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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_v._MikeRoweSoft] | [TOKENS: 1007] |
Contents Microsoft v. MikeRoweSoft Microsoft v. MikeRoweSoft was a 2004 legal dispute between Microsoft and a Canadian Belmont High School student named Mike Rowe, who was 17, over the domain name "MikeRoweSoft.com". Microsoft argued that their trademark had been infringed because of the phonetic resemblance between "Microsoft" and "MikeRoweSoft". The case received international press attention following Microsoft's perceived heavy-handed approach to a 12th grade student's part-time web design business and the subsequent support that Rowe received from the online community. A settlement was eventually reached, with Rowe granting ownership of the domain to Microsoft in exchange for an Xbox and additional Microsoft products and services. Background Since my name is Mike Rowe, I thought it would be funny to add "soft" to the end of it. The domain name MikeRoweSoft.com was initially registered by Canadian student Mike Rowe on August 5, 2003. Rowe set up the site as a part-time web design business, choosing the domain because of the phonetic pun by adding the word "soft" to the end of his name. Microsoft saw the name as trademark infringement because of its phonetic resemblance to their trademarked corporate name and demanded that he give up the domain. After receiving a letter from Microsoft's Canadian legal representatives Smart & Biggar on January 14, 2004, Rowe replied asking to be compensated for giving up the domain. Microsoft offered to pay Rowe's out-of-pocket expenses of $10, the original cost of registering the domain name. Rowe countered asking instead for $10,000, later claiming that he did this because he was "mad at" Microsoft for their initial $10 offer. Microsoft declined the offer and sent a cease and desist letter spanning 25 pages. Microsoft accused Rowe of setting up the site in order to try to force them into a large financial settlement, a practice known as cybersquatting. Press coverage and settlement Rowe went to the press, creating publicity for the case and garnering support for his cause, including donations of over $6,000 and an offer of free advice from a lawyer. At one point Rowe was forced to take down his site after it was overwhelmed by around 250,000 page views over a period of twelve hours, only managing to get the site back up after changing to a service provider with a higher capacity. The case, portrayed as a David versus Goliath struggle by the media, characterized Microsoft in a negative light. The resulting bad publicity was later described as a "public-relations mess". The public showing of support that Rowe received was credited with "softening Microsoft's stance", leading to an eventual settlement. In late January 2004, it was revealed that the two parties had come to an out-of-court settlement, with Microsoft taking control of the domain. In return Microsoft agreed to pay all of the expenses that Rowe had incurred, including setting up a new site at and redirecting traffic to MikeRoweforums.com, a website now defunct. Additionally, Microsoft provided Rowe with a subscription to the Microsoft Developer Network, an all-expenses-paid trip for him and his family to the Microsoft Research Tech Fest at their headquarters in Redmond, Washington, training for Microsoft certification and an Xbox with a selection of games. Following an online poll, Rowe donated most of his legal defense fund to Canuck Place, a hospice for terminally ill children, and used the remaining money for his future university education. Further developments We take our trademark seriously, but in this case maybe a little too seriously. After settling the dispute with Microsoft, Rowe attempted to auction off the documentation he had received on the on-line auction site eBay, describing it as "a piece of Internet history". The materials included one copy of the original 25-page cease and desist letter, as well as an inch-thick WIPO book containing copies of trademarks, web pages and e-mails between him and Microsoft. The auction received more than half a million page views and bidding rose to more than $200,000. The high bids turned out to be fraudulent, and the auction was restricted to pre-approved bidders. After restarting from the reserve price of $500, the documents eventually sold for $1,037. Microsoft later admitted that they may have been too aggressive in their defense of the "Microsoft" trademark. Following the case, it was suggested by Out-Law.com editor Struan Robertson that Microsoft had little choice but to pursue the issue once it had come to light, or they would have risked weakening their trademark. This view was also espoused by ZDNet, which noted that had Microsoft knowingly ignored Rowe's site, the company would have risked losing the right to fight future trademark infringements. Robertson opined that, had legal proceedings ensued, Rowe would have made a strong argument for keeping his domain, as he was using his real name and was not claiming to be affiliated with Microsoft. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Software] | [TOKENS: 1201] |
Contents Access Software Indie Built, Inc., formerly known as Access Software, Salt Lake Games Studio and Indie Games, was an American video game developer based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Founded in November 1982 by Bruce Carver and Chris Jones, the company created the Beach Head, Links and Tex Murphy series, as well as Raid over Moscow. Access Software was acquired by Microsoft in April 1999, transitioning in name twice before being acquired by Take-Two Interactive in October 2004, who renamed it Indie Built. In January 2005, Access Software became part of Take-Two's 2K label. Following poor financial performance after the acquisition, Indie Built was closed down in May 2006. TruGolf, a company that develops indoor golf simulators, was formerly a subsidiary of Access Software based on the display technology they had made for the Links games and spun out to its own company during the Microsoft acquisition. Following the closure by Take-Two, many of the studio's developers went to TruGolf. Separately, Jones has established Big Finish Games to continue the Tex Murphy series. History In 1982, Bruce Carver, an engineer for Salt Lake City-based company Redd Engineering, created a sprite-editing program called Spritemaster. He presented the product to Steve Witzel, who operated Computers Plus, a retail computer store in Salt Lake City's Midvale suburb; Witzel provided Carver with several improvement suggestions for the program. After Carver had implemented these changes, he began selling them under the name "Access Software" through Computers Plus. The name was chosen Carver and some of his friends had searched through a dictionary, considering "Action Software" and "Center Soft" before sticking with "Access Software". In November that year, Carver, together with Chris Jones, incorporated Access Software with a starting capital of US$25,000. In its early days, Access Software operated out of Carver's basement. One of Access' key products were a series of sprite-based golfing games in the Links. In 1984, while there were other golf games on the market, most used a top-down approach, while Bruce Carver wanted to create a game that was shown from behind the golfer. With little artistic skill among their team, the developers set up a small studio in the basement, projecting frame-by-frame VHS footage of Roger Carver's golf swing onto a clear sheet, tracing his outline onto the sheets as to then convert them into sprites within the Commodore 64 system. This became the basis of Leader Board, the first game considered part of the Links series, and would establish the behind-the-golfer view for most other golf simulation games that followed. As Access continued to develop the Links games for computers, they established a subsidiary, TruGolf, that created golf simulators, with Roger Carver overseeing this division. In April 1999, Access Software was acquired by Microsoft for an undisclosed sum. Microsoft sought to acquire Access to gain its Links series of golf games; Access had created Microsoft Golf as one of the first games to run within the Microsoft Windows operating system based on Links 386 Pro. According to Steve Witzel, Microsoft looked to acquire Access after USA Today reviewed both Microsoft Golf and Links and rated the latter much higher; Microsoft thought it would be easier to buy Access than try to compete. Microsoft desired to produce a high-end line of golf games based on Links with Access, while offering Microsoft Golf as lower-budget titles. With the acquisition, Access's principal offices remained in Salt Lake City. Access divested itself of the TruGolf division and made the company its own entity with Microsoft's purchase. Upon the formation of Microsoft Game Studios (then called Microsoft Games) in 2000, Microsoft rebranded Access Software as Salt Lake Games Studio. Initially working on products to for the personal computer, Salt Lake City Studio transitioned to Xbox versions of Links as well as the Amped snowboarding and Top Spin tennis sports games, following the console's introduction in 2002. In 2003, Microsoft rebranded Salt Lake Games Studio as Indie Games. That year, Carver left the company to pursue new interests, eventually founding Carver Homes, a construction company, in 2004. He died from cancer on December 28, 2005. Around 2004, Microsoft opted to leave the sports-game development market due to the impact of the Electronic Arts Sports (EA Sports) label, using their strength to produce sports-related games for the Xbox console. Microsoft had laid off about 76 employees with Microsoft Game Studios, and around August and September, sold Indie Games to Take-Two Interactive, who renamed the studio to Indie Built. Take-Two had been keen on challenging the dominance of EA Sports, and its acquisition of Indie Built was among US$80 million it had spent through 2005 acquiring developers. In early 2005, Take-Two Interactive established the publishing label 2K, which would henceforth manage their development studios for sports games, including Indie Built. While part of Take-Two, Indie Built created sequels for Amped and Top Spin, but these titles were not strong successes. Take-Two's 2006 fiscal year was poor as the company was dealing with both Security and Exchange Commission investigations related to its past reporting, and harsh criticism for the Hot Coffee mod as part of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Indie Built was closed in May 2006 by Take-Two as part of a re-alignment of their business strategy to overcome the weak fiscal year. Following Indie Built's closure, most of the employees transitioned to TruGolf, helping to improve the golf simulations. Additionally, Jones and Conners established Big Finish Games in 2007, where they planned to continue more narrative games, including expanding the Tex Murphy series. Games developed References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltspaceVR] | [TOKENS: 390] |
Contents AltspaceVR AltspaceVR was a social Virtual reality (VR) platform that was founded in 2013 by Eric Romo and launched its initial product in May 2015. In 2017 it was acquired by Microsoft and became part of the Mixed Reality division (alongside notable products like HoloLens and HoloLens 2) within the Cloud and AI group. Some elements of the platform appear in Microsoft Mesh. The platform largely consisted of user-generated spaces called "worlds", which could be visited by other users. Individuals could gather, talk, collaborate, and be co-present in small to large groups. The platform was regularly home to a wide variety of live virtual events from VR church and LGBTQI+ meetups to large business conferences and magic shows. In January 2023 Microsoft announced on the AltspaceVR Homepage that the service would be shutting down on March 10, 2023. Worlds AltspaceVR was organised in spaces called "worlds", which could be found and accessed via a floating menu or via in-world "teleporters". Some large worlds, such as the "Campfire", were built and maintained by official developers as places for users to meet and interact. As of May 2022, AltVR removed all developer-maintained worlds. Altspace's internal menus included a list of "featured" user-defined worlds and a real-time list of the most "popular" worlds, arranged by the number of users currently visiting each world. Other menus listed current and planned "events", which took place inside official or user-generated worlds.[citation needed] In 2020 AltspaceVR hosted BRCvr, a Burning Man event. Supported hardware AltspaceVR supported several VR headsets: The platform was available as a traditional desktop application for Mac and Windows, and had a non-VR Android app until 2019. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamira_Software] | [TOKENS: 279] |
Contents Altamira Software Altamira Software was an American software company. The company developed Altamira Composer, an early object-based image editing and composition application for Windows that introduced features such as anti-aliased effects and image sprites. Altamira Software was acquired by Microsoft in 1994. History Altamira Software was founded in Mill Valley, California by Dr. Alvy Ray Smith, Eric Lyons and Nicholas Clay in 1991. Seed capital came from Autodesk and second-round financing from a team of venture capitalists (TVI) and private individuals. The company was acquired by Microsoft in 1994. Thea Grigsby was vice president of marketing. David Shantz of WildOutWest, LLC was responsible for branding, package design and the development of a series of image object libraries that were released along with the product. Products The company's primary product was Altamira Composer. This PC based software pioneered object-based drawing and image editing. Composer was one of the first to bring important tools such as anti-aliased effects and image sprites to the desktop.[citation needed] Altamira Composer, one of the first image composition applications with image sprites (i.e., non-rectangular, floating images), entered the market in November 1993 (CoSA After Effects 1.0 shipped in January of that same year).[citation needed] References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquis] | [TOKENS: 403] |
Contents Colloquis Colloquis, previously known as ActiveBuddy and Conversagent, was a company that created conversation-based interactive agents originally distributed via instant messaging platforms. The company had offices in New York, New York, and Sunnyvale, California. History Founded in 2000, the company was the brainchild of Robert Hoffer, Timothy Kay, and Peter Levitan. The idea for interactive agents (also known as Internet bots) came from the team's vision to add functionality to increasingly popular instant messaging services. The original implementation took shape as a word-based adventure game but quickly grew to include a wide range of database applications, including access to news, weather, stock information, movie times, Yellow Pages listings, and detailed sports data, as well as a variety of tools (calculators, translator, etc.). These various applications were bundled into one entity and launched as SmarterChild in 2001. SmarterChild acted as a showcase for the quick data access and possibilities for fun conversation that the company planned to turn into customized, niche-specific products.[citation needed] The rapid success of SmarterChild led to targeted promotional products for Radiohead, Austin Powers, The Sporting News, and others. ActiveBuddy sought to strengthen its hold on the interactive agent market for the future by filing for, and receiving, a controversial patent on their creation in 2002. The company also released the BuddyScript SDK, a free developer kit that allow programmers to design and launch their own interactive agents using ActiveBuddy's proprietary scripting language, in 2002. Ultimately, however, the decline in ad spending in 2001 and 2002 led to a shift in corporate strategy towards business focused Automated Service Agents, building products for clients including Cingular, Comcast and Cox Communications. The company subsequently changed its name from ActiveBuddy to Conversagent in 2003, and then again to Colloquis in 2006. Colloquis was purchased by Microsoft in October 2006. Notes |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsion_Games] | [TOKENS: 574] |
Contents Compulsion Games Compulsion Games Inc. is a Canadian video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Montreal. Established in 2009 by ex-Arkane Studios developer Guillaume Provost, the studio developed the 2013 puzzle-platform game Contrast, the 2018 survival horror game We Happy Few and the 2025 action-adventure game South of Midnight. History Compulsion Games was founded in Montreal in 2009 by Guillaume Provost, who had previously worked for Arkane Studios. To raise funds for their first game, the team of Compulsion Games worked on external projects, including Darksiders, Dungeon & Dragons: Daggerdale, and Arthur Christmas: Elf Run. In November 2013, Compulsion Games released the puzzle-platform game Contrast for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. By January 2014, the game had sold more than one million copies. The Xbox One version was eventually released in June 2014. In February 2015, the company announced We Happy Few as its next game. Debuting at PAX East 2015, it received unprecedented hype, which the studio struggled to control. Receiving comparisons to BioShock, the team decided to pivot from the survival mechanics they initially envisioned to a more narrative-based game. In June, Compulsion launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund development, which ultimately exceeded its goal. Microsoft then showcased the game at E3 2016. The game launched in Early Access on PC and Xbox in July 2016. By the summer of 2017, Compulsion had 40 people working on the game and a publishing deal with Gearbox Publishing. We Happy Few was given an April 2018 release date. However, by January 2018, it was delayed so Compulsion could rework the first few hours of the game. At E3 2018, Microsoft announced it had acquired Compulsion Games, which would become part of Microsoft Studios (now known as Xbox Game Studios). We Happy Few was finally released in August. Critics praised its aesthetic, art direction, and narrative, but were more mixed about the actual gameplay. In 2019, after finishing the DLC for We Happy Few, Compulsion began work on its next game. By October 2021, the studio had further doubled its staff and was working on a narrative, third-person perspective game. It would avoid some missteps from We Happy Few, such as using roguelike elements or an early access approach. South of Midnight was revealed at a June 2023 Xbox Showcase, a third-person action-adventure game set in a magical version of the American South. In January 2025, Microsoft revealed an April release date for Xbox Series X and S, PC, and Game Pass. Games developed References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderlist] | [TOKENS: 1026] |
Contents Wunderlist Wunderlist is a discontinued cloud-based task management application. It allowed users to create lists to manage their tasks from a smartphone, tablet, computer and smartwatch. Wunderlist was free; additional collaboration features were available in a paid version known as Wunderlist Pro, released April 2013. Wunderlist was created in 2011 by Berlin-based startup 6Wunderkinder (Engl.: 6Prodigies). The company was acquired by Microsoft in June 2015, at which time the app had over 13 million users. In April 2017, Microsoft announced that Wunderlist would eventually be discontinued in favor of Microsoft To Do, a new multi-platform app developed by the Wunderlist team that has direct integration with the company's Office 365 service. On December 6, 2019, Microsoft announced that it would shut down Wunderlist on May 6, 2020. After this date, the application would no longer sync but users could still import their content into Microsoft To Do. History In 2009, Wunderlist's CEO Christian Reber called on the social network platform XING for business partners to create a new to-do app. Frank Thelen responded and together Reber and Thelen developed first concepts for Wunderlist. The necessary seed funding was granted by High-Tech Gründerfonds and e42 GmbH. The first version of Wunderlist was launched on November 9, 2010. Initially, the program was created for desktop PCs and platforms such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. In December 2011, the app received approval for the iPhone. Subsequently, the developers released a version prepared for the iPad with the name Wunderlist HD. In September 2012, the developers announced a shutdown of their service Wunderkit. Instead they wanted to focus on creating a new version of Wunderlist, which was later on released in December 2012 under the name Wunderlist 2. In September 2013, the company announced it had over 5 million users. In July 2014, a new major update was released under the name of Wunderlist 3, with a new real-time sync architecture. Wunderlist reached 10 million users in December 2014. On June 1, 2015, it was announced that Microsoft had acquired 6Wunderkinder, makers of Wunderlist, for between US$100 million and US$200 million (~$258 million in 2024). Following its acquisition of the app, Microsoft announced in April 2017 a preview of To-Do, a multi-platform task management app developed by the Wunderlist team that was intended to eventually replace Wunderlist and incorporate most of its features. As of January 2019, To-Do had not yet reached feature parity with Wunderlist, with its team citing that the service had to be completely re-written to use Microsoft Azure instead of Amazon Web Services. Frustrated by the perceived lack of roadmap, in September 2019, Reber began to publicly ask Microsoft-related accounts on Twitter whether he could buy Wunderlist back. Shortly afterward, however, Microsoft unveiled updates to To-Do that make it more closely resemble Wunderlist. In December 2019, Microsoft announced that it would fully shut down Wunderlist as of May 6, 2020. The team responsible for creating Wunderlist, led by co-founder Christian Reber, created that Superlist app in early 2024. Finances In its initial round of funding, 100,000 euro was invested in 6Wunderkinder by Frank Thelen and others. In December 2010, High-Tech Gründerfonds invested 500,000 euro (approximately US$660,000) in the company. T-Venture also invested an undisclosed amount in the startup. In its Series A round of funding in November 2011, Atomico invested $4.2 million (~$5.76 million in 2024) while High-Tech Gründerfonds invested an undisclosed additional amount. In May 2012, High-Tech Gründerfonds sold off its stake in 6Wunderkinder to Earlybird Venture Capital. In November 2013, $19 million (~$25.2 million in 2024) was raised in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Earlybird and Atomico. Awards In 2013, Wunderlist for Mac was named App of the Year. Wunderlist was selected as a Google Play Top Developer in 2013. In 2014, Wunderlist won the "Golden Mi" award from Xiaomi, and also named as one of its Best Apps of 2014 was given a "Google Play Editor's Choice" award, and was named in Google Play's Best Apps of 2014 as well as Apple's Best of 2014. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FASA_Studio] | [TOKENS: 290] |
Contents FASA Studio FASA Studio (formerly FASA Interactive Technologies Inc.) was an American video game developer that was founded in 1994 in Chicago, Illinois by the tabletop game company FASA Corporation. FASA is an acronym for "Freedonian Aeronautics and Space Administration". History In 1996, FASA Interactive and Virtual World Entertainment, another company created by FASA Corp. founders Jordan Weisman and L. Ross Babcock, became wholly owned subsidiaries of Virtual World Entertainment Group (VWEG). In 1999, Microsoft Corporation purchased VWEG to acquire the talent at FIT and the intellectual properties of FASA Corp. The VWE component of VWEG was sold to a group headed by VWEG's former CFO, James Garbarini. FASA Interactive then became a FASA Studio, a component of Microsoft Game Studios. As such, the company developed games exclusive to the Windows and Xbox platforms Its headquarters were located in Redmond, Washington, only a few miles from Microsoft Corporation's main campus. FASA was officially shut down on September 12, 2007, with only the Community Manager and Technical Support Manager positions remaining active to support their games. Microsoft subsequently licensed the rights to produce electronic adaptations of FASA games back to Weisman, who directed a venture called Smith & Tinker. Smith & Tinker closed down November 8, 2012.[citation needed] Games developed References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Activision_Blizzard_by_Microsoft] | [TOKENS: 5769] |
Contents Acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. The acquisition was completed on October 13, 2023, with its total cost amounting to $75.4 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft brought Activision Blizzard under its Microsoft Gaming business unit as a sibling division to Xbox Game Studios and ZeniMax Media. With it, Microsoft gained ownership of several franchises under Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, and King, including Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and Candy Crush. As of 2023, the acquisition is the largest video game acquisition by transaction value in history. Following shareholder approval of the acquisition, the merger was reviewed by several national anti-trust bodies, with early approvals granted by the European Commission and China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), among others. The United States' Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued formal challenges to the acquisition. Sony also criticized the merger, concerned that Microsoft would make the lucrative Call of Duty franchise exclusive to the Xbox platform, though Microsoft committed to non-exclusivity through 2033. The FTC withdrew its request after courts did not find their anti-trust compelling to block the merger, while Microsoft offered to offload its cloud gaming support for Activision Blizzard's games for ten years to Ubisoft to appease the CMA. Background Activision Blizzard is one of the largest video game publishers in the world, with annual revenues of about $8.8 billion in 2021. The company is composed of five business units: Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming, and Activision Blizzard Studios. Among its assets are ownership of Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro from Activision's studios; Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, and Overwatch from Blizzard Entertainment; and Candy Crush Saga from King. Microsoft is a dominant player in computing software, and also makes the Xbox line of game consoles and operates Xbox Game Studios, a collection of developers to create first party titles. In March 2021, Microsoft closed on its acquisition of ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for an estimated $7.5 billion, making it one of the largest video game acquisitions by that time. History On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in an all-cash deal, or approximately $95 per share. Activision Blizzard's stock price jumped nearly 40% that day in pre-market trading. The deal would make Microsoft the third-largest gaming company in the world and the largest headquartered in the Americas, behind Chinese company Tencent and the Japanese conglomerate Sony. If closed, it would also be the most expensive video game-related acquisition in to date. Goldman Sachs will serve as the financial advisor to Microsoft, and Allen & Company will be Activision's financial advisors. Simpson Thacher will serve as legal advisor for Microsoft while Skadden will serve as legal advisor for Activision. The deal has been approved by both companies' board of directors and is expected to close in 2023 following international government regulatory review of the action. Upon completion of the deal, Activision Blizzard would be a sibling entity to Xbox Game Studios under a new Microsoft Gaming division with Phil Spencer as its lead. The deal would also allow Microsoft to offer Activision Blizzard games on its Xbox Game Pass service. Spencer also spoke about reviving some older Activision Blizzard franchises he himself enjoyed, mentioning series such as King's Quest, Guitar Hero and Hexen: Beyond Heretic. Kotick stated that he, Spencer, and Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella have had discussions in 2021 on their concern of the power of Tencent, NetEase, Apple, Inc. and Google, and that Activision Blizzard lacked the computation expertise in machine learning and data analytics that would be necessary to compete with these companies. According to Kotick, this led to the idea of Microsoft, which does have those capabilities, acquiring Activision Blizzard at an attractive price point. Kotick further stated in a 2025 interview that these discussions initially started in 2020 when Microsoft was trying to acquire TikTok from ByteDance. Kotick, who had connections with ByteDance's founder Zhang Yiming, found that Yiming would rather have Activision buy TikTok over Microsoft, and as Activision could not out spend Microsoft on the purchase, suggested to Nadella that they partner on co-ownership, where the first suggestion of Microsoft acquiring Activision was raised. While the TikTok deal never happened, the acquisition of Activision remained on discussion. Spencer further had stated that Microsoft's intent with the acquisition is access to Activision's mobile games, which would include those by its King division such as Candy Crush Saga. He said that while there are 200 million game console users worldwide, the mobile market reaches over 3 billion people. In a statement released on Activision Blizzard's investor website, the company said its industry is the "most dynamic and exciting category of entertainment across all platforms" and that gaming will be the forefront of the development of the emerging metaverse. Some journalists saw this acquisition, and Microsoft's March 2021 acquisition of Bethesda Softworks, as a bid to compete against Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook. The announcement had come in the wake of events related to California Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Activision Blizzard, a lawsuit raised in July 2021 accusing the company of sexual harassment, employment discrimination and retaliation on the part of Activision Blizzard. Allegations had expanded by November 2021 to include actions that Activision Blizzard's CEO Bobby Kotick had done. The timing of the acquisition was reported by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News to be in response to the ongoing DFEH lawsuit. Reports from both newspapers stated that Activision Blizzard had been considering a buyout from other companies, including Facebook parent company Meta Platforms, due to the weaker than expected financial performance of their latest game releases and production delays. Based on SEC filings related to the merger, Microsoft approached Activision Blizzard again in the days immediately following the November 2021 Wall Street Journal report regarding a buyout. While Kotick had been hesitant about selling the company, the board had gone ahead with the deal as they continued to fear the ongoing impact of the lawsuit while Kotick remained on the board. The buyout would provide a graceful exit for Kotick in the future, ranging in $252.2–292.9 million over most scenarios. According to official announcements, under the deal Kotick will remain the CEO of Activision Blizzard, and is expected to keep the position while the deal goes through regulatory processes, as Activision Blizzard remains independent from Microsoft until the deal closes. According to The Wall Street Journal, Kotick "will depart once the deal closes" under Microsoft's management, while Kotick said in an interview that he has an interest in remaining in the company. Microsoft has yet to speak directly about the Activision Blizzard lawsuit following news of the acquisition, however the company announced a week prior that it would be reviewing its own sexual harassment and gender discrimination policies. Activision Blizzard's shareholders approved of the acquisition near-unanimously in April 2022. The deal was set to close by July 18, 2023, after which Microsoft would owe Activision Blizzard $3 billion if the deal failed to close. However, the companies would be able to mutually extend the deadline, or if the deal expired, renegotiate the terms. By this date, as described below, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, after an initial ruling denying the merger, had extended their deadline to August 29, 2023, to rule on a new proposal by Microsoft. It was later extended their deadline to the same day as the acquisition closing date to provide its Phase 1 investigation of the merger. The companies agreed to extend the close of the acquisition until October 18, 2023, as to resolve the CMA issue. Following the CMA's approval of the revised terms on October 13, 2023, Microsoft completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard the same day. Regulatory response Due to the size of the acquisition, the deal was required to be reviewed by several government commerce bodies for antitrust concerns. In the United States, the acquisition was reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rather than traditionally by the U.S. Department of Justice, as the agency had raised more concerns over mergers and acquisitions in the Big Tech sector in the last decade. U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Cory Booker expressed their concerns about the merger to the FTC as part of the FTC's investigation, saying that both companies have "failed to protect the rights and dignity of their workers" and that the merger should be opposed if "the transaction is likely to enhance monopoly power and worsen the negotiating position between workers and the parties." The FTC formally stated its intention to block the acquisition as proposed on December 8, 2022. The FTC expressed concern that the acquisition would harm consumers of Activision Blizzard's games and give Microsoft too much control of certain parts of the industry, such as cloud gaming. The FTC also pointed to the acquisition of Zenimax, which the FTC claimed that Microsoft had agreed to a concession from the European Union to not make their games exclusive to the Xbox and later broke. In a statement made to Axios' Stephan Totilo, the European Commission stated that they had cleared Microsoft's acquisition of Zenimax unconditionally as they saw no "material impact" on the gaming market even if Microsoft made Zenimax's titles exclusive. Microsoft responded to the FTC's complaint that Sony itself is one of the largest platforms with exclusive titles that contractually cannot be made for Xbox. They also said they still plan to offer content for multiplayer Bethesda games like Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 for all platforms to avoid undercutting the playerbase. Microsoft also initially challenged the constitutionality of the FTC due to the ability for the Commissioner to be removed by the President at will, and their use of administrative law judges to initially review cases, both which have founding in recent Supreme Court cases, but removed this language in an amended response, sticking to the video game market. In February 2023, the FTC denied a request by Sony to drop a subpoena filed by Microsoft, requesting internal documentation from Sony related to their third-party exclusivity deals. The FTC requested a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to block the merger on June 12, 2023. The FTC stated that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard "have represented in the past that they cannot close their deal due to antitrust reviews of the transaction in other jurisdictions. But Microsoft and Activision have not provided assurances that they will maintain that position." The court granted the temporary restraining order on June 13, 2023, while a hearing to determine if a preliminary injunction on the deal should be granted was held from June 22 to 30, 2023, before Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley. Microsoft said that if the injunction should be granted, they may consider abandoning the deal which they described as being a "three-year administrative nightmare". During the hearing, the FTC was focused on the effect of Call of Duty in the competitive market, console exclusivity, and the impact of the nascent cloud gaming field. Judge Corley denied to apply a permanent injunction on July 11, 2023, lifting the temporary restraining order to allow Microsoft to proceed to close the deal, though the case will continue to trial later. Corley wrote, "For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content." The FTC formally filed an appeal to Judge Corley's denial to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on July 12, 2023. The FTC also filed a separate motion to Corley on July 13 arguing for another injunction until the Ninth Circuit had time to decide to stay Corley's previous ruling, but she denied that motion. The Ninth Circuit court denied the emergency appeal to block the merger on July 14, 2023. The FTC formally withdrew its challenge to the acquisition on July 20, 2023, though they have announced their intent to refile at a later time. The FTC reopened its case against the merger on September 27, 2023, though was unable to block the merger from occurring. In its first filings after the completion of the acquisition, in February 2024, the FTC argued that the 1,900 job cuts made in January 2024 went against assurances that Microsoft had made in their previous documents, arguing for final completion of the deal to be paused while their new complaint was considered. While Microsoft had stated that the job cuts were in areas of overlap between the companies, the FTC stated this action was "inconsistent with Microsoft's suggestion to this court that the two companies will operate independently post-merger". The FTC further amended its case in July 2024, following Microsoft's announcement of rate increases for Game Pass and the creation of a low-cost tier that removed day-one access to games. The FTC said the move was inconsistent with the assurances Microsoft gave the court prior to acquisition, and considered the new tier a "degraded product" that, along with price increases, harmed consumers. The Ninth Circuit denied the FTC's appeal in early May 2025, leading to the FTC dropping the case by May 22, 2025. After receiving a formal notification by Microsoft on September 30, 2022, the European Commission (EC) began its first phase review of the acquisition under the EU merger law. The Commission sent out a questionnaire to several game industry firms to ask them about the potential impact of the acquisition on their livelihood, including if Microsoft does opt to lock rivals out of Activision games in the future. The Commission announced on November 8, 2022, that it would conduct an additional review of the merger "to ensure that the gaming ecosystem remains vibrant to the benefit of users in a sector that is evolving at a fast pace." The EC filed its formal complaint against the acquisition on February 3, 2023. The EC said they considered that Microsoft may be "incentivized to block access to Activision's popular Call of Duty franchise," which could lead to "reduce competition in the markets for the distribution of console and PC video games, leading to higher prices, lower quality and less innovation for console game distributors, which may, in turn, be passed on to consumers." Microsoft met with the EC regulators on February 21, 2023, announcing that they had secured a ten-year agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to that platform alongside the Xbox release, as well as a separate ten-year agreement providing Call of Duty and other first-party Microsoft games with Nvidia as part of their GeForce Now streaming service. The EC approved the acquisition on May 15, 2023. Among concessions that Microsoft had made were the numerous deals to allow Activision Blizzard games to be played on cloud gaming services, believing this would help grow that sector. The Commission dismissed the concerns about platform exclusivity, as Microsoft had reason why it would not be financially viable to withhold Call of Duty from other platforms. And even if they did, Sony had the capacity with their own studios to compete fairly. Ahead of the October 2023 closure, the Commission affirmed that the changes made to appease the UK regulators remained sufficient from their side, and no further review of the acquisition was needed. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) stated its intent to perform a higher-level review of the acquisition in August 2022. The phase 1 ruling, issued on September 1, 2022, said that the merger "may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition within a market or markets in the United Kingdom". Preliminary findings of phase 2 of the investigation was reported on February 8, 2023, concluding that the acquisition "could result in higher prices, fewer choices, and less innovation for UK gamers", as well as less competition in the console and cloud gaming spaces. The CMA has recommended that Activision should at least divest the Call of Duty franchise. However, following Microsoft's commitments to ensure the release of Call of Duty on multiple platforms for ten years, in association with meeting other regulatory bodies, the CMA changed its stance by late March 2023. In its new statement, the CMA said "While the CMA's original analysis indicated that this strategy would be profitable under most scenarios, new data (which provides better insight into the actual purchasing behaviour of CoD gamers) indicates that this strategy would be significantly loss-making under any plausible scenario." The CMA formally ruled against the merger on April 26, 2023. Among various reasons, CMA stated that Microsoft had already a strong position in cloud gaming, and the merger would only strengthen that position. CMA also stated that Microsoft's concessions related to the 10-year contracts for Call of Duty on other platforms were not enough to satisfy their concerns, and doubted that Microsoft would be able to port Call of Duty onto the Nintendo Switch. The CMA further prevented Microsoft to initiate any acquisition of Activision again in the future without seeking pre-clearance from the CMA. Microsoft filed its appeal to the decision by the end of May, outlining five points of rebuttal mostly around the CMA's assessment of the cloud gaming market and Microsoft's current position within it. The appeals process could extend the potential completion of the merger to the end of 2023 if not into 2024. The CMA's decision had become subject to political debate within the UK, particularly after the European Commission approved the deal. Current prime minister Rishi Sunak aimed to make the UK the tech industry leader in the European region, and the CMA's blockage ran against that position. Representatives of the CMA have defended their position to members of Parliament, standing their ground that the proposed merger would give Microsoft too much of an advantage. Following the decision from Judge Corley to deny the injunction for the FTC, Microsoft, Activision/Blizzard, and the CMA have agreed and asked to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to pause their legal battle to negotiate. The CAT adjourned the hearing on July 21, 2023. The CMA announced on July 14, 2023, that they would be extending their investigation, originally set to close before the July 18, 2023, acquisition deadline, for six weeks to August 29, 2023, pending review of a new proposal that Microsoft had submitted to the CMA. Later in August 2023, Microsoft announced a 15-year agreement with Ubisoft to license Activision Blizzard titles for cloud gaming services, contingent on the successful completion of the merger (which would include the ability to offer them as part of its Ubisoft+ service, as well as the ability for Ubisoft to sub-license these rights to other competitors), a move that had been projected to appease the CMA. The CMA stated that while this appeared to meet their concerns, they will still review the deal through a Phase 1 investigation, which is expected to complete by the extended merger deadline, October 18, 2023. The CMA stated on September 22, 2023, that they considered the revised acquisition to be provisionally approved, as while the sale of the cloud gaming rights satisfied the group's primary concern, there were some limited residual concerns to resolve before giving full approval by October 13. The CMA approved the revised terms for acquisition on October 13, 2023. Due to criticism it received over how it handled the review, the CMA announced in November 2023 that it plans to revamp its procedures to make it more open to change of merger terms, among other facets. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reviewed potential claims that investors close to Kotick engaged in insider trading prior to the acquisition announcement. Activision Blizzard said they would fully cooperate with the SEC's review. South Africa's Competition Commission approved the merger in April 2023. The deal is also seeing review in Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. In December 2022, Chile's regulatory authority (Fiscalia Nacional Economica) voted to approve the deal in Phase 1. The Japan Fair Trade Commission had also given approval for the merger by March 2023. On May 19, 2023, China's State Administration for Market Regulation approved the Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) approved the Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition on May 30, 2023. The New York City Employees' Retirement System, which are shareholders of Activision Blizzard, sued the company in April 2022, arguing that the company had made the acquisition deal quickly with Microsoft as to try to cover up the misdoings of Kotick that had been uncovered as part of the ongoing DCEH lawsuit and escape any liability. Sjunde AP-Fonden, a Swedish-government run pension fund with investments in Activision-Blizzard, filed a lawsuit in November 2022 within the U.S. court system against Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard of collusion in establishing the deal. The lawsuit asserts that because of Activision-Blizzard's weakened position resulting from the workplace harassment lawsuit from the California DFEH, that Microsoft negotiated with Kotick and Activision-Blizzard to buy the company at a reduced price. The lawsuit also named Kotick for using the deal to cover up his alleged misconduct related to the DFEH suit. A group of gamers filed suit against Microsoft in December 2022 to block the merger under the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 which enables consumers to file such lawsuits. The suit argues that should the merger go through, Microsoft's combined power would disrupt the video game marketplace, giving Microsoft the capability to outpace competitors and take a stronger hold. Microsoft failed to have the case dismissed in January 2023, and arguments related to a preliminary discussion was presented to the judge in March 2023. The judge dismissed the suit in March 2023, citing that the gamers had not shown sufficient evidence of harm to the industry should the merger go through. The gamers refiled their suit, using additional evidence and claims provided to them by Sony, in April 2023. The same federal court denied a preliminary injunction in the refiled case in May 2023, stating the plaintiffs failed to show how they would be damaged by the merger. The group subsequently filed an emergency request at the Supreme Court of the United States on July 16, 2023, to halt the merger, but this request was denied by the Court the next day. Both Microsoft and the players reached a settlement to terminate the lawsuit in October 2024. Reactions and commentary Several Activision Blizzard employees have expressed cautious optimism with respect to the deal, with the ABK Workers Alliance, a group of employees pushing for unionization in the wake of the DFEH lawsuit, saying the acquisition did "not change the goals" of the Alliance. A report by Business Insider suggested several Microsoft employees have raised their concern on the deal with respect to the sexual harassment scandals and Activision Blizzard workplace culture, hoping for "concrete steps to make sure we aren't introducing a dangerous and unwelcome culture." On January 19, 2022, World Bank president David Malpass criticized the acquisition, contrasting the acquisition price with the smaller amount of bond financing available to developing countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The AFL-CIO supports the merger due to Microsoft signing a labor neutrality pact between the Communications Workers of America (who also supports the merger) and the company that was signed following the announcement of the proposed acquisition. Concerns on Microsoft's potential ownership of the Call of Duty franchise, which has sold over 400 million units by April 2021 and considered one of the most valuable properties within the video game industry, have been raised by Sony Interactive Entertainment and regulators. Shortly after the acquisition announcements, Sony had stated that they expect Microsoft to honor all of Activision Blizzard's publishing agreements for multiplatform games, assuring that Call of Duty would remain available on the PlayStation platform and not made a console-exclusive title. Spencer and Microsoft president Brad Smith reassured that Microsoft will continue these existing agreements and expressed their desire to keep Call of Duty and other popular Activision Blizzard games on PlayStation beyond the terms of these agreements, as well as explore the opportunity to bring these games to the Nintendo consoles. Around September 2022, Xbox head Phil Spencer said Microsoft had written a letter to Sony in January, affirming their commitment to maintain Call of Duty on the PlayStation "several years" beyond the current contractual agreements set before the acquisition, which are said to last until 2024. Spencer said their offer to Sony "goes well beyond typical gaming industry agreements". Sony's president Jim Ryan responded to Spencer by stating that in their commitment, Microsoft only stated their intent to keep Call of Duty for three more years beyond the current contract terms, and that "their proposal was inadequate on many levels and failed to take account of the impact on our gamers. We want to guarantee PlayStation gamers continue to have the highest quality Call of Duty experience, and Microsoft's proposal undermines this principle." Public documents filed as part of the UK's investigation revealed that Microsoft would be limited by prior contractual agreements between Sony and Activision to provide Call of Duty on Xbox Game Pass for several years. Microsoft stated that it had written to Sony on November 11, 2022, to agree to a ten-year commitment for Call of Duty to remain non-exclusive to Xbox. Sony further stated that Microsoft's intent with the acquisition is to remove Sony and PlayStation from competition with Microsoft and instead have the PlayStation platform more comparable to the Nintendo Switch, which Sony stated is based on taking up a family-friendly position and not attempting to compete with adult-rated games like Call of Duty. Besides the commitment to Sony, Microsoft also had committed in December 2022 to a similar ten-year deal to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo's platforms, further attempting to prove to regulators they had no intent to make the title exclusive to Xbox or Windows. By July 16, 2023, Sony signed to a "binding agreement" with Microsoft that committed to keeping Call of Duty on the PlayStation family. A number of indie publishers and developers including Curve Games, Finji, Iam8bit, and Strange Scaffold expressed support for the deal according to 2023 court filings. Aftermath Kotick stayed as the CEO of Activision Blizzard until December 29, 2023, after which he then retired from the company, as previously promised. Over 2024 and 2025, Microsoft, as a whole, laid off portions of its workforce, including roles within the combined Microsoft Gaming division, cancelling multiple games that had been in development for years. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and chief design officer Allen Adham left the company in January 2024. Johanna Faries, the general manager of the Call of Duty series, was named Blizzard's new president effective on February 5, 2024. Faries' appointment was a significant change for Blizzard, whose leaders have in the past come up through the ranks of gaming and tech. Over 2025, Microsoft increased the retail price on its Xbox consoles twice in North America, citing the "changes in the macroeconomic environment", which included the tariffs placed on most imports by Donald Trump. Following news that Microsoft was raising the price of Xbox Game Pass by up to 50%, former FTC commissioner Lina Khan said "Microsoft's acquisition of Activision has been followed by significant price hikes and layoffs, harming both gamers and developers. As we've seen across sectors, increasing market consolidation and increasing prices often go hand-in-hand. As dominant firms become too-big-to-care, they can make things worse for their customers without having to worry about the consequences." See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farecast] | [TOKENS: 416] |
Contents Farecast Farecast (acquired by Microsoft and rebranded Live Search Farecast in 2008, then Bing Travel in 2009, and finally MSN Travel in 2015, when its underlying technology had been discontinued) was an airfare prediction website in the computer reservations system industry. It launched in beta in 2006 and premiered to the public on May 15, 2007. Until 2014, it offered predictions regarding the best time to purchase airline tickets. History Farecast was founded in 2003; Farecast's team of data miners used airfare observations to build algorithms to predict future airfare price movements. Founded by Oren Etzioni, it launched in beta in 2006 and premiered to the public on May 15, 2007. In April 2008, Farecast was acquired by Microsoft for $115 million. Microsoft officially integrated it as part of its Live Search group of tools in May 2008. On June 3, 2009, Microsoft officially rebranded "Live Search Farecast" as "Bing Travel" as part of its efforts to create a new search identity with Bing. In 2009, there were allegations that Bing Travel had copied its layouts from Kayak; Microsoft denied the allegations. In January 2014, the airfare prediction feature, which was previously the flagship feature of Farecast, was removed from Bing Travel. In May 2015, Microsoft rebranded "Bing Travel" to "MSN Travel" and, for some time, redirected the Bing Travel website to MSN Travel. In August 2015, however, Microsoft shut down its MSN Travel app, and the MSN Travel flight search pages changed from being powered by Kayak to competitor Skyscanner. Microsoft later shut down the MSN Travel website entirely, but as of 2025, Bing retains a Bing Travel search section on its website. References External links This article about a travel website is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Development_Center_Norway] | [TOKENS: 2489] |
Contents Microsoft Development Center Norway Microsoft Development Center Norway (known as FAST (Fast Search & Transfer ASA) before 2010) is a Norwegian company, founded in 1997 and based in Oslo, with offices located in Germany, Italy, Sri Lanka, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Mexico and other countries around the world. FAST focused on data search technologies. On April 24, 2008, Microsoft acquired FAST, which is now known as Microsoft Development Center Norway. FAST offered an enterprise search product, FAST ESP. ESP is a service-oriented architecture development platform which is geared towards production of searchable indexes. It provided a framework for creating ETL applications for indexing of searchable content. Fast also offered a number of search-derivative applications, focused on specific search use cases, including publishing, market intelligence and mobile search. The Search Derivative Applications (SDA) are built upon the Enterprise Search Platform (ESP). The company was developing PHAROS, a new European multimedia search engine. Technology FAST delivers real-time search and business intelligence products, and currently has about 3,600 implementations. They offer a core search platform, FAST ESP, and develop products on top of the platform. FAST's products are used in three areas: external (online and mobile), internal (information access and discovery) and OEM (embedded in other vendor's products). Some examples of their applications were: FAST used complementary technologies from BBN Technologies for speech recognition and Stellent (now part of Oracle) for the conversion of different file formats. In 2007, FAST was sued by a company which claims that FAST, as well as Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other major web companies, stole its technology. Information Access Disruptions (IAD) is a research Centre funded by the Research Council of Norway and the center's partners. FAST was the host institution and the research Centre manager was Bjørn Olstad, adjunct professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Chief Technology Officer of FAST. iAd sought to identify opportunities and develop the next-generation search engines that could extract user-friendly information from vast and complex amounts of data. iAd also facilitated interaction between international content and technology suppliers. Norwegian partners were the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the University of Oslo, the University of Tromsø, the Norwegian School of Management, Schibsted and Accenture. International partners are Cornell University, University College Dublin and Dublin City University. The European Commission (EC) funded the research project “The Platform for Search of Audiovisual Resources Across Online Spaces” (PHAROS). The mission of PHAROS was to transform audiovisual search from a point-solution[buzzword] search engine model to an integrated search platform paradigm, incorporating future user and search requirements as key design principles. History FAST was founded in 1997, and the initiation of the company stems from the Department of Computer and Information Science at NTNU. Professor Arne Halaas at NTNU was a substantial contributor in the early days of FAST. John M. Lervik, a student from NTNU, was one of the first employees at FAST. He took his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Tor A. Ramstad and eventually became the company's CEO, until January 2009. During 1998 and 1999, FAST announced strategic alliances with Lycos, Dell and TIBCO, and the first commercial launch of products took place in 1999. During 2000, FAST announced several new European and US customers and partners. The company's IPO took place in June 2001, and FAST is publicly traded on the main board of the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE) under the ticker symbol 'FAST'. The company continued over the next couple of years to announce new contracts with customers and partners such as eBay, IBM, BEA, Microsoft, Telus, Elsevier, and Broadvision. FAST was ranked number three on the 2002 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in Europe. In 2003, FAST decided to focus on enterprise search, and sells their Internet division, including FAST Web Search, FAST Partner Site and AlltheWeb.com, to Overture Services, Inc. (later acquired by Yahoo!). In January 2004, FAST introduced the FAST Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP.) to the market. During the following three years, FAST expanded its geographical reach by opening new offices in Asia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa, extended its partnership relations through the introduction of the FAST X10 partner program, and introduced new solutions[buzzword] aimed specifically at certain business areas, like FAST Impulse for eCommerce and FAST Advisor for Internet yellow pages and portals. The company was for the first time placed in the Leader's Quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology in 2004, and stayed in the Leader's Quadrant over the next years as well. The company almost quadrupled its revenues from 2003 (US$42M) to 2006 ($162M). FAST acquired Convera's RetrievalWare in August 2007 for US$23 million (~$33.4 million in 2024). Fast's Q4 2007 Intra-quarterly update gave enterprise as 30% of its business (page 17). With Q3 2007 enterprise license revenues of less than $4M (~$5.81 million in 2024), it was one of the less significant players in enterprise search market.[citation needed] On 30 July 2007, FAST announced a reduction in revenue of 40% due to changes in financial controls on revenue recognition. It had been forecasting US$55M of Q2 2007 revenue and profitability; in a statement on the company's website, it revealed revenue would be reduced to US$35M and it would be unprofitable. According to the company it had been recognizing revenue without signed contracts using Memoranda of Understanding. The shares fell 28% to hit a three-year low. That, along with problems with lack of customer payment, was raised by Goldman Sachs in a report, written in June 2007 by Moawalla. Finansavisen newspaper on August 6, 2007, ran an article entitled "FAST under investigation again"[citation needed] reporting on an ongoing investigation by the unit of The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway (Kredittilsynet) that oversees all listed companies’ financial reporting. On August 8 the company reported actual Q2 2007 numbers with revenue of US$34.1M (license sales down 41% sequentially and 24% y on y) and operating loss of US$38M. As a result of this, the company has announced that it will implement a layoff program of 20% of all staff, reducing the quarterly operational cost base in excess of US$12M, as it tries to return to profitability. It expects to be unprofitable until 2008. On 5 September 2007, FAST signed a deal with The Walt Disney Company's Parks and Resorts Online for the Fast Enterprise Search Platform, including software licenses, maintenance fees and other services. On 7 September, FAST informed investors in its quarterly update that the predicted losses for Q3 would rise again to over $60M, and that the company would be concentrating its remaining resources on the "monetization" or ad serving business managed by their Ad Momentum platform. The downplaying of those older functions and concentration on the new market area was welcomed by financial markets.[citation needed] FAST received a further blow when a major customer, Schibsted, said it had made a too-risky decision in choosing to implement its own web search engine and was changing its strategy. Investors and customers were hoping that, to reverse the slide, the company would announce new accounting and quality controls in its Q3 report. However, on 30 October, FAST reported a loss of $100M in the quarter (up from the anticipated $60M loss), with another collapse of license revenue, down 55% year on year, resulting in a significant loss of software market share. The operation of the company as a software company rather than a services company was accompanied by its gross margin falling to 67% from 83% a year earlier. The problems with the non-payment of bills by customers continued, with $26M of debt being written off. The conduct of FAST's directors was the subject of much comment in Norway, with one director resigning and another making public statements about other directors and major shareholders. FAST board member, Robert Keith, told the newspaper Finansavisen: "I ought to have seen the problems in FAST earlier. And I ought to have understood that Hans Gude Gudesen is a crazy liar. Also, I ought have shot Oystein Stray Spetalen the first time I met him. That would have helped a lot of people." Spetalen and Hans Gude Gudesen were both major shareholders in FAST. Furthermore, directors Keith and Fussel were allegedly being pursued by the Norwegian tax authorities for US$50M in unpaid taxes. In the event of non-payment, there was concern that liability might fall on the company. The ongoing turmoil saw three directors resign from the board, the last being Johan Fredrik Odfjell, who was quoted in the company's release as saying: "FAST faces many challenges and opportunities going forward". On 22 December, Orkla, FAST's largest shareholder, demanded an extraordinary general meeting to force Fussel and Keith off the board. On 12 December 2007, the Oslo Stock Exchange suspended trading of FAST shares. The next morning, the company announced it was reviewing the accounts both for 2006 and the preliminary results for 2007, with the likely outcome that the results would be changed. In an article entitled "Fast restates its accounts", www.dagensit.no reported that FAST's results for 2006 and 2007 might be revised, in what it called "another clean up round." It also stated: "The Search technology vendor Fast Search & Transfer have had several rounds with restating of accounts." Some months after CFO Joseph Lacson declared that “everything is cleaned up”, there seemed to be skeletons in the closet. Wednesday afternoon trading was suspended after what the stock exchange called “certain conditions”. The shares fell around 7% on the news. On 8 January 2008, it was announced that the board of FAST had unanimously accepted a $1.2 billion takeover offer from Microsoft. Microsoft had secured the backing of FAST's two largest institutional shareholders, Orkla and Hermes Focus Asset Management Europe. As of 24 April 2008, 97.37% of all FAST shares were controlled by MACS Holdings Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. The stock was de-listed from Oslo Stock Exchange 16 May 2008. On 26 November 2008, it was reported that FAST Search had laid off 25 employees as a result of the acquisition by Microsoft. As more information came to light about the major readjustment of the accounts, it was reported that Microsoft might not have completed its due diligence adequately. On 2 December 2009, Microsoft sold FAST's Folio and NXT businesses to Rocket Software. The complementary products were application suites used by businesses to publish and index reference material onto discs, network workstations, and online. Criminal Investigation On 24 May 2008, Norwegian news website E24.no reported that the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway had asked police to investigate anomalies it had uncovered in the FAST accounts. On 13 October 2008, Norwegian Økokrim raided FAST's offices in Oslo. Under scrutiny by the Norwegian police for possible fraudulent behavior prior to the FAST acquisition by Microsoft, former founder and CEO, John Lervik, resigned from the wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary on 23 January 2009. CTO and Microsoft Distinguished Engineer, Bjørn Olstad, then assumed Lervik's duties as the head of Microsoft's Enterprise Search Group. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Heat_Major_League_Baseball] | [TOKENS: 305] |
Contents High Heat Major League Baseball High Heat Major League Baseball was a series of baseball video games, released on PlayStation, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Windows. There were six annual versions of the game released, starting with High Heat Baseball 1999, and ending with High Heat Major League Baseball 2004. With the exception of the first game in the series, the officially licensed teams and player names from all 30 Major League Baseball teams were included. The series was created by games company 3DO (under the Team .366 brand), which filed for bankruptcy in 2003, soon after the release of the final version of the series, High Heat Major League Baseball 2004. In August 2003, Microsoft purchased the rights to the High Heat franchise from 3DO; however, Microsoft has yet to develop a new title in the series. High Heat was traditionally known for possessing more simulation-style qualities than competitors World Series Baseball, All-Star Baseball, or Triple Play, but frequently lagged behind in graphical quality. Games Reception At the core of High Heat′s gameplay was its batter-pitcher interface, which was often hailed as the most realistic of its era. According to GameDaily, "Although [the original] High Heat Baseball was not a big seller, the game won numerous awards". References External links This baseball video game article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. This article related to Microsoft is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InXile_Entertainment] | [TOKENS: 910] |
Contents inXile Entertainment inXile Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Tustin, California. Specializing in role-playing video games, inXile was founded in 2002 by Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo. The studio produced the fantasy games The Bard's Tale and Hunted: The Demon's Forge, along with various games for Flash and iOS such as Fantastic Contraption in its first decade of development. In 2014, inXile released the post-apocalyptic game Wasteland 2, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Following the game's critical success, the studio went on to raise a then-record US$4 million on Kickstarter to develop Torment: Tides of Numenera, a spiritual successor to Interplay's Planescape: Torment. The studio was purchased by Microsoft and became part of Xbox Game Studios in 2018, just as they were developing Wasteland 3, which they released in 2020. The studio is currently developing Clockwork Revolution for Windows and Xbox Series X/S. History inXile Entertainment was founded on October 26, 2002, by Brian Fargo in Newport Beach, California. In an interview with Joystiq, inXile's President Matthew Findley shared some of the company's history: "I worked with Brian Fargo at Interplay for a number of years and we both left Interplay at the same time. We knew we wanted to stay in video games, so starting a company seemed like a good idea -- he spent 20 years at Interplay and I was there for 13. When we were first out there, trying to figure out what to do next, we kinda felt like we were in exile, and we made fake cards with a fake company name just to have a card to go to E3 with. And before we ever thought of the name "inXile", Brian put as his job description on the cards: "Leader in exile." People got such a kick out of that card, we kept saying "in exile, in exile, in exile" so much that we just thought, "Why not make up a new word?" And so we did." In May 2008, inXile announced the creation of SparkWorkz, an online business division with a focus on user-generated content, using their experience with Line Rider as base for the venture. David Heeley, a former executive for Microsoft, was hired to oversee the creation of the division. In April 2012, inXile launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund Wasteland 2, the sequel to Interplay's Wasteland, with most of the original team on board. The crowdfunding drive raised more than 300% of its initial goal of $900,000, ending at $2,933,252. In March 2013, inXile returned to Kickstarter to crowdfund Torment: Tides of Numenera. The Kickstarter for Torment: Tides of Numenera broke the record of fastest Kickstart drive to $1 million, raising that amount in seven hours and two minutes. During a Kickstarter campaign for the game Wasteland 2, Brian Fargo developed the Kicking it Forward program. Under this program, inXile Entertainment pledged to use 5% of post-launch net profits to back future Kickstarter projects. In October 2015, inXile opened inXile New Orleans as a second studio based in New Orleans. The Newport Beach office was moved to Tustin by January 2021. In November 2018, Microsoft Studios announced they were in the final stages of acquiring InXile, as well as Obsidian Entertainment, another studio known for its role-playing games. According to Fargo, they were approached in April 2018 by Noah Musler, one of Microsoft's business development executives that had former ties to the studio, who suggested the possibility of acquisition. Fargo believed the acquisition was beneficial for the studio, as at the time, they were in the "uncanny valley" between more independent game development and high-budget AAA games where there was a significant difference in expectations on quality and pricing of the game. Microsoft's support would help them make games that are closer to AAA games and better compete in the current state of the industry. In June 2023, inXile unveiled their new game Clockwork Revolution during the Xbox Games Showcase 2023. Games developed References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains_Software] | [TOKENS: 343] |
Contents Great Plains Software Great Plains Software, Inc. was an accounting software company located in Fargo, North Dakota, whose products focused on small to medium-sized businesses. It was founded in 1981, went public in 1997, and was sold to Microsoft in 2001. Prior to its acquisition, it had 2,200 employees. History The company was founded in 1981 by Joseph Larson, who also served as the company's first president. Doug Burgum, who later went on to become a future Governor of North Dakota and United States Secretary of the Interior, joined the company in March 1983 as a shareholder. Burgum provided seed capital for the company; he bought out its other investors in early 1984 and became its new president. Larson continued to serve as a company director until its acquisition. The company grew to about 170 employees by 1987, and had around 290 employees by 1989. PC Magazine in 1993 said "Its reputation for outstanding support and customer relations leads the industry". Great Plains earned about $300 million in annual sales and had its IPO in 1997, after using the Internet to help it expand beyond North Dakota. In 1999 the company acquired Match Data Systems, a development team in the Philippines. In 2000, after several layoffs, it announced its acquisition by Microsoft for $1.1 billion. The purchase was completed in 2001. Its products were rebranded "Microsoft Dynamics GP" in 2005, part of Microsoft Dynamics 365 as of 2016. References External links This United States software corporation or company article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Incorporated] | [TOKENS: 374] |
Contents Massive Incorporated Massive Incorporated was an American advertising company that provided software and services to dynamically host advertisements within video games. Massive Incorporated was purchased by Microsoft in May 2006 for approximately $200 million to $400 million. The company closed down at the end of 2010. Service The service, collectively known as The Massive Network, allows game developers to place advertisements within video games by providing a software development kit (SDK) and servers to host advertisements to be streamed to clients when the game is played. The streaming of advertisements allows old advertisements to be removed and more contextual ones applied in their place. Where games such as Need For Speed: Most Wanted had static advertisements for Cingular and Burger King, advertisements supplied by a streaming network allow for time-limited ads such as movie or TV show posters. Both the publisher and Massive can then continue to make money after the game has been sold. The software is made so as to capture the proper demographic: it would be a problem to advertise an R-rated movie in a G-rated game or to place advertisements that conflict with a game's genre. First, placement and layout of the advertisements is planned by the developers with help from Massive. Advertisements can be any texture, but to maintain realism, advertisements are generally placed on objects such as posters, billboards, storefronts, and other likely media. Massive calls this "Phase I: Design of the Inventory Elements." Second, the SDK is integrated with the game to act as a client to Massive's ad servers. It allows the game to fetch the ad, display it on a surface, and analyze how the player acts around it. Massive refers to this as "Phase II: Integration of the Software Development Kit (SDK)." Third is self-explanatory, "Phase III: Testing & Support." These are the software testing and deployment steps. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_Networks] | [TOKENS: 528] |
Contents Pando Networks Founded in 2004 in New York City, Pando Networks was a managed peer-to-peer (P2P) media distribution company backed by Intel Capital, BRM Capital and Wheatley Partners. The company specialized in cloud distribution of games, video and software for publishers and media distributors and also operated a freemium consumer business for sending large files. Pando Network's technology was based on BitTorrent but with modifications. Its hybrid P2P- and server-based network included central control over file distribution, intelligent throttling between peers and servers, reporting/analytics and security. In the spring of 2006, the company publicly launched Pando, a small application that let consumers bypass email's attachment limits and send large files (up to 1GB) regardless of email service provider. By late May 2009, over 30 million people had installed the Pando application. In late 2007, along with Verizon Communications, Pando Networks co-founded the P4P (“Proactive network Provider Participation for P2P”) Working Group, to serve both P2P companies and Internet service providers (ISPs), who were seeing as much of 70 percent of bandwidth go to P2P traffic. The P4P working group includes a mix of more than 50 P2P companies and ISPs including Telefónica and Comcast. A Yale computer science research team developed the P4P technical protocol, which they believed could speed P2P content delivery while lowering ISP network utilization. In collaboration with Yale and the P4P working group, Pando Networks adopted the technology and Laird Popkin coordinated a test in the summer of 2008, showing promising results. The company released its first commercial service in May 2008; media distributors could now plug Pando Networks' peer cloud into their existing content delivery networks (CDNs). The combination of a peer cloud plus a CDN allows files in high demand to be quickly and cost effectively delivered by the peers and long tail content to be reliably served off the CDN. NBC Universal incorporated Pando Networks’ technology later that year to deliver high-definition TV episodes to consumers’ PCs. The game industry was Pando Networks’ largest customer segment. Installation files, particularly for massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), can reach well over 1GB. Pando Networks' game customers included Nexon, Turbine, Riot Games, Gala-Net, and LevelUp. In May 2010, Pando Networks surpassed 30 million game downloads. Pando Networks was acquired by Microsoft in March 2013. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_Analytics] | [TOKENS: 1015] |
Contents Revolution Analytics Revolution Analytics (formerly REvolution Computing) is a statistical software company focused on developing open source and "open-core" versions of the free and open source software R for enterprise, academic and analytics customers. Revolution Analytics was founded in 2007 as REvolution Computing providing support and services for R in a model similar to Red Hat's approach with Linux in the 1990s as well as bolt-on additions for parallel processing. In 2009 the company received nine million in venture capital from Intel along with a private equity firm and named Norman H. Nie as their new CEO. In 2010 the company announced the name change as well as a change in focus. Their core product, Revolution R, would be offered free to academic users and their commercial software would focus on big data, large scale multiprocessor (or "high performance") computing, and multi-core functionality. Microsoft announced on January 23, 2015, that they had reached an agreement to purchase Revolution Analytics for an as yet undisclosed amount. In 2021, Microsoft announced they would be retiring their R distribution they acquired from Revolution Analytics. In 2023, Microsoft retired the Microsoft R Application Network, which was a proprietary package hosting service similar to the Comprehensive R Archive Network for packages acquired from Revolution Analytics (like "ScaleR"). Founding and venture capital REvolution Computing was founded in New Haven, Connecticut in 2007 by Richard Schultz, Martin Schultz, Steve Weston and Kirk Mettler. At the time Martin Schultz was also the Watson Professor of Computer Science at Yale University. Adding parallel computing to R allowed the company to net large gains in speed for many common analytics operations and early clients like Pfizer took advantage of REvolution R to see large performance gains using R on computing clusters. While the improvements to core R were released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), REvolution provides support and services to customers of their commercial product and had considerable early success with life sciences and pharmaceutical companies. A year later the company opened an additional office in Seattle. In 2009 REvolution Computing accepted nine million dollars in venture capital from Intel and North Bridge Venture Partners, a private equity firm. Intel had previously supported REvolution Computing with venture capital in 2008. A number of Intel employees also joined Revolution Analytics as employees or as advisors. Concurrently, the company changed their name to Revolution Analytics and invited Norman Nie, founder of SPSS, to serve as CEO. This change in management corresponded with a movement toward building a more complete set of software for commercial users; prior to 2009 Revolution had been focused on building parallel processing functionality into the then mostly single threaded R. David Rich replaced Norman Nie as CEO in February 2012. High performance computing, big data and the shift to analytics Unlike analytics products offered by SAS Institute, R does not natively handle datasets larger than main memory. In 2010 Revolution Analytics introduced ScaleR, a package for Revolution R Enterprise designed to handle big data through a high-performance disk-based data store called XDF (not related to IBM's Extensible Data Format) and high performance computing across large clusters. The release of ScaleR marked a push away from consulting and services alone to custom code and a la carte package pricing. ScaleR also works with Apache Hadoop and other distributed file systems and Revolution Analytics has partnered with IBM to further integrate Hadoop into Revolution R. Packages to integrate Hadoop and MapReduce into open source R can also be found on the community package repository, CRAN. Market position In comparison to developers of similar analytics tools, Revolution Analytics is a small company; in 2010 the company had a projected revenue of $8–11 million, but no official records of revenue or profit were published in their projections. According to Nie, the increased use of R - a fully fledged programming language, in contrast to other analytics packages - within academia is helping the company to grow quickly. Community vice president David Smith suggested that movement away from "black box" analytics toward open source tools in general supported vendors like Revolution over solely proprietary tools. Products Revolution Analytics' product Revolution R is available in three editions. Revolution R Open is a free and open source distribution of R with additional features for performance and reproducibility. Revolution R Plus provides technical support and open-source assurance (legal indemnification) subscriptions for Revolution R Open and other open-source components that work with R. (These products were first announced October 15, 2014.) Revolution R Enterprise adds proprietary components to support statistical analysis of Big Data, and is sold as subscriptions for workstations, servers, Hadoop and databases. (Single-user licenses are available free for academic users as well as users competing in Kaggle data mining competitions.) In January 2015 Microsoft rebranded and renewed several Revolution Analytics products and offerings for Hadoop, Teradata Database, SUSE Linux, Red Hat, and Microsoft Windows. Microsoft made several of these R-based products free of charge for developers - these products included: See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TakeLessons] | [TOKENS: 147] |
Contents TakeLessons TakeLessons was an online platform that connected students with instructors for a variety of subjects offering both online and in-person individual and group lessons. The online marketplace covered topics including in areas like cooking, music, languages, academic subjects, and professional training. The platform was launched in 2007 in San Diego initially for music teaching. In 2021, Microsoft acquired the platform. The last day to book lessons was August 15, 2024 and the website closed on November 15, 2024. See also References External links This website-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. This article related to Microsoft is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaswitch] | [TOKENS: 620] |
Contents Metaswitch Metaswitch Networks (formerly Data Connection Ltd) is a private UK-based telecommunications software company. It designs, develops, manufactures, and markets telecommunications software to communication service providers, equipment manufacturers, and large enterprises. After being acquired by Microsoft in July 2020, Metaswitch Networks has been owned by Alianza since March 4, 2025. Corporate history Then known as Data Connection, the firm was founded in 1981 by seven former IBM employees led by Ian Ferguson, who remained on the board of directors until its sale to Microsoft. Their earliest business areas included IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) and retail point of sale systems. In the 1990s, the company began developing network protocol software. In 2000, the company launched the Metaswitch brand, which provided softswitches and network management systems designed to enable telephone service providers to migrate to Voice over IP (VoIP) networks while still supporting legacy telephone technologies. By 2008, the Metaswitch division was responsible for 78% of the company's revenue. In April 2009, the company announced intentions to consolidate all of its products and business operations under the Metaswitch brand, with two business units: the Carrier Systems Division and Network Protocol Division. In October 2009, the firm rebranded itself as Metaswitch Networks, to reflect the growing focus on the products and services that it sells to telephone service providers. In August 2011, it formally changed its name from Data Connection Ltd to Metaswitch Networks Ltd. In July 2014, the company moved some of its software to open-source with the launch of Project Calico. Project Calico was subsequently spun out into an independent startup, Tigera, Inc., with Andy Randall (formerly the general manager of Metaswitch’s Networking Business Unit) as CEO. On 15 July 2020, two months after announcing a definitive agreement, Microsoft completed the purchase of Metaswitch Networks. In June 2024, Microsoft made major cuts to its Azure for Operators business, which then included most of Metaswitch. In December 2024, Alianza announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Metaswitch from Microsoft. On 04 March 2025, the acquisition was completed. Acquisitions In March 2010, the firm acquired AppTrigger Inc, a provider of service broker software in Richardson, Texas. In April 2011, it acquired Colibria AS, a provider of Rich Communication Suite (RCS) software in Oslo, Norway. In February 2017, Metaswitch acquired OpenCloud Ltd, a provider of an open mobile services platform. Ownership and investors In 1987, Metaswitch established the Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) to hold shares of the company on behalf of the employees, which enabled company-wide profit sharing. In January 2008 Francisco Partners, a private equity firm, and Sequoia Capital, a venture capitalist firm, invested an undisclosed sum in Metaswitch. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MileIQ] | [TOKENS: 699] |
Contents MileIQ MileIQ is an American-based technology company that develops a mileage tracking and logging app. The app uses automatic mileage tracking to calculate mileage while driving for business purposes that can then be used to report for reimbursement and potentially a tax deduction with the IRS, being attributed as the first mobile app to passively track such data. MileIQ has been compared to Fitbit for driving and has been discussed in national business publications that include Fast Company, Fortune, and Forbes. On November 5, 2015, Microsoft announced that it had acquired MileIQ. On March 18, 2021, Microsoft divested MileIQ and it became an independent company again. Subsequently in July 2025, the company was acquired by Bending Spoons for $233 million. History MileIQ was founded by Dan Bomze, an entrepreneur and investor of numerous startups. He began collaborating with a small team to design software that would simplify mileage reimbursement. Bomze obtained feedback from others who tracked mileage for reimbursement and began looking for a business partner knowledgeable with software development. He was introduced to SlideRocket CEO and former Salesforce.com general manager Chuck Dietrich who became a founding partner in the company. MileIQ was officially launched in the App Store in 2013, later becoming available for Android. Concur Technologies, a company that integrates third-party apps for users to file business reports, added MileIQ to its service offerings in early 2014. The same year, MileIQ partnered with cloud accounting software company FreshBooks. The partnership allowed users of MileIQ to automatically import their driving data into their FreshBooks accounts. MileIQ received seed funding in amount of $3 million (~$3.9 million in 2024) in late 2014, led by SV Angel, CRV, and Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff. MileIQ added $11 million (~$14.2 million in 2024) in funding in 2015 with a Series A round that included original investors as well as the addition of Trinity Ventures. On November 5, 2015, Microsoft announced that it had acquired MileIQ for an undisclosed amount and the app was integrated into the Microsoft license scheme. On March 18, 2021, Microsoft divested MileIQ and it reverted to an independent company again as MileIQ LLC. The newly independent company was led by the original creators of the mileage tracking app. In 2025 MileIQ raised its annual subscription rate by 50% from $59.99 a year to $89.99 a year. Products and services MileIQ offers an app named after the company ("MileIQ") which passively tracks and logs mileage of users. The app works in the background of a Smartphone, tracking and recording all driving activities. It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to filter personal and business mileage based on time, day, and other factors. The app syncs with online mileage logs to document information obtained while driving.[citation needed] The MileIQ app is available for free download on the App Store and Google Play. After a one-time download and profile set-up, it works like an activity tracker and begins to log drives automatically, or allows for manual entry of travel. The user swipes left or right at the end of each trip to indicate if the trip was for personal or business. The free version of the app tracks up to 40 drives per month with a premium feature that allows for more. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermeer_Technologies] | [TOKENS: 264] |
Contents Vermeer Technologies Vermeer Technologies Incorporated was a software company founded in 1994 by Charles H. Ferguson and Randy Forgaard. Its products were a Web site development tool, FrontPage, and a Web server, Personal Web Server, which complemented developing in FrontPage. Vermeer launched the initial version of FrontPage on October 2, 1995.[citation needed] Vermeer was funded by Matrix Partners, Sigma Partners, and Atlas Venture.[citation needed] The company was purchased by Microsoft for US$133 million in January 1996 ($273 million in present-day terms). Microsoft acquired FrontPage as a new weapon in the browser wars.[citation needed] The company's birth, development, and sale were the subject of Ferguson's 1999 book, High St@kes, No Prisoners. A Harvard Business School case, "Vermeer Technologies (A): A Company is Born" (HBS 9-397-078), described the start of the company. Even after Microsoft acquired FrontPage, the software continued to store proprietary configuration settings in directories whose names started with _vti. The letters "VTI" stand for Vermeer Technologies, Inc. References This article about an IT-related or software-related company or corporation is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yupi] | [TOKENS: 458] |
Contents Yupi Yupi was a Spanish-language Internet portal founded in 1997 by Carlos Cardona and Camilo Cruz in Miami Beach, Florida. Company history Yupi Internet Inc. was founded in May 1996. Its flagship portal site, Yupi.com, was a Spanish-language content and services site. In 1999, Yupi acquired CiudadFutura, one of the world's first Spanish-language online communities, which at the time was supported by over 200 webmasters from around the world.[citation needed] The Yupi portfolio featured MujerFutura.com, a site catering to Spanish-speaking women. Yupi also owned sites dedicated to localized news, content and services; including multimedia site YupiTV. Yupi.com and its network of sites was headquartered in Miami Beach, Fla. and had offices in Bogotá (Colombia), Madrid and Barcelona (Spain), Mexico City (Mexico), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and in Quito (Ecuador). The company's Senior Executive staff included: Oscar Coën (President and CEO), Marlena Delgado (COO), Rudy Vila (SVP Business Development - Entertainment), Jose Luque (Sr. VP Business Development and eCommerce), Pepe Carreras (SVP Client Management), and Gustavo Morles (Sr. VP Business Development and Content), Camilo Cruz (First CEO and Co-Founder), Carlos A Cardona (CTO and Founder). By 1999 the company had raised as much as $150 million from venture capitalists including Sony, Comcast and News Corp. It was planning an initial public offering in the spring of 2000 when the Nasdaq market crashed. Quickly running out of cash and without enough revenue to support its business, Yupi cut staff by 66% on December 19, 2000. In 2001, Yupi was acquired in a joint venture between Microsoft and Telmex (Teléfonos de México). Although MSN and Telmex never disclosed the price they paid in acquiring Yupi, analysts had estimated that it might have been about $50 million, much less than investors had poured in. In 2003, YupiMSN's operations were moved to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xamarin] | [TOKENS: 2044] |
Contents Xamarin Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned San Francisco-based software company founded in May 2011 by the engineers that created Mono, Xamarin.Android (formerly Mono for Android) and Xamarin.iOS (formerly MonoTouch), which are cross-platform implementations of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and Common Language Specifications (often called Microsoft .NET). With a C#-shared codebase, developers can use Xamarin tools to write native Android, iOS, and Windows apps with native user interfaces and share code across multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. According to Xamarin, over 1.4 million developers were using Xamarin's products in 120 countries around the world as of April 2017. On February 24, 2016, Microsoft announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Xamarin. Microsoft ended support for Xamarin on May 1, 2024, in favor of .NET MAUI. History In 1999 Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman launched what eventually became known as Ximian to support and develop software for de Icaza's nascent GNOME project. After Microsoft first announced their .NET Framework in June 2000, de Icaza began investigating whether a Linux version was feasible. The Mono open source project was launched on July 19, 2001. Ximian was bought by Novell on August 4, 2003, which was then acquired by Attachmate in April 2011. After the acquisition, Attachmate announced hundreds of layoffs for the Novell workforce, including Mono developers, putting the future of Mono in question. On May 16, 2011, Miguel de Icaza announced on his blog that Mono would be developed and supported by Xamarin, a newly formed company that planned to release a new suite of mobile products. According to de Icaza, at least part of the original Mono team had moved to the new company. The name Xamarin comes from the name of the Tamarin monkey, replacing the leading T with an X. This is in line with the naming theme used ever since Ximian was started. After Xamarin was announced, the future of the project was questioned since MonoTouch and Mono for Android would now be in direct competition with the existing commercial offerings owned by Attachmate. It was not known at that time how Xamarin would prove they had not illegally used technologies previously developed when they were employed by Novell for the same work. In July 2011, however, Novell – now a subsidiary of Attachmate – and Xamarin announced that Novell had granted a perpetual license to Xamarin for Mono, MonoTouch and Mono for Android, and Xamarin formally and legally took official stewardship of the project. In May 2012, Xamarin released XobotOS, an experimental Android implementation using C# instead of Java. In December 2012, Xamarin released Xamarin.Mac, a plugin for the existing MonoDevelop Integrated development environment (IDE), which allows developers to build C#-based applications for the Apple's macOS operating system and package them for publishing via the App Store. In February 2013, Xamarin announced the release of Xamarin 2.0. The release included two main components: Xamarin Studio, a re-branding of its open-source IDE Monodevelop; and integration with Visual Studio, Microsoft's IDE for the .NET Framework, allowing Visual Studio to be used for creating applications for Android, iOS and Windows. On July 17, 2013, Xamarin announced that they had closed $16 million (~$21.2 million in 2024) in Series B funding led by Lead Edge Capital. Several investors from their Series A funding also participated, including Charles River Ventures, Floodgate, and Ignition Partners. On August 21, 2014, Xamarin successfully closed an additional $54 million (~$70.3 million in 2024) in Series C funding, which is one of the largest rounds of funding ever raised by a mobile app development platform. As of August 2014 the total funding for the company was $82 million (~$107 million in 2024). On February 24, 2016, Xamarin and Microsoft announced that Microsoft signed a definitive agreement to acquire Xamarin. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though the Wall Street Journal reported the price at between $400 million and $500 million.[better source needed] At Microsoft Build 2016 Microsoft announced that they will open-source the Xamarin SDK and that they will bundle it as a free tool within Microsoft Visual Studio's integrated development environment, and Visual Studio Enterprise users would also get Xamarin's enterprise features free of charge. As a part of the acquisition they would also relicense Mono completely under the MIT License and would release all other Xamarin SDK software through the .NET Foundation also under the MIT License. Products The Xamarin company produces an open source[citation needed] software platform by the same name, and Xamarin 2.0 was released in February 2013. Xamarin extends the .NET developer platform with tools and libraries specifically for building apps for Android, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, macOS, and Windows (UWP) primarily with C# in Visual Studio. Developers can re-use their existing C# code, and share significant code across device platforms. Several well-known companies including 3M, AT&T, and HP have used the platform to create their apps. Xamarin integrates with Visual Studio, Microsoft's IDE for the .NET Framework, and subsequently is available for use by macOS users through Visual Studio for Mac. Xamarin also released a component store to integrate backend systems, 3rd party libraries, cloud services and UI controls directly into mobile apps. Introduced in Xamarin 3 on May 28, 2014, and allows one to use portable controls subsets that are mapped to native controls of Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Windows Phone was deprecated and removed in favour of UWP. It is also possible to target other different platforms such as Tizen (by Samsung), GTK (Linux), WPF and macOS even though they have stayed in Preview. This system uses XAML. Microsoft has modified this framework to work with the Universal Windows Platform. Microsoft enables native mobile development with Blazor. Mobile Blazor Bindings allow developers to build native Android and iOS using C#, .NET, and web programming patterns. At Microsoft Build 2020, Microsoft announced that Xamarin.Forms was going to be merged into .NET 6 as .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI). NET MAUI adds macOS support via Mac Catalyst. On May 23, 2022, during Microsoft Build 2022, .NET MAUI was released. Microsoft stated that they will continue supporting Xamarin until it is fully replaced by .NET MAUI in May 2024. Xamarin Test Cloud makes it possible to test mobile apps written in any language on real, non-jailbroken devices in the cloud. Xamarin Test Cloud uses object-based UI testing to simulate real user interactions. Xamarin is a .NET developer platform made up of tools, programming languages, and libraries for building many different types of applications. Xamarin supplies add-ins to Microsoft Visual Studio that allows developers to build Android, iOS, and Windows apps within the IDE using code completion and IntelliSense. Xamarin for Visual Studio also has extensions that provide support for the building, deploying, and debugging of apps on a simulator or a device. In late 2013, Xamarin and Microsoft announced a partnership that included further technical integration and customer programs to make it possible for their joint developer bases to build for all mobile platforms. In addition, Xamarin now includes support for Microsoft Portable Class Libraries and most C# 5.0 features such as async/await. CEO and co-founder of Xamarin, Nat Friedman, announced the alliance at the launch of Visual Studio 2013 in New York. Xamarin is useful in developing iOS and Android apps. On March 31, 2016, Microsoft announced that they were merging all of Xamarin's software with every version of Microsoft Visual Studio including Visual Studio Community, and this added various Xamarin features to come pre-installed in Visual Studio such as an iOS emulator. In February 2013, Xamarin Studio was released as a standalone IDE based on the open source project MonoDevelop for mobile app development on Windows and macOS, as part of Xamarin 2.0. In addition to a debugger, Xamarin Studio includes code completion in C#, an Android UI builder for creating user interfaces without XML, and integration with Xcode Interface Builder for iOS app design. On Windows Xamarin Studio is now deprecated in favor of Xamarin for Visual Studio. In 2016, Microsoft discontinued Xamarin Studio with the release of Visual Studio for Mac. Xamarin.Mac was created as a tool for Apple technology application development using the C# programming language. Xamarin.Mac, as with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android, gives developers up to 90% of code reuse across Android, iOS and Windows. Xamarin.Mac gives C# developers the ability to build fully native Cocoa apps for macOS and allows for native apps that can be put into the Mac App Store. Xamarin's .NET Mobility Scanner lets developers see how much of their .NET code can run on other operating systems, specifically Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and Windows Store. It is a free web-based service that uses Silverlight. In October 2015 Xamarin announced that they had acquired the Swedish RoboVM for Java developer platform akin to its offerings, the reason stated by Xamarin for the acquisition was that if they developed a Java-based platform from the ground up, their end product would be similar to RoboVM so they acquired the company instead; as a result RoboVM operates independently of the Xamarin team. RoboVM enables developers to build Java apps for iOS and Android with fully native UIs, native performances, and all Java apps have the complete access to the APIs of each developer platform. In April 2016 Microsoft announced that they would discontinue RoboVM and cease all subscriptions after April 30, 2017. BugVM, a fork of RoboVM was created to maintain the free open source status. Acquisitions See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetShow] | [TOKENS: 180] |
Contents NetShow NetShow was Microsoft's original framework for Internet network broadcasting, intended to compete with RealNetworks RealMedia & Vivo (acquired in 1998 by RealNetworks). It was later renamed and marketed under the Windows Media umbrella. NetShow 1.0 came out in 1996. A newer version, 2.0, was included in Windows NT 4.0 SP3 in 1997. Version 3.0 came out mid-1998. The whole product line was renamed Windows Media in October, 1999, four months before Windows 2000 appeared. The NetShow name is still carried on in the user-agent string in current versions of Windows Media Player, which reports as "NSPlayer". Components Related technologies References This article about software created, produced or developed by Microsoft is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Xbox_Game_Studios] | [TOKENS: 50] |
Template talk:Xbox Game Studios Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. You can use this page to start a discussion with others about how to improve the "Template:Xbox Game Studios" page. |
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