SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. may go hostile in its bid for Yahoo Inc. as soon as Friday, according to a published report.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported early Friday that the world’s largest software maker may be preparing to go straight to Internet pioneer Yahoo’s shareholders.

An announcement was “likely” to come Friday, according to the report, though the newspaper said its sources cautioned that Microsoft may delay.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp. has pounced on slumping Internet icon Yahoo Inc. with an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion in its boldest bid yet to challenge Google Inc.’s dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets.

The surprise offer of $31 per share, made late Thursday and announced Friday, seizes on Yahoo’s weakness while Microsoft tries to muscle up in a high-stakes battle with Google likely to define the technology landscape for years to come.

In a statement Friday, Yahoo said it will “carefully and promptly” study Microsoft’s bid.

With its profits steadily sliding, Yahoo’s stock slipped to a four-year low earlier this week and a new management team has been trying to steer a turnaround but sees more turbulence through 2008.

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Microsoft: $16.37 Billion Revenue in Record-Breaking Q2

Microsoft Corporation has announced second quarter records for revenue ($16.37 billion, a 30% increase over last year’s period), operating income ($6.48 billion, a 87% increase) and diluted earnings per share ($0.50, a 92% increase). During the quarter, Microsoft rolled out new consumer focused offerings such as Windows Home Server, new versions of the Zune media player and the next generation of Windows Live Online Services. Sales to business customers remained brisk in the quarter with Microsoft Business Division and the Server and Tools business each experiencing double-digit revenue growth rates over the prior year and together increased revenue over $1 billion versus the comparable quarter last year.

“We are in the midst of another strong year with great momentum heading into calendar year 2008. We continue to see healthy demand from both businesses and consumers in the United States and our growth in emerging markets is especially strong. Looking across Brazil, Russia, India and China, our field revenue reached a combined growth rate over 65% this quarter. As we look ahead, our Windows Server 2008 launch, with our virtualization solution, will further our quest to bring exceptional value to our customers,� said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft.

Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code
It’s finally here - the launch of the .NET Reference Source project. This post (hopefully!) contains everything you need to know. Over the past few weeks, we ran a pilot of this feature and collected lots of great data that helped us work through some issues and understand where people were likely to have problems.

First, though, if you have any problems, please make sure you’ve followed all of the steps exactly as described. If you’re still having problems, please check the FAQ/Troubleshooting section at the bottom. If that doesn’t work, post a comment below and I’ll look into it.

BASIC SETUP
Note this functionality is not available on the Express versions of the Visual Studio 2008 products.

1) Install the Visual Studio 2008 QFE. This Hotfix just updates a DLL that’s part of the Visual Studio debugger that fetches the source files, more details on the download page.

UPDATE: If you get an error installing the Hotfix , try inserting your VS 2008 DVD and then running the Hotfix EXE again. We’re looking into the root cause - it’s related to having a prior version of VS 2008 (e.g. Beta 2) installed on the machine. But this workaround should allow the Hotfix to install properly.

UPDATE (1/18): There were some problems with the QFE link above that have been addressed, sorry for the inconvenience, it’s fixed now.

2) Start Visual Studio 2008 and bring up Tools > Options > Debugging > General. If you are running under the Visual Basic Profile, you will need to check the box on the lower left of the Options Dialog marked “Show All Settings” before continuing (other profiles won’t have this option).

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