Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting Today: Billion-Dollar Belly Flop With a Side of Yahoo

The fun never stops at Microsoft, it seems.

Well, not fun–more like a long march of khaki-clad Softies.

They will be on display bright and early this morning at the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting, a cavalcade of top execs at the tech giant blabbing away.

BoomTown will be there covering it in person, natch!

The Microsoft management smorgasbord includes:

CEO Steve Ballmer, COO Kevin Turner, Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach, Online Services President Qi Lu, Microsoft Business President Stephen Elop, Servers and Tools President Bob Muglia, Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and CFO Chris Liddell.

I am betting that most of the focus at the gathering, which is being held at the worldwide HQ of Microsoft (MSFT) in Redmond, Wash., will likely be on two major events over the last week–its billion-dollar revenue miss in its fourth quarter and its just-born search and online advertising deal with Yahoo (YHOO).

The former, of course, was bad news for Microsoft, as it continues to signal weakness in its core operating system software and server businesses, due to lower demand for personal computers in the midst of the econalypse.

The latter was good news, of course, since Microsoft seemed to score a coup in nabbing the search technology business from Yahoo with no big upfront payments.

I have a lot of questions about both these issues, as will the crowd of reporters and Wall Street sharpies at the FAM, which is what they call the meeting here.

There could even be be plenty of answers, especially given that the entire leadership of Microsoft will be there.

Here is a link to a live Webcast of the FAM event, if you want to join the party too.

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— David Pogue on why he’s joining Yahoo