OFF Topic, but need to be said.
It is a sad day, Microsoft has announced layoffs.
MS announced 2nd quarter net income of $4.17 billion, down 11%
from last year. Yet, the company also reported revenue of $16.63 billion for
the quarter, up 2% from 16.37 billion a year earlier. With reporting that,
they announced that they need to lay off 1,400 now and total of 5,000 by
June 2010, to cut costs. "The company said it will save about $1.5 billion
in operating expenses and $700 million in 2009 capital expenditure."
They are reporting a loss and an increase at the same time. That is weird,
even for them.
Well, how many companies out there could say that they have $16.63 billion
in revenue and $4.17 billion in net income for the same quarter and still
say they need to cut costs by getting rid of people? Maybe they will
ask the
US government for a bailout? Other big companies are doing it.
Well, the big trouble is that the stock market took a hit with their
announcement
of a dividend of 47 cents per share instead of the expected 49 cents.
What is the world coming to? Stock market takes a dive when MS does not
give out
2 cents per share more that they are doing?
What is going to happen when the stock market hears that MS is loosing their
Office market share to freely distributed open source software like
OpenOffice.org
or Windows to Linux? Or their IE browser is loosing market share to
Firefox?
They did not like the TV commercial jokes on taking the money to fix
Vista and
place it towards advertising how great Vista is. Now they want you to
drool over
the up coming Window 7, which is touted as the "new Vista" and better
than the
current Vista is now. Buy Vista now, and then you are set to upgrade to
Windows 7
next year. Why bother, wait till next year, I say.
So MS is in trouble, because they did not get a few billion in net
income. I say they
are just wanting to show that are like everyone else, loosing money in
today's
economy. It would not be politically correct to make an extra billion
when everyone
else is loosing money. Also the layoffs could be the same. Everyone
else is doing it
so MS has to do it as well. Lay off the little guys and give bigger
bonuses to the fat
cat big boys at the top. If Bill Gates and the other top 10-20 people
would take
even a 1% reduction in pay, including bonuses, then they could hire
10,000 people
instead of laying off 5,000.
But that is not what businesses like MS do.
Oh well, no more ranting about MS's billions.
I just wish that I did not loose 1/3 of my income with the economy crash.
Being on a fixed income, and it going down because of the economy crashing,
it hurts. The little guy who cannot afford to loose their small income
are the
ones who are being hurt by all these big companies saying that they need
Uncle Sam to give them big bucks or they will close their doors. The little
companies, who employ the most people are denied the same ability to get
the bail out funds.
So, we shall see.
Tim L.
retired, and living on less money every month, thanks to big business.
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