A Week in Digital

Microsoft Earning Report: Revenue Up 22% & Net Income Up 48%
Microsoft announced earning and beat Wall Street expectations. They reported a fantastic fourth quarter revenue of $16.04 billion for the quarter ending 30th June 2010. This represents an increase of 22% compared to the same quarter last year.
However the Online Services Division (Bing and Yahoo alliance) have not seen such a nice increase in revenue due to the spending on research and development on Bing, and “reimbursement and implementation” and “third-party development and programming” with the Yahoo deal, which set them back $696 million. The revenue for this department was up 13% compared to last year, with total revenues of $565 million.

French Newspapers Partner To Sidestep Google News
A group of six French newspapers is partnering to create an online news site that they hope will be an alternative to Google News. France’s National Daily Press Union announced the plan yesterday and said the virtual newsstand will be launched in September.

Facebook Makes Improvements to the Like Button
Facebook announced last Friday that it is releasing some new features for the Like button social plug-in. There is now commenting for the iFrame version, publishing to connected users via the Graph API, and “more robust” analytics.

Free Case Not Enough? Samsung Gives Some Disgruntled iPhone Users Free Android Phones
Samsung are making the most of those who have used public networks (twitter and other social networks) to complain about the iPhone4 to convert them to the Galaxy S, their latest Android Phone, by sending them free phones. It does sound better than just getting a free case, even if Apple are doing their best to make their customers happy.