Microsoft Internal Google Chrome Bouncing Ball Now Everywhere Parody.

Please play a game with me. Who dislikes whom more? Google or Microsoft? I only ask because at Wednesday's I/O conference Google's chief preacher, Larry Page, bemoaned what he believes is Microsoft's reluctance to do what Google wants. No, he didn't quite phrase it like that. It was more berating Redmond for allegedly milking Google for its own profits. Yes, just like Google milks you.

Google would like to endow Chrome with Microsoft's technology for letting Web applications deal with input from mice, pens, and touch screens. Developers of the Google browser said at the company's Google I/O show here Thursday that Microsoft's Pointer Events approach - built into IE10, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8, and being standardized at the World Wide Web Consortium - has some real advantages. "We're going to start landing some experimental support in Blink for Pointer Events," said Chrome programmer Rick Byers. Blink is the open-source browser engine at the heart of Chrome. "Hopefully, we'll see it in Chrome at some point in the future."

Speaking at Microsoft's Security Development Conference in San Francisco this week, Scott Charney, corporate vice president for Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, detailed Microsoft's journey from just issuing patches when problems occurred to following its own SDL (Security Development Lifecycle) processes, which made security intrinsic to development. "Back in the early days, it was all about whack-a-mole. Problems would occur, patches would issue," said Charney, a former prosecutor.

Earlier this week, Google sent a cease-and-desist letter to Microsoft, saying that it must remove the YouTube application from the Windows Phone marketplace. That app, which Microsoft updated to make it look like those on other mobile platforms, was criticized by Google for allegedly violating its terms of service. The company specifically took aim at Microsoft over the application's lack of ad support.

The new Microsoft Surface Pro will be released in one week in the UK. Microsoft's tablet/laptop gadget is finally going to be released in the UK on May 23, months after its US release. It is the company's most powerful tablet to-date, boasting 4GB RAM, an Intel Core i5 third-generation processor, and a large HD 10.6in screen. One major boon for this tablet is (unlike most Microsoft tablets), the computers runs a full version of Windows 8 rather than Windows RT. However, the UK retail version does not come included with the iconic keyboard that clips on to the device, rather that is sold separately for an additional £110 (approximately $168). The computer does, however, come with the "pen digitizer and pen" stylus for accurate writing or drawing.

In the light of yesterday’s well-received unveiling of the new Nokia Lumia 925 flagship phone, we grabbed 15 minutes with Nokia’s VP of European Sales and Marketing, Chris Weber, and asked him where Nokia’s future lies. His response? Unequivocally in “the Windows Phone camp”. But why has the Finnish mobile giant so recklessly thrown all its eggs into a basket lined with the most derided of operating systems when its very survival is in question? Simply it seems because everyone at Nokia, from developers to execs, is convinced the Windows ecosystem offers the most coherent and future proof service for customers.

Lots of rumors and speculation circulating today that Microsoft has a smaller variant of the Surface – let's call it the Surface Mini until further notice – in the pipeline, and there's been a lot of focus on what screen size this mythical device will have. But it's not screen size that will determine whether the Surface Mini sinks or swims. The general chit-chat hints that the Surface Mini will have a screen size of between 7.5- and 8-inches, putting it in the same ball park as Apple's iPad mini, and a smidgen bigger than Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD.

It’s not that long since Microsoft and Windows defined all aspects of computing. In the days when every computer was a functional, beige box sitting underneath a bulky monitor, what this Seattle-based company wanted was what consumers and businesses got the world over. When Microsoft decided that the best way to access software was via a mouse, even though they hadn’t invented it, that was what the world got. When the same company decided that a menu called “Start” was the place to go to find anything on your PC, and also, oddly, the place to go to shut down your computer, that was that.

Microsoft and Google have been locked in a war of words over a YouTube Windows Phone app, but in the midst of the arguments a new Scroogled ad has emerged. Designed to be an internal-only video, a copy has somehow managed to find its way onto the web right in the middle of Google's I/O developer conference.

Unlike Microsoft's previous attempts, this directly parodies Google's own Chrome ads with a bouncing ball tracking how Google allegedly targets you with ads. It's identical to Google's own Chrome "Now Everywhere" ad, set to the same music and style. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the ad is genuine, stating it's "an internal video that was leaked."

Google CEO Larry Page zinged Microsoft for its "sad" behavior during his remarks at Google I/O, complaining about the company's us-versus-them mentality. Yet only a few days earlier, Google had served Microsoft with a cease-and-desist letter to pull a Windows Phone YouTube app. Whose behavior is really sad here? During a talk at Google I/O, Page decried tech industry competition, saying that it impedes progress. Cooperation, not competition, is the way that the world will improve, he said. CNet quotes him as saying: "Every story I read about Google is us versus some other company or some stupid thing. Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero sum. There is a lot of opportunity out there."

Google and Microsoft are in the middle of a scuffle over the updated YouTube app in Windows Phone, but the software giant is apparently willing to compromise. Earlier this week, Google sent a cease-and-desist letter to Microsoft, saying that it must remove the YouTube application from the Windows Phone marketplace. That app, which Microsoft updated to make it look like those on other mobile platforms, was criticized by Google for allegedly violating its terms of service. The company specifically took aim at Microsoft over the application's lack of ad support.

Free Microsoft games in Windows 7 are abundant, but not always easy for everyone to find (which is probably how you came to find this page in the first place). To make it less of a chore for you, fair reader, we will outline 10 free Microsoft games that you can find on your Windows 7 machine. These games come standard with Windows 7 and are free to play. If you want to access them, you can use the Games folder via the Start button and search for games in the provided field.

Windows 8 was built for a world that blends our work and our personal lives, a world where we expect high quality touch experiences everywhere, and a world that is always on the go and always connected. Windows 8 redefines our market from PCs to mobile computing. We are pleased with the progress we’ve seen with Windows 8 so far. Our OEM partners have delivered tablets, touch laptops, and convertibles that bring the vision of Windows 8 and mobile computing to life. They have introduced some incredible (and unique) new form factors like the Dell XPS 12, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, the Sony VAIO Tap 20, or the recently announced Acer Aspire R7. And today at retail, you can find a powerful mobile touch laptop starting at just over $400. We now have more than 70,000 apps in the Windows Store (the online app store for Windows) – apps such as Twitter, eBay, Netflix, CNN and games like Temple Run: Brave, Bejeweled LIVE and Angry Birds Star Wars and many others.

The checkered flag is out and the race to the bottom for Windows RT manufacturers has entered the final laps. Dell - for all intents and purposes the only Windows RT hardware manufacturer left standing, other than Microsoft -just dropped the official price of its only Windows RT tablet by 33 percent. At almost the same time (when most of the tech world is watching Google I/O), Microsoft started giving away free Touch or Type covers with all new Surface RTs sold in most of Europe, effectively up to a 25 percent discount.

Google was once a humble startup with a big dream—to be the David that takes down Microsoft’s Goliath. Google has become a tech force to be reckoned with, challenging Microsoft in almost every area including Web search, browsers, email, operating systems, productivity software and mobile platforms. Over time, it has chipped away at Microsoft’s market share.

Gartner reports that sales of PCs in Western Europe fell 20.5 percent in the first quarter compared to a year previous. Every country and every segment of the market saw serious declines. Shipments of mobile PCs fell by 24.6 percent and desktop PCs by 13.8 percent. Shipments for the "professional" PC market dropped 17.2 percent, and those to the consumer PC market declined 23.7 percent.

As an aside, if you're sending URLs that contain login credentials in plain text, you already have big security problems. The same is true if your session ID allows anyone to masquerade as you simply by clicking a link. That IP address, 65.52.100.214, is indeed controlled by Microsoft, as a cursory inspection of DNS records confirms. But after doing some investigating of my own, I’ve concluded that the reason for the mysterious visit is almost certainly innocent.

The new gift cards will be offered in a similar way to Apple's iTunes vouchers, allowing Xbox owners to purchase true currency to be used to download content. We're told that normal cash transactions, using credit and debit cards, will also be supported. Microsoft currently offers gift cards in its retail stores, but these can only be used for purchases in brick and mortar stores. The new system will work across Microsoft's various marketplaces, including the Windows Store, Windows Phone Store, and Xbox. We understand that Microsoft is planning to unveil the system as soon as E3, with a planned launch later this year in time for the next-generation Xbox console.

Regular readers know I have been a die-hard Windows Phone fan since the beginning, after testing out an early prototype starting in July 2010. The newly announced Nokia Lumia 928 and 925 devices look solid, but they also makes it clear that Nokia is being held back with incremental hardware updates while pushing as hard as they can with their own software. It reminds me of the way HTC used to push Windows Mobile back in the day and we see how that ended up. The new Lumia 928 and 925 devices offer some incremental improvements over the 920 released last year with a Xenon flash in the 928 and additional lens piece in the 925 with OLED displays now being used on both.

In June, Microsoft will release its next big update to Windows 8 called Windows Blue. With this update, Microsoft will hopefully fix a lot of things that have annoyed people about Microsoft's new touch-friendly operating system. A lot is riding on this. Windows 8 has been widely criticized as being too hard to learn. One report after another has shown that initial demand has not been good for new Windows 8 devices, including Microsoft's own Surface tablets.

Microsoft claimed last week that it's made '100 million' Windows 8 sales and the claim has been widely repeated. But channel feedback and the experience on the ground point to a very different picture. The Guardian's Charles Arthur has made a stab at estimating the true figure, and suggests it's much less, at between 57 million and 59 million machines running Redmond's latest OS. Arthur looks at two metrics of browser usage: StatCounter and Net Applications' NetMarketShare, and extrapolates a usage figure from the number of PCs actually shipped. The logic here is that browser usage is a reliable proxy for real-world usage.

There are narratives circling the technology industry that are wearing out their welcome. The primary one, and the one where I wish more intelligent voices would prevail, is the narrative that there can only be one winner in this industry. Namely that for Google’s ecosystem to win, Microsoft and Apple must fail. Or that for Microsoft’s ecosystem to win, Apple and Google need to lose. And of course for Apple to win, Google and Microsoft need to lose.

The Google Talk integration will be implemented similarly to the way Microsoft already integrates Facebook and Skype messaging from inside Outlook.com, according to a new post on the Microsoft Outlook blog. Microsoft said users should expect to be able to send an instant message to Google contacts with a single click "over the next couple of days." Microsoft built the support using Google's

As many expected and hoped, Microsoft is going to make the coming Windows Blue update to Windows 8 free for existing Windows 8 and Windows RT users. win8blueprice Microsoft's Windows Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller, during an appearance at the May 14 JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, shared the pricing news.

First detected in Brazil, Trojan:JS/Febipos.A, the malware attempts to keep itself update, just like normal, legitimate browser extensions, Microsoft noted in a security bulletin late Friday. Once downloaded, the Trojan monitors whether the infected computer is logged into a Facebook account and attempts to download a config file that will includes a list of commands for the browser extension. The malware can then perform a variety of Facebook actions, including liking a page, sharing, posting, joining a group, and chatting with the account holder's friends.

Multiple security firms warned that Internet Explorer 8 was used to launch "watering hole" attacks at government workers at the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Energy. In a security advisory issued on Friday, Microsoft said it was "investigating" the reports and that it was "aware of [the] attacks." It confirmed the flaw as a "remote code execution vulnerability" that allows hackers to inject malware into a webpage or a user's computer.

The company is attempting a U-turn. Windows 8 was Microsoft’s biggest bid so far to adjust its flagship product to the new world of touch-screen devices. Out went the “start” button that had controlled access to the computer’s menu since 1995. In came giant multicoloured tiles that respond to the touch. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s boss, described the introduction of the new system as a “bet-the-company” moment. But the bet proved so ill-judged that an app which lets users reintroduce the familiar start button is now one of the bestsellers for Windows 8.

Ms. Hood, 41, joined Microsoft in late 2002 and was most recently the chief financial officer of Microsoft’s business division, the unit that oversees its lucrative Office suite of applications. She replaces Peter Klein, Microsoft’s chief financial officer who announced recently that he was resigning to spend more time with his family.