Free Republic

Microsoft Corp will release a free version of its dominant Office software that users can access over the Web, catching up with products that arch rival Google Inc launched three years ago. The world's largest software maker will offer a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a note-taking program with the same look and feel of their counterparts in the Office suites that it sells for personal computers. It is the latest salvo in an intensifying war between the two technology giants. Google announced plans last week to challenge Windows with a free operating system. Microsoft introduced a new search...

The internet has witnessed the conversion of analog advertising dollars into digital advertising pennies (credit due to Jeff Zucker at NBC (GE) for “coining” that metaphor). Despite the fact that a viewer is always just a “click away” on the internet, online advertisements command only a fraction of the cost of far less measurable media – like print, radio, and television. Consider this: an advertisement on MySpace (NWS) might cost $.25 to show to 1,000 people ($.25 CPM), versus $25 for 1,000 readers of Time (TWX) magazine ($25 CPM). In the good old days of performance-less advertising, engagement didn’t really...

Texas employers who rely on immigrant labor are wary of some of the proposals being debated in Washington to deal with the runaway expansion of the underground work force, now crucial to a number of industries. Half of the bills don't address their greatest concern: how to keep enough employees on the job while their legal status is settled. Three of the six bills would require foreign workers to return to their homelands before applying for authorization to work in the U.S., according to a review by the Migration Policy Institute. Two proposals would bar them for a decade if...