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Welp, it's official. Microsoft and Skype are one. Well, Skype isn't alone in this world any longer, anyway. While this deal was announced months back, there has been plenty of work in the time being to ensure all the legalities were ironed out. Now, Microsoft has closed its acquisition of Skype, locking in an $8.5 billion payment that was...

As search spending continued to rise in the just-ended third quarter, Google regained market share lost during the last couple of quarters to Microsoft's Bing search engine, according to a new report to be released Tuesday morning by Efficient Frontier, which manages about $1 billion in search, display, and social advertising for agencies and advertisers. ...

The European Commission approved Friday the proposed $8.5 billion acquisition of the Internet phone and video communication provider Skype by Microsoft Corp., saying the deal would not significantly impede competition in Europe. The approval appears to be the final step in the technology company’s effort to acquire Skype. The European Commission is the EU’s executive branch.

Microsoft Corp is considering a bid for Yahoo Inc, resurfacing as a potential buyer after a bitter and unsuccessful fight to take over the Internet company in 2008, sources close to the situation said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Microsoft explained why the Windows 8 start menu is now a start screen: no one used it.

IBM topped rival Microsoft in market valuation for the first time since 1996, the latest sign of the technology industry's shift in emphasis away from the personal computer.

Last week, at a large developers’ event, Microsoft formally introduced its next operating system to the world, and it’s nothing like the Windows you’re used to. It’s clear the company has watched and learned as Apple stormed into the marketplace with the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft’s new Windows 8 looks and feels like it’s built from the ground up to do away with the noisy, dated interfaces of the desktop computer, replacing them with a touch-friendly experience that’s focused on a new way of computing.

There was a time in the tech business when your company could be as slow as molasses in January yet still prevail based on shear market size. That day disappeared in the rear view mirror many years ago, as Microsoft is about to learn as it prepares to introduce a major Windows upgrade.

Gears of War 3, which arrives in stores Tuesday, is Microsoft's biggest Xbox exclusive game ever out of the gate — surpassing even pre-orders for the flagship Halo games. Sales of this final chapter in the Gears series topped 1.3 million at last tally and are expected to surpass the first two installments, which sold about 13 million copies combined.

One of the unambiguous messages we heard from Microsoft's Build 2011 conference in Anaheim all last week was that development of HTML5 "Metro-style apps" for Windows 8 would be "plug-in free." All requests for Microsoft to "clarify" that rule only underscored the blunt reality of the statement: HTML5 is about the absence of plug-ins, and thus, Metro will have an absence of plug-ins ...