MbS made the remarks at an annual speech to the advisory Shura Council, which he gave on behalf of his father, King Salman
mena9 hours ago
Challenging market leader Google—which in turn is looking to break into Microsoft’s core software market—is a long-term project, said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.
“We have had some very good initial response,” Ballmer said at a conference in Detroit. “I don’t want to over-set expectations. We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up the pace of innovation over a long period of time.”
Microsoft grabbed 12.1 percent of U.S. Internet searches for the work week June 8-12, according to data released by industry tracker comScore earlier on Wednesday.
That is up from 11.3 percent in the June 1-5 period—the week in which Bing was launched—and up from 9.1 percent the week before that.
For comparison, Google got 65 percent of U.S. searches in May, the last full month for which figures are available, followed by Yahoo with 20.1 percent and Microsoft with 8 percent.
Analysts and investors are keenly awaiting data for all of June to see if Microsoft can hold onto early gains.
Ballmer acknowledged the tough task of beating Google, which he referred to as “a big dog competitor”.
The world’s largest software company has long been determined to play a major role in the lucrative Web search market after watching upstart Google take a stranglehold.
At the same time, Google is looking to take advantage of its popularity to launch software that competes with Microsoft’s, which has created a new source of tension between the two companies.
Microsoft ratcheted up that tension on Wednesday by claiming that Google’s new Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook software—which allows users to share data between their Outlook e-mail and Google’s online offerings—disables a key function in Outlook.
“The installation of the Google Apps Sync plugin disables Outlook’s ability to search any and all of your Outlook data,” Outlook product manager Dev Balasubramanian wrote on a Microsoft blog. “It is also important to note that uninstalling the plugin may not fix the issue.”
The problem, though relatively unimportant to users, represents a crucial struggle between Microsoft and Google for e-mail customers.
Google’s new product allows business users to continue using Outlook for email and other tasks, but the back-end functionality and data storage moves to Google, instead of residing on a company’s internal servers running Microsoft software.
Google did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Microsoft shares closed up just less than 1 percent at $23.68, while Google’s fell 0.2 percent to $415.16, both on Nasdaq.
MbS made the remarks at an annual speech to the advisory Shura Council, which he gave on behalf of his father, King Salman
mena9 hours ago
His visit to Cairo aimed to salvage stalled negotiations mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to end the conflict
world9 hours ago
The group accused Israel, which has so far refused to comment, as US denies involvement
mena10 hours ago
Hundreds of pagers belonging to the armed group exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday, killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others
world10 hours ago
They view it as a pivotal move toward fostering inclusivity and diversity in corporate structures
uae10 hours ago
Israel has not yet commented on the explosions
europe10 hours ago
The meeting saw engaging discussions on Sinomach’s strategic initiatives and ongoing projects in the region
economy10 hours ago