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Microsoft Corp., the world’s biggest software maker, made an unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo! Inc. to challenge Google Inc.’s dominance in Internet search services and advertising.

The $31-a-share bid of cash or Microsoft stock is 62 percent more than Yahoo’s closing price yesterday. Yahoo, which posted a 23 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit this week, had fallen 18 percent in Nasdaq Stock Market trading this year before today. Microsoft fell the most since 2006 as investors expressed disapproval of the deal.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer is attempting the biggest-ever technology takeover after failing to compete with Google in a market that may almost double to $80 billion by 2010. Microsoft’s shares have dropped more than 40 percent since Ballmer took over from co-founder Bill Gates in 2000.

“With Microsoft paying a full price for a broken business where there’s not accelerating organic growth, I can’t make that work at all,'’ said Jon Fisher, a Minneapolis-based portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management, which manages $22 billion, including Microsoft shares. “I don’t see what they get out of it. The strategy behind the deal was wrong.'’

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Microsoft late last week released an updated test version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 to about 15,000 beta testers. The update, the third such service pack for the six-year-old operating system is due out in final form in the first half of next year. The company said before its final release it expects to issue a public test version of the service pack, though it did not provide more specificity than at “a later date.”

“We are targeting (the first half of) 2008 for the release of XP SP3,” Microsoft said, “though our timing will always be based on customer feedback as a first priority.”

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In a high-profile reminder of the security pitfalls that still exist with PC-based communications, eBay’s Skype Latest News about Skype is warning users of a fast-spreading worm affecting users of Skype for Windows.

The worm spreads through the peer-to-peer phone service’s instant chat application and is activated when a user clicks in a link in an instant message they receive, Skype said.

Those messages may appear to be from someone on a Skype user’s contact list or from an unknown party. The messages contain an attachment that appears to be a JPEG photo but in reality is executable code.
‘Cleverly Written’

The worm, which has been dubbed “W32/Ramex.A,” then uses code within Skype’s application programming interface to access files on the PC.

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Apple has posted yet another beta of its Safari Web browser for Mac OS X and Windows.
Peter Cohen, Macworld
Friday, June 22, 2007 04:00 PM PDT

Apple has posted a new beta build of its Safari Web browser for Mac OS X and Windows, Safari 3.0.2 beta. It’s available for download now.

Safari 3.0.2 for Mac OS X beta features several changes, including the latest security updates, improved stability, and improved WebKit support for Mail, iChat and Dashboard.

According to a security note offered by Apple, Safari Beta Update 3.0.2 incorporates the same WebCore and WebKit fixes that Apple published separately on Friday as Security Update 2007-006. Other improvements include a fix in both Mac OS X and Windows versions of Safari that corrects access control to window properties to prevent malicious Web sites from cross-site scripting.

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Microsoft has signed yet another Linux collaboration and patent agreement, this time with its old copyright adversary Linspire, through which the companies will work on interoperability between Windows and Linux.

The agreement is the latest in a list of Linux-related partnerships for Microsoft that began with Novell in November 2006 and has also included Samsung, Fuji Xerox, LG Electronics, and Xandros.

It sees Microsoft and San Diego, California-based Linspire teaming up on document format compatibility, instant messaging, fonts, digital media, and web search. It also includes a patent covenant from Microsoft not to sue Linspire’s customers for patent infringement that could see Linspire prevented from distributing Linux and open source code licensed with the forthcoming GPLv3.

Specifically, Linspire will license Microsoft’s RT Audio Codec to enable voice-enabled interoperability between Linspire’s Pidgin client and Microsoft’s Office Communicator and Live Messenger instant messaging clients.

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