TechWeek: Microsoft Makes Search Sense

That's a pretty good question, especially when you remember that exactly one month ago Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer warned Wall Street that some of its expectations for Vista-driven revenue were "overly aggressive." Moreover, there are indications that Vista (which will ultimately be a success) has gotten off to a relatively slow start.

Given that, you'd think Gates would measure his words carefully. Instead, he said: "Vista's the most-used piece of software there is in the world."

Excuse me? Vista has been on the market for less than a full quarter, while XP and earlier versions of Windows are installed on something like 90% of the PCs in the world. There's no algorithm (as the chairman would say) on the planet that would make sense of Gates' incredible statement, so I won't even try.

Man the Lifeboats?

When CA(CA Quote) spun off Ingres into a private company in late 2005, there were high hopes that a nimble, open-source database company could make a good living stealing market share from mighty Oracle(ORCL Quote).

Since it's not public, it's hard to know how Ingres is doing, but in the last three months, there's been an unsettling exit of top talent.

Gone are the highly respected Chief Technology Officer Dave Dargo; Mike Coney, the head of sales; Don Mukherjee, the chief marketing officer; and Oracle vet Jim Finn, who handled communications.