The Wall Street Journal and Information Week reported this morning that EU regulators have announced a third investigation into Microsoft’s conduct on the desktop. This latest action demonstrates that while the EU has settled the case against Microsoft that ran for almost a decade, it remains as suspicious as ever regarding the software vendor’s conduct, notwithstanding Microsoft’s less combative stance in recent years. The news can be found in a story reported by Charles Forelle bylined in Brussells this morning. According to the Journal, the investigation will focus on whether Microsoft ‘violated antitrust laws during a struggle last year to ratify its Office software file format as an international standard.’ The article also says that the regulators are ’stepping up scrutiny of the issue.’

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The Wall Street Journal and Information Week reported this morning that EU regulators have announced a third investigation into Microsoft’s conduct on the desktop. This latest action demonstrates that while the EU has settled the case against Microsoft that ran for almost a decade, it remains as suspicious as ever regarding the software vendor’s conduct, notwithstanding Microsoft’s less combative stance in current years. The news can be found in a story reported by Charles Forelle bylined in Brussells this morning. According to the Journal, the investigation will focus on whether Microsoft ‘violated antitrust laws during a struggle last year to ratify its Office software file format as an international standard.’ The article also states that the regulators are ’stepping up scrutiny of the issue.’

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “Ars Technica is reporting that the College Opportunity and Affordability Act passed through the Home today with a vote of 354-58 and the anti-P2P provision is intact. That provision would require universities to filter P2P and to offer legal alternatives. They’re claiming now, though, that universities would not lose federal funding if they fail to do this. Of course, an amendment that would have clarified that was withdrawn immediately after it was offered.”

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The Wall Street Journal and Information Week reported this morning that EU regulators have announced a third investigation into Microsoft’s conduct on the desktop. This latest action demonstrates that while the EU has settled the case against Microsoft that ran for nearly a decade, it remains as suspicious as ever regarding the software vendor’s conduct, notwithstanding Microsoft’s less combative stance in recent years. The news can be found in a story reported by Charles Forelle bylined in Brussells this morning. According to the Journal, the investigation will focus on whether Microsoft ‘violated antitrust laws during a struggle last year to ratify its Office software file format as an international standard.’ The article also says that the regulators are ’stepping up scrutiny of the issue.’

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “Ars Technica is reporting that the College Opportunity and Affordability Act passed through the House today with a vote of 354-58 and the anti-P2P provision is intact. That provision would require universities to filter P2P and to offer legal alternatives. They’re claiming now, though, that universities would not lose federal funding if they fail to do this. Of course, an amendment that would have clarified that was withdrawn immediately after it was offered.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Filed under: Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Bargain stocks, Chasing Value, Stocks to Buy, Ideal Stocks for 2008

After years of ranting and raving that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) was over priced and that investors and speculators alike were at risk I finally did an about face this week. The huge GOOG made my Chasing Value column earlier in the week Chasing Value: Is it Google time? when it dropped below $500 per share. Contrarian that I’m, when everyone else is losing heart I think perhaps reality takes hold. One tenet of contrarian investing is that nothing is ever priced right!

So this week I sensed an opportunity was at hand and could not resist blurting it out. In a down week and down day Google is up, so far so good. Microsofts (NASDAQ: MSFT) offer to buy Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) in a hostile bid Microsoft attacks: going after Google not Yahoo didn’t faze Google. There are several that think MSFT is making a mistake by overpaying and won’t see the return on investment that shareholders should expect.

The market is down mid-day and Google is up about $10 trading around $515 a share, about $24 higher than when I took notice. Based on a purchase at this price Google should have a 2008 forward P/E of 27 without any strenuous exercises this year. Microsoft on the other hand was clicking along just fine in most of its business segments and might have bitten off more than it can chew.

Google, with $14 billion in cash and short term investments and growing, is only getting stronger. I did not like GOOG before, but hey, a bargain is a bargain.

• UPDATE: GOOG closed today at $516.69, up $11.64.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the design and research principal for an architecture & planning firm. To find potential opportunities and verify my track record read Chasing Value or Serious Money. Disclosure: I don’t own shares of GOOG, MSFT or YHOO.

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An anonymous reader writes “It looks like Intel is being sued over a patent infringement alleged to be in the Core 2 Duo microprocessor design. ‘The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) is charging Intel Corporation with patent infringement of a University of Wisconsin-Madison invention that significantly improves the efficiency and speed of personal processing The foundation’s complaint identifies the Intel CoreTM 2 Duo microarchitecture as infringing WARF’s United Says Patent No. 5,781,752, entitled “Table Based Data Speculation Circuit for Parallel Processing Computer.” WARF contacted Intel in 2001, and made repeated attempts, including meeting face-to-face with company representatives, to offer legal licensing opportunities for the technology.’ The text of the complaint [PDF] is also available via WARF’s site.”

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An anonymous reader writes “Local search engine company, Zvents, has released an open source distributed data storage system based on Google’s released design specs. ‘The new software, Hypertable, is designed to scale to 1000 nodes, all commodity Computers […] The Google database design on which Hypertable is based, Bigtable, attracted a lot of developer buzz and a “Best Paper” award from the USENIX Association for “Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data” a 2006 publication from nine Google researchers including Fay Chang, Jeffrey Dean, and Sanjay Ghemawat. Google’s Bigtable uses the company’s in-house Google File System for storage.’”

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Filed under: Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Bargain stocks, Chasing Value, Stocks to Purchase, Best Stocks for 2008

After years of ranting and raving that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) was over priced and that investors and speculators alike were at risk I finally did an about face this week. The huge GOOG made my Chasing Value column earlier in the week Chasing Value: Is it Google time? when it dropped below $500 per share. Contrarian that I’m, when everyone else is losing heart I think perhaps reality takes hold. One tenet of contrarian investing is that nothing is ever priced right!

So this week I sensed an opportunity was at hand and couldn’t resist blurting it out. In a down week and down day Google is up, so far so good. Microsofts (NASDAQ: MSFT) offer to purchase Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) in a hostile bid Microsoft attacks: going after Google not Yahoo didn’t faze Google. There are lots of that think MSFT is making a mistake by overpaying and will not see the return on investment that shareholders should expect.

The market is down mid-day and Google is up about $10 trading around $515 a share, about $24 higher than when I took notice. Based on a purchase at this price Google should have a 2008 forward P/E of 27 without any strenuous exercises this year. Microsoft on the other hand was clicking along just fine in most of its business segments and may have bitten off more than it can chew.

Google, with $14 billion in cash and short term investments and growing, is only getting stronger. I did not like GOOG before, but hey, a bargain is a bargain.

• UPDATE: GOOG closed this day at $516.69, up $11.64.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the design and research principal for an architecture & planning firm. To find potential opportunities and verify my track record read Chasing Value or Serious Money. Disclosure: I don’t own shares of GOOG, MSFT or YHOO.

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Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Starbucks (SBUX), McDonald’s (MCD)

It seems to me that my aversion to McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD)’s burgers and the company’s success are inversely related; the more I dislike the greasy food, the more the fast-food chain succeeds. It was only today that the world’s largest restaurant company stated sales at locations open more than 13 months, commonly know as same-store sales, increased 5.7% in January, spurred by growth in Europe and Asia.

While comparable-store sales in the US grew 1.9% (better than the 1.5% the company had guided), sales in Europe — McDonald’s largest region by revenue — advanced 8.2% and 7.8% in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The main culprits to the chain’s growth? In Europe — it was burgers and chicken sandwiches, in China — longer hours, and in the US — it was breakfast. Apparently, the new $2.49 McSkillet breakfast burrito boosted breakfast sales.

But it isn’t just the “yummy” food the chain sells, or its operational improvements that have contributed to growth, it is also the weak dollar. While systemwide sales for its worldwide restaurants increased 13.4% in January, in constant currencies, the increase was 7.1%.

So now what? The stock was hit so far in 2008, trading down over 8.4% to yesterday’s close, after the company reported flat December same-store sales numbers that raised concerns about how a US and perhaps even a global economic weakness could impact the fast-food giant. These numbers alleviated some of these concerns, as at least for now Europe looks more resilient.

McDonald’s, though, seems to never rest and, trying to further boost US sales, it’s going head to head with Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) by starting last year to offer more specialty coffees. It plans to offer more menu items as well.

You probably won’t catch me eating a Huge Mac any time soon, but it’s undeniable the company is managed well and the stock has always been one of my faves. MCD has done well the past 52 weeks, gaining 21%, paying a decent dividend too. The stock is reacting well to the news today, up 2.74%, or $1.49 to $55.95.

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