsoft representative came out with the following statement:

According to a report by ZDNet, Microsoft has signed a mutual deal with Dell that new Dell computers will be shipped with the Live search bar preinstalled – rather than going for Google!

It was in the year 2006, Google had a tie up with Dell on the issue of installing Google software on "millions of Dell personal computers.” The Dell-Google deal also included a co-branded Dell-Google home page

As reported by Liveside.net, Microsoft owns a new domain name kumo.com and the website is pointing towards an internal Microsoft test site. This site can only be accessed by Microsoft employees. The name Kumo standing for cloud or spider was amongst other names, which were mentioned in a post written by Mary Jo Foley, where she discussed about Microsoft's plan of rebranding Live Search.

Most of the SEOs were amazed by reading the article written by Skip Chilcott, Sr. Product Manager of Microsoft. He openly asked the entire webmasters to participate in Link Exchange program as it results in providing a boost to their ranks in search engines. His statement contradicts with Google’s Webmaster and Microsoft’s guidelines.

Google has been seen saying following words about participating in the link schemes:

Microsoft is going strong with its strategy to craft search shares by gaining more number of distribution partners.
In order to continue with this strategy, Microsoft has signed a deal with Sun Microsystems Inc., where it is offering its MSN Toolbar to anyone who downloads Java.

According to the press release,

After Jerry Yang's explicit comments about Yahoo! being open to an acquisition from Microsoft, everyone was waiting with waited breath as to what the latter would have to say regarding this announcement. Well, the announcement came, it was anything but promising.

While speaking to a group of developers in Sydney, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made these not-so-subtle statements in response to Yang's announcement. Ballmer openly dismissed the prospects of an outright acquisition. However, he emphasized that a search deal might be possibility.