Microsoft gives up, offers Windows Phone OS for free

Windows Phone OS -- can they even give it away successfully?

MS offers Windows Phone OS free to Indian players - The Times of India: "...Desperate times call for desperate measures. With Windows Phone failing to make a significant dent in the market share of Google's Android and Apple's iOS in the last four years, Microsoft is waiving the licence fee and offering it to at least two Indian phone makers for free...."

Microsoft says, Come and get it -- Windows Phone is free
Computerworld (blog)
Microsoft will be following Google's lead in hoping to make money via services such as Bing, Outlook.com on mobile, rather than on licensing fees. As to whether that will work, it will be quite some time before we know. But watching Windows Phone's ...

Microsoft's next big headache: The Google Chromebook
CNNMoney
In a stagnant PC market, the Google-powered Chromebooks have managed to find some traction. ... Late last year, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) launched a seemingly random, preemptive campaign against Chromebooks in a series of TV commercials.

Google is encrypting search globally. That's bad for the NSA and China's censors.
Washington Post (blog)
Firefox, Safari and Google's own Chrome browser support automatic encryption, but older generations of Microsoft's Internet Explorer — still popular in China and much of the world — do not. Internet Explorer 6, which was first released in 2001 and ...

Target Missed Alarms in Epic Hack of Credit Card Data - Businessweek: " . . . Target stood by as 40 million credit card numbers—and 70 million addresses, phone numbers, and other pieces of personal information—gushed out of its mainframes...."

Amazon hikes Prime membership to $99 per year
Boston.com
AP FILE - In this Oct. 18, 2010 file photo, an Amazon.com package awaits delivery from UPS in Palo Alto, Calif. Amazon on Thursday, March 13, 2014 said it is raising the price of its popular Prime membership to $99 per year, an increase of $20. It's ...

Google Capital invests in SF startup Credit Karma
San Jose Mercury News
SAN FRANCISCO -- Google is betting that good things will happen to Credit Karma, an online service that provides consumers with free copies of the credit scores that define their financial reputations. Credit Karma is getting Google's endorsement and ...

Microsoft Quietly Pulls Xbox Two-Year Contract Plans
Wall Street Journal
Microsoft drew a lot of attention when it introduced the program, which emulates the subsidized prices U.S. wireless carriers offer on pricey smartphones for buyers who agree to a service contract. The subsidy model was not applied to Microsoft's new ...

Google Search makeover ditches underlined links and downplays ads
PCWorld (blog)
Put down those glasses! Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Google Search indeed has a new look—one that ditches the Web 1.0-era link underlines and removes the big yellow boxes around advertisements in favor of more discrete yellow tags next to ...

Google Snaps Up a Defunct Android Gaming Company
TIME
But in November, Green Throttle gave up on that idea and removed the Arena app fromAmazon's and Google's stores. The controller ... Nokia, Palm and Green Throttle were all flailing before being pursued by Microsoft, HP and Google, respectively. So ...

Microsoft names head of investor ValueAct to board
Washington Post
... board of directors. Morfit has pushed for Microsoft to focus on its enterprise software products and cloud computing business rather than its flagship Windows computer operating system, which is being hurt by the declining sale of PCs. More ...

Apple devices said to get free in-flight movies on United
CNET
Apple devices said to get free in-flight movies on United. The airlines is reportedly getting ready to debut an Apple-only entertainment service that will let users access more than 150 movies and 200 TV shows while up in the air....

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