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Microsoft has spent plenty of time defending itself in the court room over the years, but arguably the case of Microsoft vs. i4i is as important a battle for the software giant as its antitrust trial was more than a decade ago. The case itself began over a claim of infringement by i4i over a recently removed feature in Microsoft Word, but more broadly the case will have a long term impact on how patents will be enforced going forward. Microsoft has teamed up with Apple, Google, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to defend itself against i4i who is backed by 3M, 19 separate venture capital firms, and even the U.S. Government. It's going to be the legal battle of the century, and it kicks off in front of the Supreme Court starting tomorrow. Microsoft and it's rather a-typical posse are seeking to change the way patent accusations are handled in general. A ruling in their favor could severely damage the ability of "nonpracticing entities" (patient trolls), from going after other companies with weak patents. The implications are obviously much broader than this, but ultimately that is what Microsoft is looking to accomplish here. According to Sarah Columbia from the IP litigation group at McDermott Will & Emery: "If you look at the group that filed amicus briefs, you can see pretty clearly the companies that filed on Microsoft's side tend to be companies who get a lot of lawsuits against them on patents, and in particular a lot of lawsuits against them by what we call nonpracticing entities.". We expect a great many lawyers to get rich on this one before we get the final verdict, but the implications on this one will be wide reaching. Are you willing to go on the record and let us know who you think will win? Let us know in the comments below. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Competition in the hard drive sector has done wonders for consumer pricing, but it's about to take a toll on another supplier. According to Reuters Samsung is looking to exit the spinning disk sector by selling off the losing division as soon as possible. Sources quoted by the newspaper claim they are hoping to rake in as much as $1.5 billion from the sale, but might be willing to entertain bids as low as $1 billion if necessary.
Speculation as to possible suitors pretty much starts and ends with Seagate since Western Digital is in the early days of their merger with Hitachi. Western Digital by comparison paid about $4.3 billion for Hitachi, however Hitachi had a much larger share of the market to back up the price. Samsung still has a very robust component business including memory chips and flat screens, however it never seems to have established itself in the hard drive sector. Neither Samsung or Seagate have made any official comment on the matter, but expect to hear more in the coming weeks. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Still wondering if there is any money to be made on the Internet? Well according to NPR the U.S. online advertising hit a record $26 billion in 2010. The meteoric rise has been mostly attributed to online video and social media, an area which is expected to continue growing considerably in 2011. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the year-over-year growth in 2009 was close to 15 percent, a considerable spike over the previous record of 23.4 billion which was hit in 2008.
In terms of ad format, search continued to lead the pack capturing 46 percent of the revenue, with display related ads picking up 38 percent. Display ads encompass everything from banner ads, to those annoying pop-in style found in you tube clips. Pulling up a distant third is classified ads which only account for 10 percent. Mobile advertising continues to be the smallest area of investment, but is expected to be the biggest area of growth going into this year. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
Internet Explorer 9 made the somewhat controversial decision to leave Windows XP users behind, and IE10 is getting ready to extend the legacy OS snub to Vista users now as well. Microsoft confirmed the rumor this week during its annual MIX conference where a preview version of IE10 was made available, and the company made no apologizes for not supporting Vista. Find out why after the jump.A Microsoft executive told reporters at the event that supporting Internet Explorer 10 on Windows Vista would have meant "optimizing for the lowest common denominator". This is an argument we can somewhat understand on the Windows XP front, but Vista? To the best of our knowledge Vista shares many of the same advanced underpinnings that made Windows 7 possible. It introduced a new display & audio subsystem, not to mention the latest and greatest version of DirectX. Windows 7 introduced some amazing new UI features and fixes to items such as UAC, but behind the scenes let's face it, they just aren't that different. It's possible that Microsoft is taking a hard look at its user base, and given that most of Windows 7 share gain has been at the expense of Vista, it just isn't worth supporting the tens of millions of remaining users. This is a valid argument, but given that the OS still carries mainstream support until April 2012, and extended support for much longer, it's still a pretty controversial decision. Maybe Microsoft will surprise Vista users and release it as an "Ultimate Extra". Ouch, too soon? (Yes I'm still bitter). | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The current HTML Working Group charter defines HTML5 as being "a platform-neutral and device-independent design." Pretty straightforward, right? Well, try telling that to Microsoft. Earlier this week, when it launched IE10 Platform Preview 1, the world's leading software vendor claimed that Internet Explorer is the only browser to deliver a "native HTML5" experience.
Microsoft's ludicrous claim didn't go unnoticed. While rivals Mozilla and Opera were quick to respond, it was the former that stood out with a parodic bug filing on its Bugzilla bug tracking system. Mike Beltzner, a former Firefox director at Mozilla, Beltzner reported Firefox's lack of native HTML5 support as a bug on Mozilla's Bugzilla installation, spawning a fairly long thread full of some very witty comments. One poster even suggested that Mozilla should focus on developing a "HTML5 coprocessor" if it hopes to provide a truly native experience. Some of you are probably wondering what Microsoft really means by native HTML5. Well, nobody really seems to have a definite answer as the software giant hasn't defined the term as yet. This is what Internet Explorer boss Dean Hachamovitch wrote about native HTML5 support in a recent blog post: "The only native experience of the Web and HTML5 today is on Windows 7 with IE9. IE9's approach to taking advantage of what the operating system offers – from the native graphics stack to jump lists in the shell – maximizes performance, usability, and reliability." "The best HTML5 is native to the operating system, so Web sites have the fewest translation layers to pass through. The best HTML5 enables sites to use the same markup – the same HTML, CSS, and script – across browsers. The best HTML5 respects developers' time and enables same markup by treating site-ready HTML5 differently from unstable technologies." Meanwhile, Opera's Haavard Moen dismissed the entire thing as "another nonsensical marketing claim from Microsoft." He was particularly severe on Dean Hachamovitch: "In my opinion, Dean Hachamovitch should be ashamed of himself for signing his name to such a shoddy piece of dishonest marketing nonsense. Call me a grumpy old open web fundamentalist, but I'm getting fed up with this." | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
