Palm pre Pre

<a href=”http://feeds.barrons.info/~r/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed/~3/qjSuJ9xZcCQ/”>Palm: Can The Company Walk On Water?</a> No.

Microsoft readies their fifteenth search engine in 5 years

Long awaited?

The long-awaited upgrade to Microsoft’s search engine will soon make its debut.

Code-named “Kumo”, the search engine is a major effort by Microsoft (MSFT) to raise its hand to table stakes in the battle for search market share with Google (GOOG)–something it desperately needs to do.

According to the latest metrics from comScore (SCOR), Google’s share of the search market rose to 64.2 percent in April from 63.7 percent in March and from 61.6 percent from a year ago. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s market share for the month topped out at 8.2 percent, down from 8.3 percent in March and 9.1 percent a year ago.

Maybe they can start a new marketing campaign with a mish mash of actors getting money to use a different search engine?

HP: The future is so bright we’ve got to lay off more people

They barely met expectations, so its time to do what HP’s new management knows best: cut employees.

Enterprise Storage and Servers: down 28 percent
Software: down 15 percent
Personal Systems Group: down 19 percent (though it claims the leading market position in PCs in every region)
Imaging and Printing Group: down 23 percent
Financial Services: down 6 percent
Services: up 99 percent

UPDATE: During a conference call to discuss earnings, HP’s leadership said the company will sack about two percent of the workforce in the months ahead as it looks to trim costs. 6,400 employees will lose their jobs as a result.

Once upon a time HP used to be a product company now its just an also-ran in several businesses.