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Microsoft on Monday replaced Yahoo's search technology with its own homespun software and will kick off a huge advertising campaign to supplant Google in consumers' hearts. As expected, MSN, a unit of the software giant, has taken its Web search technology out of the laboratory, and placed it on MSN's newly redesigned home page in 25 countries. Two and a half years in the making, MSN Search will now be the focal point of the updated, lighter-weight site; and it is the subject of Microsoft's newest ad campaign, which includes television, print, Internet and outdoor promotions. MSN Search Vice President...

TODAY’S donation pushes Bill Gates into an even more exalted position as the world’s biggest philanthropist. The Gates foundation, which is worth $30 billion, (£17billion), is now the largest charity to have been created by a single benefactor or private company by a factor of three, following a previous $3 billion gift from its founder last July. Mr Gates has stated that he intends to give away 90 per cent of his fortune, which is currently valued at about $50 billion. The causes to which he has channelled his wealth — global health inequalities, education programmes, public libraries and projects...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. personal incomes soared a record 3.7 percent in December, largely as the result of a one-time $32 billion dividend payment from Microsoft, the Commerce Department said Monday. Excluding the dividend, incomes rose 0.6 percent, the government said. Meanwhile, consumer spending increased 0.8 percent in December, as spending on durable goods jumped 4.3 percent. ....................... The $32 billion paid out by Microsoft was reported as an annual $298 billion increase in December's income. The government estimates about $24.8 billion of the $32 billion was paid to U.S. residents...............

Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, has been talking about the digital future. The other Bill, technology critic Bill Thompson, has been reading between the lines.Bill Gates thinks I'm a communist. Not the old-fashioned state socialist concerned with five-year plans for boot production in the eastern provinces, but a "new modern-day sort of communist", the sort who "want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and movie-makers and software makers". Admittedly, Mr Gates probably does not know who I am and I doubt if he spends a lot of time reading the BBC news site. But he...