Web Services & Browser

Internet Explorer IQ Story Was a Hoax

Corporate, Web Services & Browser, Windows 7, Windows News No Responses »

Aug 032011

Remember that report claiming Internet Explorer users were borderline morons?

Turns out it was a hoax. Shocking, right?

Last week, Canadian consulting firm Aptiquant published the “results” of a survey suggesting that IE users scored lower on IQ tests than those using, say, Firefox. A bunch of publications picked up the story and ran with it, at least until cooler heads began questioning the data. Not to mention whether “Aptiquant” existed at all. Oh, and it turned out that Aptiquant.com ripped off a bunch of stuff from the Web portal for a French company called Central Test.

“Central Test noticed the fraudulent use of its identity by Aptiquant, a Canadian company,” reads a note posted on the Central Test Website, “and denies any direct or indirect link with the above-mentioned company.”

For their part, the people behind “Aptiquant” were in full retreat. “The main purpose behind this hoax was to create awareness about the incompatibilities of IE6, and not to insult or hurt anyone,” claims the notice on its landing page. It also included a helpful list of “tell-tale signs” that the study was a fake.

Meanwhile, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber hints that the IE-IQ study, while fake, might not be entirely off-base. “I’d wager that if someone did a proper study on this, that IE users would tend to have a lower average IQ,” he wrote. “It’s just the nature of IE being the most-used browser, and the default on lower-priced and older PCs.”

Um, yeah. Because people who use the default browser on lower-priced and older PCs must be more idiotic than those using Firefox, Chrome or Safari. I’m sure a rigorous scientific analysis would prove that one in a jiffy. Actually, knowing Gruber’s work, I’d bet a dollar he thinks Safari users would average the highest on any given IQ test.

The only thing this Aptiquant “study” demonstrated, in the end, is that virtually any bit of data–no matter how unbelievable–is a viable candidate for the blogosphere’s great echo chamber. That’s why I didn’t write about it in the first place.

&partnerID=167&key=segment"/> .7700,cat.TechBiz
.rss"/>

Microsoft Selling Bing Is a Non-Starter

Advertising & Search, Corporate, Web Services & Browser, Windows News No Responses »

Jul 262011

Should Microsoft sell off Bing?

Hahaha. No.

Reuters columnist Robert Cyran wrote a July 22 opinion piece suggesting that Microsoft chucking its search engine will boost the stock price and save its online division some cash. “The industry’s distant number two is a distraction for the software giant,” he wrote, “one that costs shareholders dearly.” He even calls out Facebook and Apple as potential candidates for snatching up Bing. Ha. Hahahaha.

As Mary-Jo Foley pointed out on her blog earlier today, there’s one little problem with Microsoft ridding itself of Bing: By this point, the search engine is so deeply integrated into Redmond’s “all in” cloud strategy that selling the unit would be tantamount to chopping off a limb. As explained (repeatedly) by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives, Bing’s data is heavily leveraged in service of other cloud offerings, and the engine itself is being hard-baked into Windows Phone and other products.

Sure, Microsoft’s online initiatives are losing a lot of cash. Guess what? Microsoft is sitting on a veritable Mount Everest of greenbacks. That situation won’t last forever (in fact, given the recent weakness in Windows and Windows Live Division revenue, it might end sooner or later), but for the moment, Microsoft can certainly afford to set however much money on fire in order to establish and maintain an online presence.

Indeed, an online presence is perhaps Microsoft’s most important goal at the moment. Traditional desktop-based software is transitioning, surely and not-so-slowly, to a cloud-based paradigm. Bing can serve as a sort of cross-platform “glue” between these growing cloud products. Give it up, and you rob pundits of the ability to argue over whether Microsoft is a dinosaur–because it will be a dinosaur, finally and irrevocably.

I’m sure investors (not to mention Microsoft’s accounting department) are irate at Microsoft’s online division burning through so much cash, but there’s really no alternative. If it’s any consolation to Microsoft, few people thought that Bing would survive as long as it has, much less (in conjunction with powering Yahoo’s search) seize nearly a third of the market.

&partnerID=167&key=segment"/> .7700,cat.TechBiz
.rss"/>

Microsoft Very Serious About Finding Rustock Operators

Corporate, Web Services & Browser, Windows News No Responses »

Jul 202011

Microsoft is serious about this whole “eliminating botnets” thing.

The company’s offering a bounty for the operators behind the Rustock botnet, which the company helped disable in March. Before it went offline, the botnet proved capable of sending billions of spam e-mails per day.

In exchange for information leading to those operators’ arrest and conviction and whatnot, Microsoft is now willing to pay some $250,000. That’s a pretty big chunk of change, and the company’s probably betting it’s enough to persuade someone to sell their botnet-building buddy out.

“This reward offer stems from Microsoft’s recognition that the Rustock botnet is responsible for a number of criminal activities and serves to underscore our commitment to tracking down those behind it,” Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, wrote in a July 18 email posted on The Official Microsoft Blog. “The legal action Microsoft has taken in civil court has already been successful, helping us take down the Rustock botnet and disrupt its operations.”

Translation: We want these people caught in the worst way.

Before its shutdown, estimates of Rustock’s size varied between 1.1 million and 1.7 million infected computers, and the botnet may have been responsible for 47.5 percent of all spam spent worldwide by the end of 2010. Microsoft blocked the IP addresses controlling the botnet, in conjunction with a coordinated seizure of Rustock command-and-control servers located at five hosting providers in seven U.S. cities: Denver, Scranton, Pa., Kansas City, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, and Columbus, Ohio.

Microsoft’s been aggressive in the botnet-killing department. In February 2010, the company helped persuade a federal judge in Virginia to issue a temporary restraining order that cut off the 277 Internet domains associated with Waledac, which was blamed for producing more than 1.5 million spam messages per day. Having infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, Waledac was considered a big enough threat to attract the attention of not only Microsoft, but also Symantec, Shadowserver Foundation, the University of Washington and a handful of others joined together in an initiative termed “Operation b49.”

At the time, security experts questioned whether such legal maneuvers would ultimately be sufficient to curb the increasingly endemic issue of botnets. Microsoft’s latest bounty on Rustock’s operators suggests the company is taking ever-harder steps to deal with the threat.

&partnerID=167&key=segment"/> .7700,cat.TechBiz
.rss"/>

Microsoft Might Be Thinking Beyond Facebook

Web Services & Browser, Windows News No Responses »

Jul 182011

So last week, Microsoft posted what looked like a social-networking project–codenamed “Tulalip”–onto the Web URL socl.com. “With Tulalip you can find what you need and Share what you know easier than ever,” read the page’s opening text, above a series of what looked like user-profile photos.

That page was subsequently yanked, replaced with a note suggesting the whole thing was an accident: “Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the Web … We didn’t mean to, honest.”

As I mentioned on eWEEK a little while ago, Microsoft has two good reasons to explore the possibility of branded social networking: Google and Facebook.

What’s that, you say? Microsoft already owns a minority chunk of Facebook? That’s right, and Redmond’s leveraging that relationship to the hilt: baking Facebook features into its Bing search engine and offering up newly acquired Skype for Facebook video chat.

By itself, that could be enough for Microsoft to combat archrival Google’s growing influence in the social-networking sphere. But that minority stake also means Microsoft has precious little control over Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who, well, sort of has a reputation for marching to his own drummer. Sure, the relationship between Microsoft and Facebook is pretty tight at the moment–but what happens if it turns sour?

In light of that, it seems inevitable that a company as large and ostensibly forward-thinking as Microsoft could consider how to best establish a branded social-networking presence beholden to nobody. Hence this weird accident (or “accident”) with Tulalip. Nonetheless, Microsoft still needs to tread carefully–Google Plus is apparently enjoying an early-adopter surge, and Facebook remains the dominant force in social networking.

&partnerID=167&key=segment"/> .7700,cat.TechBiz
.rss"/>

Microsoft’s Office 365 Ready to Duel Google Apps

Corporate, Desktop & Mobile, Web Services & Browser, Windows News No Responses »

Jun 292011

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took to a New York City stage June 28 to roll out Office 365. That alone hints at the importance attached to this latest cloud-based effort, which Microsoft hopes will blunt the momentum of Google’s work in the cloud-productivity arena.

Ballmer claimed Office 365 will give small- to midsize businesses an “edge” in competing, without the burden of complex on-premises systems. Indeed, most of Microsoft’s promotional materials seem angled toward that particular audience segment. That’s unsurprising, considering how analysts have been telling me for months that Google Apps’ presence is strongest in companies with relatively low headcount.

Certainly the competition between Microsoft and Google has intensified in recent months. Tom Rizzo, senior director of Microsoft Online Services, insisted in a May 17 interview that businesses were trying Google’s business-cloud offerings before shifting back into Microsoft’s camp. Google executives took exception to Rizzo’s assertions, arguing that Google remained the leading choice for businesses interested in cloud-based email and collaboration.

And so it’s gone on, for some time. But now there’s Office 365: Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online unified onto a cloud platform available for between $2 and $27 per user per month. Supposedly, Office 365′s backend infrastructure is also tougher and more reliable than its predecessor, BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), which had suffered some service outages in recent months. Does that mean it’s time for the Google legions in Mountain View to start shaking in their collective boots?

Google certainly seems a little freaked out about it, launching a preemptive PR blitz ahead of Office 365′s launch. “Office 365 is built for Microsoft. [Google] Apps is built for choice,” Shan Sinha, Google Apps’ product manager, wrote in a June 27 posting on the Official Google Enterprise Blog. “Office 365 is optimized for Windows-based PCs and devices, which reduces your flexibility. Our applications are designed to work well on any device, on any operating system.”

But according to some analysts, Office 365 isn’t poised to conquer the cloud just yet.

“While Office 365 does put Microsoft in mortal combat with Google,” Matthew Cain, an analyst with Gartner, wrote in a June 28 email, “it is not really an existential threat for Google since Microsoft is essentially validating the model that Google pioneered with Google Apps.”

He added: “I would expect that Office 365 actually heightens interest in Google Apps … the first ingredient we need for companies to wholly embrace cloud-based personal productivity and collaboration tools is time. Time–and I mean 3-5 years–will prove or disprove the soundness of the model in terms of economics, security, stability and functionality.”

Other analysts seemed to concur:

“Microsoft is struggling to show value given that Google is preaching ‘free,’” Rob Enderle, principal analyst of the Enderle Group, wrote in a July 27 email. “They need to reeducate their market quickly, but don’t see this as a marketing but a product problem, and are playing Google’s game as a result.”

For the substantial majority of companies, Office 365 likely won’t wholly replace desktop-based Office anytime soon. Nonetheless, it’s an ever-cloudier IT world out there.

&partnerID=167&key=segment"/> .7700,cat.TechBiz
.rss"/>