Windows 8 will have two versions of Internet Explorer 10: a conventional browser that lives on the legacy desktop, and a new Metro-style, touch-friendly browser that lives in the Metro world. The second of these, the Metro browser, will not support any plugins. Whether Flash, Silverlight, or some custom business app, sites that need plugins will only be accessible in the non-touch, desktop-based browser.

Should one ever come across a page that needs a plugin, the Metro browser has a button to go to that page within the desktop browser. This yanks you out of the Metro experience and places you on the traditional desktop.

The rationale is a familiar one: plugin-based content shortens battery life, and comes with security, reliability, and privacy problems. Sites that currently depend on the capabilities provided by Flash or Silverlight should switch to HTML5.

Earlier today, Google came out swinging. Seemingly sick of being continuously slapped in the face by the patent issue, Google’s SVP and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, wrote a blog post calling out several of Google’s rivals for attempting to use “bogus patents” to destroy Android. Chief among the rivals called out was Microsoft. Drummond noted that the software giant had been getting in bed with other rivals to hurt Google.

Among the accusations was that Microsoft teamed up with Apple to buy Novell’s old patents, implying that they did so in order to keep them away from Google.

Microsoft didn’t take too kindly to that remark.

“Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no,” Brad Smith, Microsoft General Counsel tweeted out in response.

Microsoft support for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) will end on July 12, 2011. From that date onward, Microsoft will no longer provide support or free security updates for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Windows Vista Authorized Replication Ends October 11, 2011
This date is two years after the General Availability (GA) of Windows 7. Going forward all Windows products will follow a standardized End of Sales schedule which sets the End of Sales date for the previous Windows version at the start of the General Availability (GA) of the new Windows version. Once the new Windows Operating System (OS) reaches the set GA date, the previous version will remain available for two years after this date.

Microsoft Corp. receives $5 for every Android phone made by Taiwan-based HTC Corp., according to a Citigroup report on Microsoft.

The report released Friday said that Microsoft gets the money as part of a patent dispute settlement with HTC, which manufactures smartphones and tablets powered by Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.

The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant is also seeking to sue other Android phone makers, the report says, and is aiming for “a $7.50 to $12.50 per unit license to settle alleged infringement of Microsoft patents.”

It could be the most expensive call Microsoft Corp. has ever made.

In acquiring Internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion, the technology giant is seeking new ways to make money as its core computer software business faces a growing threat from a new generation of powerful mobile devices.

But some analysts believe the Skype deal, Microsoft’s largest ever, could become a multibillion-dollar dud, as it once was for EBay Inc. The online auction site acquired Skype for $3.1 billion in 2005 but then sold most of its stake in the phone service after failing to wring a profit from it.

It started with Chrome browser. Google decided that the stop button is not important enough to have its own space on the browser toolbar. I guess the 16 pixel button takes too much space that Google merged it with the refresh button as a toggle button.

Now Firefox 4 also copied this poor design and eliminated the stop button.

As part of my job I sometimes need to do some web development or debug an html page. Today I has such case where I had to look at an HTML page that has an automatic refresh/redirect code in the page after few seconds. I use Firefox browser for years now and all I had to do for this kind of pages to stop the refresh is to press the stop button. However since I recently upgraded to Firefox 4 I found this task impossible because the refresh button toggle to the stop button for a split second before the page actually refreshed itself.

Chrome browser was not different, I could not stop the page from refreshing. All angry and upset I was thinking to myself, well probably IE9 (which I also recently installed) that looks like Chrome too, was no different, however I tried that too, and kudos to Microsoft, the product designer did leave the stop button on the tool bar and I was able to finally stop the page from reloading itself.

While I don’t use IE9 as my default browser I finally found a good use for it. It is no doubt that Microsoft products have best user interface designers and this is no exception.

I call to Mozilla and Google to please BRING BACK THE STOP BUTTON, I’m sure that many users will be happy to scarify a whole 10-16 pixels from the toolbar to have this button back.

Microsoft has released its Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) web browser, saying that it “unleashes a more beautiful web”.

Microsoft has been publicly testing IE9 beta releases for some time and revealed that over 40 million people had downloaded the betas. The Vole has been aggressively promoting a number of IE9 features, with the highlight being HTML5 hardware acceleration.

This has led Microsoft to come out with unsubstantiated hyperbole such as “IE9 harnesses the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU), unlocking 90 per cent of the PC’s power that went previously untapped by web browsers.” Admittedly GPU acceleration for both HTML5 and Adobe’s Flash Player will help performance, but it should also improve battery life on laptops.

Continuing its campaign to turn Microsoft customers to Google Apps customers, Google on Thursday released Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office and announced a new partner program that allows businesses to test drive its online applications.

Initially released as a limited preview in November 2010, Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is now available worldwide. It allows users to create documents in Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, or 2010, and then to share and sync them through Google Apps.

Microsoft has told BBC News that it is investigating why some handsets running its Windows Phone 7 software are sending and receiving “phantom data”.

Several net forums detail complaints from people that say their phones are automatically eating into their monthly data plans without their knowledge.

Some have complained that their phone sends “between 30 and 50MB of data” every day; an amount that would eat into a 1GB allowance in 20 days.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has promised that the company will support Kinect for PCs sometime in the future. This is news that should make Bill Gates a very happy man. The motion controller is currently only officially supported for the Xbox 360, although it has been hacked and tweaked to work on pretty much any platform that can be plugged into via a USB port.

Some users of Microsoft Hotmail are starting off the new year scrambling to get back e-mails of old. A chorus of frantic users has posted complaints on Microsoft’s online forum that all of their messages have disappeared.

“Please help me get them back,” wrote one user under the moniker ‘Zacgore’ in a post dated Saturday. “All my kids’ info and pictures are in there!”

Others complain that the majority of the e-mail in their inboxes was sent to their deleted mail folders instead. It is unclear from the posts how widespread the problem is. The free Web-based e-mail service is the world’s most used with about 360 million users globally, according to comScore Inc.

Windows Live support technicians have said in numerous threads that the Hotmail team is aware of the problem and working on a fix.

As browser-based exploits and specifically JavaScript malware have shouldered their way to the top of the list of threats, browser vendors have been scrambling to find effective defenses to protect users. Few have been forthcoming, but Microsoft Research has developed a new tool called Zozzle that can be deployed in the browser and can detect JavaScript-based malware at a very high effectiveness rate.

Zozzle is designed to perform static analysis of JavaScript code on a given site and quickly determine whether the code is malicious and includes an exploit. In order to be effective, the tool must be trained to recognize the elements that are common to malicious JavaScript, and the researchers behind it stress that it works best on de-obfuscated code.