Microsoft is reportedly considering paying Rupert Murdoch a substantial amount of money to remove all News Corp. content from Google's search results, and instead have them listed on Microsoft's Bing search engine. Of all the bad ideas floated by Microsoft through the years, this is one of the worst. Microsoft will have spent a lot and gained very little, Murdoch will once again pick the pockets of a partner, and Google won't even notice a revenue drop.

No doubt they're breathing a big sigh of relief at Microsoft right now, after the world has had a first look at the Google Chrome operating system. Chrome represents absolutely no threat to Windows for the foreseeable future, just at a time when Microsoft is vulnerable.

I've just put the beta of Microsoft Office 2010 through its paces for a Computerworld review, and while there's plenty to like, there's plenty that should be made better as well. Here are five ways it can be improved.

Microsoft has good reason to be pleased with recent figures that show Bing has a nearly 10% share of the search market, nearly 31% higher than a year previous. But it still lags far behind Google, which has 65.4% of the market. If the goal is to catch Google, it will never happen.

A Google executive has admitted what most already people know: Google Docs simply isn't yet good enough for prime time. "We wouldn't ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet," Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division recently admitted. He said, though, that he expects that to change in the next year.

Local TV news has long lived by the maxim, "If it bleeds, it leads." It appears that Microsoft has decided that when it comes to local news on Bing, that's also the path to success, at least when it comes to Massachusetts. Check out Bing's local Massachusetts news, and you'll find plenty of tabloid news -- at least I did when I tried it out.

Microsoft has often been pilloried by European governments and regulators who favor open source technology over proprietary software. But Europe's love of open source software may be one of Microsoft's biggest allies in the company's fight against Oracle.

I've frequently written that Windows 7 will kill Linux on netbooks. But given that most Windows 7-equipped netbooks ship with the underwhelming Starter Edition, I may well have been wrong. And new evidence shows that Linux on netbooks is alive and well, no matter what pundits like me have said in the past.

comScore reports that when it comes to time people spend online, Microsoft leads Google by a wide margin -- more than 3.9 billion hours spent online for Microsoft versus more than 2.5 billion hours spent online for Google. But those numbers may be very misleading, and Google may in fact be crushing Microsoft.

They shouldn't be popping the champagne corks at Microsoft over the news that Windows 7 sales are skyrocketing. A well-known management consultant says that Windows 7's success could be the worst thing to happen to Microsoft, and turn the company in the General Motors of software.

It's not only long-time Linux true believers who say that Linux will eventually wipe out Windows. An former Microsoft employee of 11 years says that "proprietary software is eventually going to be doomed," and believes that Microsoft's future lies in releasing its own version of Linux.

Has Apple decided that among its top potential customers for switching to a Mac are Windows 7 pirates? Based on ads that Apple is buying on Google that might be the case --- search for "download Windows 7" and you'll see an Apple ad urging PC users to switch to the Mac. But search for "buy Windows 7" and you'll see no such ad.

Microsoft may find the Family Guy too off-color or off-center for sponsorship, but the company seems to have something of a double standard --- it's spent more than $1 million on ads for South Park, and it pays for ads on shows that feature drug dealing, violence, plenty of sex, and bathroom humor.

The surge of Windows 7 market share in October certainly sounds like good news for Microsoft. But Microsoft shouldn't celebrate so quickly, because there's evidence much of that gain has been driven by widespread piracy in Eastern Europe.

Google, being investigated by the FCC for whether its blocking of phone calls on Google Voice violates the law, has essentially told the agency that it should be let off the hook because it's cut back on the calls it blocks. That's like saying you're only a little bit pregnant.