Reporting from Microsoft's annual meeting
14th Nov 2006, 22:50 GMT
I'm over here in Bellevue this morning for Microsoft's annual meeting with shareholders, which starts at 8 a.m. Pacific time. You can view a webcast on the company's site. (Scroll down to "upcoming events.") See this proxy statement for a summary of shareholder resolutions to be considered at the meeting. One seeks to prevent the company from doing business in China, due to human-rights violations in the country. Update: Shareholders approved all nine board members up for election, and turned down the three shareholder resolutions by overwhelming majorities. In his state-of-the-company address, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer pointed to online services -- the "fourth core" of Microsoft's business, as he called it -- as a key area for growth. "At the same time, we recognize that we face especially strong competition in this fourth core, particularly in search and advertising," he added. "To respond, we're building new capabilities around advertising, operations and data centers. ... We're dedicating more talent and resources here than anywhere else across the business." That was, in part, a reference to the 40 percent headcount growth in Microsoft's Online Services Business, which added to the recent quarterly loss in that division. Bill Gates gave an overview of the company's new and upcoming products -- Windows Vista, Office 2007, Zune, Exchange Server etc. His time on the agenda also included demonstrations of several Microsoft technologies. Among them: PhotoSynth, Virtual Earth 3D and Windows Live Search -- including a check of MSFT, which was down 9 cents at that point in the day. Gates mentioned his plan to move to part-time work in 2008, and he told shareholders that the transition to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie was going well. When I spoke with shareholders afterward, however, some expressed a little bit of uneasiness about Gates ultimately scaling back his role.
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