Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Sells Part of the Company

Portions of Microsoft up for sale

Crack



Summary: Microsoft to let go of Franchise Gator; Paul Allen suffers a blow; Microsoft Stirling postponed

WHAT is a company to do when debt is just around the corner [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]? Let redundant bits go, of course. Microsoft has already laid off many employees, but it's not enough. Having just decided to shut in the attic an old expensive trophy which is Encarta (among many other products and services), Microsoft proceeds to selling Franchise Gator.

Microsoft’s digital advertising division, which includes what was formerly aQuantive, has sold off its small subsidiary Franchise Gator, to Landmark Interactive, paidContent has learned. The sale price is around $20 million.


This is also covered in the following articles, so it's apparently more than just an early/premature rumour:



There is no end to it. Rumours suggest that Microsoft might sell Razorfish because, like many other divisions, it's just not working out, both financially and technically [1, 2]. This may lead to a rapid decline in Microsoft's value.

Speaking of Microsoft and financial difficulties, its cofounder's 'baby' has entered a debt of $21,000,000,000. How quietly such things can happen.

Charter officials have said that Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, will retain 35 percent voting control of the company, down from 91 percent. And his 51 percent stake in shares will drop to 3 percent.

Charter filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Friday in an effort to reduce its $21 billion debt by $8 billion.


More coverage can be found in:



This was pretty predictable.

And here is yet another Microsoft delay, demonstrating the vapourware tactics run deep in the company's veins.

Microsoft delays Stirling security suite until late 2009/early 2010



Microsoft had been planning to deliver its integrated security suite, codenamed “Stirling” in the first half of this year. On April 3, company officials admitted that Stirling, instead, will begin rolling out very late this year, with substantial components not coming until early 2010.


All in all, not good for Microsoft.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Lookout, It's Outlook
Outlook is all about the sharing!
Updated A Month Ago: Richard Stallman on Software Patents as Obstacles to Software Development
very recent update
Is BlueMail a Client of ZDNet Now?
Let's examine what BlueMail does to promote itself
OpenBSD Says That Even on Linux, Wayland Still Has a Number of Rough Edges (But IBM Wants to Make X Extinct)
IBM tries to impose unready software on users
 
The 'Smart' Attack on Power Grid Neutrality (or the Wet Dream of Tiered Pricing for Power, Essentially Punishing Poorer Households for Exercising Freedom Like Richer Households)
The dishonest marketing people tell us the age of disservice and discrimination is all about "smart" and "Hey Hi" (AI) as in algorithms akin to traffic-shaping in the context of network neutrality
Links 29/11/2023: VMware Layoffs and Too Many Microsofters Going Inside Google
Links for the day
Just What LINUX.COM Needed After Over a Month of Inactivity: SPAM SPAM SPAM (Linux Brand as a Spamfarm)
It's not even about Linux
Microsoft “Discriminated Based on Sexuality”
Relevant, as they love lecturing us on "diversity" and "inclusion"...
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Media Cannot Tell the Difference Between Microsoft and Iran
a platform with back doors
Links 28/11/2023: New Zealand's Big Tobacco Pivot and Google Mass-Deleting Accounts
Links for the day
Justice is Still the Main Goal
The skulduggery seems to implicate not only Microsoft
[Teaser] Next Week's Part in the Series About Anti-Free Software Militants
an effort to 'cancel' us and spy on us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Permacomputing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constraints Freedom of Thought
Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 27, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, November 27, 2023
When Microsoft Blocks Your Access to Free Software
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." [Chicago Sun-Times]
Techrights Statement on 'Cancel Culture' Going Out of Control
relates to a discussion we had in IRC last night
Stuff People Write About Linux
revisionist pieces
Links 28/11/2023: Rosy Crow 1.4.3 and Google Drive Data Loss
Links for the day
Links 27/11/2023: Australian Wants Tech Companies Under Grip
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 27/11/2023: Underwater Data Centres and Gemini, BSD Style!
Links for the day
[Meme] Leaning Towards the Big Corporate CoC
Or leaning to "the green" (money)
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc in 2022: Almost Half a Million Bucks for Three People Who Attack Richard Stallman and Defame Linus Torvalds
Follow the money
[Meme] Identity Theft and Forgery
Coming soon...
Microsoft Has Less Than 1,000 Mail (MX) Servers Left, It's Virtually Dead in That Area (0.19% of the Market)
Exim at 254,000 servers, Postfix at 150,774, Microsoft down to 824
The Web is Dying, Sites Must Evolve or Die Too
Nowadays when things become "Web-based" it sometimes means more hostile and less open than before
Still Growing, Still Getting Faster
Articles got considerably longer too (on average)
In India, the One Percent is Microsoft and Mozilla
India is where a lot of software innovations and development happen, so this kind of matters a lot
Feeding False Information Using Sockpuppet Accounts and Imposters
online militants try every trick in the book, even illegal stuff
What News Industry???
Marketing, spam, and chatbots
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 26, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, November 26, 2023
The Software Freedom Law Center's Eben Moglen Explains That We Already Had Free Software Almost Everywhere Before (Half a Century Ago)
how code was shared in the 1970s and 80s