Microsoft earnings results yield some unexpected good news

And I’m not talking about the Xbox, Office or Tools numbers.

Those were widely anticipated. These kind of surprised me.

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

Search Engine market shares refused to budge in 2011

Remarkable. They went absolutely nowhere.

And Microsoft lost $2 billion in the process.

InfoWorld Tech Watch. [Link fixed.]

The real reason Steve Ballmer canned the head of Windows Phone

Andy Lees is out – but not for the reasons you’ve probably read.

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

Barnes & Noble takes on Microsoft’s Android patents

Finally, a company stands up to MS – and look at what they’ve found!

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

GM is the latest battleground between Microsoft Office and Google Apps

With 100,000 seats in the balance.

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

AliMicrohoobaba

A Microsoft-Yahoo-Alibaba hookup just makes sense.

When you hear the news in coming weeks, remember: it’s Alibaba first and last.

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

When it comes to Microsoft stock, it’s good to be Steve

The real story in Microsoft’s Proxy Statement isn’t Steve Ballmer’s 2% pay raise.

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

Open source slammed in US government sponsored meeting

Last year, the US govt sponsored a meeting with Thai govt agency heads in Chiang Mai. In the meeting, the Microsoft rep “expressed concern over the [Thai government's] Creative Economy policy of promoting the “open source” software model over the “commercial source” model as a means to curb piracy.”

In the same meeting, the Business Software Alliance rep “urged the [Thai government] not to favor open source over commercial source. He argued that (1) the open source model has been shown to have an insignificant impact on reducing software piracy; and (2) by focusing on an open source policy, the [Thai government] signals the market to stunt the development of commercial source software, which in turn undermines Thailand’s ability to fully service market needs.”

Our tax dollars at work, eh?

Wikileaks cable. See paragraphs 9 and 10.