Rumours have been circulating since mid-December that Microsoft plan to layoff 10-17% of its 91,000-strong global workforce next week. The date of January 15th has been cited as it falls neatly between the launch of the public beta of Windows 7 and the company's next quarterly earnings call.

There are lots of "no comments" at the moment, but the axe is expected to fall hardest on the Entertainment & Devices and the Online Business divisions along with MSN and the European, Middle Eastern and African sales groups. No rumours about local jobs -- yet.


Things are tough for the old monopolist. After all, they did pay a whopping 0.038% tax in 2007. According to Irish public service broadcaster RTE;

Accounts for Microsoft Ireland Research, an Irish subsidiary of the global software giant, show that the company paid just €460,000 in tax, on profits of more than €1.2 billion last year, by using provisions in Irish tax law to take its corporation tax bill down from €158m. Much of Microsoft's international profits are channelled through Ireland, but because the main company for Microsoft's activities has unlimited liability, it does not have to file detailed accounts.

To put that in perspective, imagine earning $100,000 and giving the IRD $38.


On Christmas day Micrsoft received a US patent for pay-as-you-go computing. The idea is that you buy a cheap PC and only pay for software you use, each time you use it -- a bit like the way you pay for electricity or the phone.

While it might appeal to some, it strikes me as a foot in the door for an unprecedented level of user surveillance. Not only will Microsoft know what you're doing, when and for how long, but they'll have a name, address and credit card number to go with it. Imagine the possibilites of tying that sort of data to search engines or advertising agency browser spies.

It also begs a lot of questions. What if your machine gets hijacked and Outlook fires off a million spam messages at a cent a pop? Ooops. That'll be $10,000 please.

According to one source, internet browsing will cost US$0.80 per hour. But surely that's what Microsoft will pay users for putting up with Internet Explorer...

Still, there is an alternative. It's called free-as-you-go. All the software you could ever want, for nothing. It's known as Linux!