Techmeme: Microsoft Hits Back as Google Muscles In (Shira Ovide/Wall Street Journal)

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July 16, 2012, 4:25 AM

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Brian Stelter / New York Times:

MSNBC.com Renamed to NBCNews.com as Microsoft and NBC Divorce — On Sunday night, MSNBC.com did something that successful Web sites almost never do: it renamed itself. — The site became NBCNews.com, signifying the end of a relationship between NBC and Microsoft that dates back to the earliest days of the commercial Web.

More: Reuters, ZDNet, msnbc.com, The Next Web, Bloomberg, paidContent, VentureBeat, Truthdig, GeekWire, The Verge, msnbc.com, Hollywood Reporter, AllThingsD, Forbes, Beet.TV and CNET

Tweets: @nbcnews, @msnbc, @pkafka, @rafat, @brianstelter and @rafat

See also Mediagazer

New York Times:

Apple May Meet Tablet Competition With a Smaller iPad — The tech companies are at it again — trying to catch the blockbuster iPad in a race to win the tablet market. — Google on Friday began shipping its Nexus 7, which is smaller and less expensive than Apple's iPad …

More: Gizmodo, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Apple Bitch, IntoMobile, I4U News, iDownloadBlog.com, Redmond Pie, TUAW, PhoneArena, GeekWire, Mobile, App Advice, MacNN, 9to5Mac and iClarified. See also Mediagazer

Jordan Golson / MacRumors:

Smaller iPad Costing “Significantly Less” Than $499 Coming This Fall, According to NYT — The New York Times has added to the concerto of reports hinting at the arrival of an iPad with a 7.85" screen this fall. Two weeks ago, Bloomberg offered a similar report, also citing anonymous sources …

More: The Verge

Fred Wilson / A VC:

In Defense Of Free — I have written so much about free here at AVC that it should be called AVFree. In fact, I've even written a post with this exact same title (almost exactly seven years ago, the summer we invested in twitter, zynga, and tumblr). — I haven't touched this subject …

More: Dave Winer, Virtual Pants, FM Signal, rc3.org and Social Media

Tweets: @daltonc and @howardlindzon

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life:

Some Thoughts on App.net — A few weeks ago Dalton Caldwell …

Julie Bort / Business Insider:

Microsoft Isn't The Only Tech Company Doing Forced Employee Ranking — Microsoft has been taking a lot of heat over its employee review process known as “forced ranking” or “stack ranking.” — But Microsoft is far from the only tech company doing it. — We've heard from employees at Dell …

Tweets: @alhui

Shira Ovide / Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Hits Back as Google Muscles In — Microsoft Corp. has publicly dismissed Web-based Google Apps as a competitor to its Office software suite. But, behind the scenes, Microsoft is stepping up its efforts to halt Google Inc.'s encroachment on its business-software turf.

Loren Feldman / New York Times:

Goldman Sachs and a Sale Gone Horribly Awry — THE business deal from hell began to crumble even before the Champagne corks were popped. — The deal, the $580 million sale of a highflying technology company, Dragon Systems, had just been approved by its board and congratulations were being exchanged.

More: Techland and Pulse2 Technology …. Tweets: @bill_gross and @saralivingston

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Here is why Facebook bought Spool — Over the weekend, news reports emerged that Facebook was buying Spool, a mobile-oriented social bookmarking service started by Avichal Garg and Curtis Spencer. At the surface, this seems like yet another acqua-hire but scratch a little deeper and you start …

More: Techie Buzz, AllThingsD and The Next Web

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:

Linux developers working on Windows UEFI secure boot problem — Summary: With Windows 8 PCs with UEFI secure boot locked PCs on its way, Linux developers are working on addressing its problems. — Follow @sjvn — We all know that Windows 8 PCs will come locked up tight Microsoft's UEFI …

Klint Finley / TechCrunch:

What Exactly Is GitHub Anyway? — Andreessen Horowitz announced a whopping $100 million investment in GitHub this week. You can read commentary and speculation all over the web about what GitHub will do with the money, whether this was a good investment for Andreessen Horowitz and whether taking …

More: Social Media and 7fff. Tweets: @jeffjarvis

Lee Chyen Yee / Reuters:

China's Lenovo inches closer to a global tech title — Lenovo Group Ltd is on track to overtake Hewlett-Packard Co as the world's biggest PC maker by sales as soon as this year, making it the first Chinese company to grab the top spot globally in a technology sector.

More: CNBC and Tech in Asia. Thanks:@budip

David A. Bell / The New Republic:

The Bookless Library — Don't deny the change. Direct it wisely. — I. — THEY ARE, in their very different ways, monuments of American civilization. The first is a building: a grand, beautiful Beaux-Arts structure of marble and stone occupying two blocks' worth of Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

More: The Verge

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