The Republican-led Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is ending a Biden-era effort to stop Microsoft from buying the video game company Activision Blizzard, known for “Call of Duty.” On Thursday, the FTC said it decided “the public interest is best served by dismissing the administrative litigation in this case.” This was the second time in one…
Tag: Microsoft
Microsoft Unbundles Teams From Office Suites to Address EU Antitrust Concerns and Boost Competition
Microsoft announced fresh commitments to unbundle its Teams communication app from the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software suites. This move aims to address antitrust concerns raised by European regulators about Microsoft’s bundling practices, which some believe unfairly tie Teams to popular productivity tools like Word and Outlook. The European Commission, the executive branch of…
Microsoft Lays Off 6,000 Employees as It Streamlines Operations Despite Strong Financial Performance
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced it is laying off 3% of its global workforce, amounting to approximately 6,000 employees across all levels, teams, and regions. The company emphasized that these layoffs are part of ongoing organizational changes aimed at positioning Microsoft for success in a rapidly changing marketplace. A Microsoft spokesperson clarified that the job cuts…
Windows 7 Faced 30-Second Startup Delay Due to Overlooked Bug in Single-Color Background Code
Released in 2009, Windows 7 quickly became a hit for Microsoft, helping the company recover from the disappointing reception of Windows Vista. However, despite its success, Windows 7 was not without its faults. One curious issue that affected a subset of users involved a significant delay when the operating system was starting up. Specifically, users…
Microsoft Introduces Phi-4-Reasoning-Plus to Advance Scalable Structured Thinking in Open AI Models
Microsoft Research has introduced Phi-4-reasoning-plus, an open-weight language model designed to excel in deep and structured reasoning tasks. An evolution of the previously released Phi-4, this new 14-billion parameter Transformer model incorporates supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning to deliver superior performance on complex tasks in domains such as mathematics, coding, and science. It is trained…
Windows 11 March Update Uninstalls Copilot by Mistake, Triggers BSODs and RDP Failures
A new issue has emerged from the March 2025 update to Windows 11 24H2, where Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant is being unintentionally uninstalled on some devices. The problem affects not only Windows 11 24H2 (KB5053598) but also other versions, including Windows 11 23H2 (KB5053602) and Windows 10 22H2 (KB5053606). The Copilot app also becomes unpinned…
Windows 11 Update KB5053598 Triggers Installation Failures, BSODs, and RDP Breakdowns Despite Critical Security Fixes
Microsoft recently rolled out update KB5053598 for Windows 11 24H2 as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday releases. The update includes crucial security patches, most notably a fix for the zero-day vulnerability CVE-2025-24983, which could allow local attackers to escalate privileges. Being a mandatory update, it is designed to install automatically for eligible systems to…