Microsoft Corp

Microsoft Corp. has warned U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin that it might seek to have him removed from the company's high-stakes antitrust case if the judge considers an anonymous charge that Microsoft threatened a competitor. The Justice Department also asked Sporkin to avoid consideration of allegations that Microsoft has used its market power to threaten or retaliate against competitors.

Software giant Microsoft Corp. denied a report published Monday that it was engaged in talks to take a major equity position in NBC-TV, the nation's leading television network. "The report in Daily Variety that Microsoft is involved in discussions to buy up to 49% of NBC are not true," said Allison O'Brien, spokeswoman for Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, which normally declines to comment on such rumors.

Microsoft Corp., uncharacteristically heeding industry criticism, said Monday that it would not sell its package of word processing, spreadsheet and other programs with the new version of Windows due later this year. A Microsoft executive said the company did not want to upset distributors and retailers who objected to the idea.

Microsoft Corp. announced the departure of several executives Thursday, among them a Silicon Valley veteran recruited to help fix its unprofitable Web business and one in charge of marketing Windows Vista. It also announced the promotion of more than a dozen other executives. The changes come two weeks after Microsoft offered to buy Web portal and search competitor Yahoo Inc.

Microsoft Corp. said Monday it would begin selling Web-based programs to smaller customers, countering a challenge from Google Inc. The company would begin testing online editions of its Exchange and SharePoint Server programs for companies with fewer than 5,000 employees, Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said. Blockbuster Inc. and Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. are already customers for a service designed for larger companies, he said.

. -- When Microsoft Corp. makes its annual presentation to investors and analysts here today, executives will be preaching the value of patience to stockholders who are nervous about the world's largest software company's online prospects. Executives plan to hold up the entertainment and devices division -- home of the Xbox game console, Zune media player and cellphone software -- as a prime example of persistence rewarded.

Microsoft Corp.'s rivals renewed their call Friday for European Union regulators to act against what they say are illegal practices, alleging that the new Vista operating system is the company's attempt to extend its monopoly to the Internet. They asked the European Commission to make a decision "as fast as possible" on a complaint they filed in February.

Under threat of new multimillion-dollar fines, Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that it had signed up its first licensee for a program to help servers work with the Windows operating platform. The European Commission had threatened the software giant with new daily fines of $4 million last week, alleging that it ignored a March 2004 antitrust order that said Microsoft overcharged rivals for "complete and accurate" documentation.

Microsoft Corp. faces a probe into a complaint by an anonymous company that it is in violation of terms of a 2001 antitrust settlement with the U.S. government, a Department of Justice attorney said during a court hearing Tuesday. Aaron D. Hoag, a trial attorney for the Justice Department's antitrust division, told a federal judge in Washington that an unnamed software maker complained that Microsoft was violating terms of the agreement.

CareerBuilder.com said that Microsoft Corp. acquired a 4% stake in the online jobs site and extended a partnership for CareerBuilder's job search placement on a Microsoft website. The financial details of the equity stake were not disclosed. CareerBuilder, part-owned by Tribune Co., publisher of the Los Angeles Times, will pay up to $443 million over seven years under the partnership, which makes it the exclusive job search engine through 2013 on Microsoft's MSN Careers site.