BRAD SMITH

Testers at multiple U.S. ZeniMax video game studios voted in favor of joining a union. Microsoft's support lines up with a previous commitment.

Microsoft said for the third largest console maker to be buying a major gaming franchise would't overturn a competitive market. U.S. regulators don't agree.

The Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday it has filed an antitrust case against Microsoft to challenge the software maker's attempt to acquire video game publisher Activision Blizzard . Microsoft announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in January, with the goal of closing it by June 2023. The deal has come under pressure from Microsoft's competitors in gaming, such as Sony . Smith argued Microsoft's purchase of Activision would let it compete effectively in the gaming industry, spurring innovation and helping customers. Politico reported last month that the FTC was likely to try to block the deal.

Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, tweeted that Microsoft “entered into a 10-year commitment" worth $69 billion to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo.

Microsoft has agreed to make the hit video game Call of Duty available on Nintendo for 10 years should its $69 billion purchase of game maker Activision Blizzard go through.

Microsoft is hoping to assuage regulators' and rivals' antitrust fears over its proposed $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard.

Ukraine is counting on more Western technological support as its war against Russia drags on, with Microsoft pledging to extend its backing for Kyiv through the end of next year.

Emissions measurement and tracking are still nascent, and there's a general lack of clarity in the vocabulary used.

Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy video game company Activision Blizzard faces an in-depth antitrust investigation in Britain after the tech company refused to offer proposals to ease competition concerns.

The U.S. Army has approved an order to buy thousands of HoloLens combat goggles made by Microsoft — years after employees of the tech giant demanded the company cancel its contract with the military.

Microsoft’s plan to buy video game company Activision Blizzard faces a potential setback after British regulators said their antitrust inquiry needed to take a closer look at the blockbuster deal after identifying competition concerns.

Microsoft’s plan to buy video game giant Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion could have major effects on the gaming industry, transforming the Xbox maker into something like a Netflix for video games by giving it control of many more popular titles.

Microsoft says “strategic espionage” by state-backed Russian hackers has targeted government agencies, think tanks, businesses and aid groups in 42 countries supporting Ukraine.

Microsoft is known for rapid detection and analysis of hacking methods employed by governments, but has trailed Facebook, Twitter and other companies in dealing with the rapid proliferation of misinformation.

A program offering cash incentives for out-of-state workers to move to West Virginia has welcomed its second round of new residents.

Microsoft said Monday it would respect the rights of Activision Blizzard workers to join a union, and would enter into a so-called labor neutrality agreement with major media union Communications Workers of America.

Microsoft President Brad Smith says the company is committed to collaborating if employees choose to unionize.

Mike Westhoff has always been blunt and brutally honest.

A Senate hearing on Wednesday is likely to produce fireworks as Republicans and Democrats square off over the role that foundations and nonprofits are playing in elections.

The message came one day after Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a keynote warning of the potential harms of a key antitrust proposal in Congress.

Microsoft said that it “will not stand in the way if Activision Blizzard recognizes a union.”

Microsoft said it's also stopping many aspects of its business in compliance with government sanctions rules.

WASHINGTON — Last Wednesday, a few hours before Russian tanks began rolling into Ukraine, alarms went off inside Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center, warning of a never-before-seen piece of “wiper” malware that appeared aimed at the country’s government ministries and financial institutions. Within three hours, Microsoft threw itself into the middle of a ground war in Europe — from 5,500 miles away. The threat center, north of Seattle, had been on high alert, and it quickly picked apart the m

Russia has some of the best hackers in the world, but in the early days of the war in Ukraine, its ability to create mayhem through malware hasn’t had much of a noticeable impact.

New commitments could help Microsoft look like less of a target in Washington after the company revealed its plan to buy game publisher Activision Blizzard.

Internet giants, including social media apps Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, joined some world leaders to issue a global call to better protect children online at a Paris summit on Thursday.

The race to build new climate tech is like the mammoth effort of putting the first man on the moon, Microsoft President Brad Smith told CNBC.

The company believes it can help train and recruit 250,000 people into the cybersecurity workforce by 2025.

Microsoft has confirmed that executives in 2008 warned Bill Gates to stop sending flirtatious emails to a female employee but dropped the matter after he told them he would stop.

In 2008, Microsoft became aware Gates sent "inappropriate" messages to a female employee a year earlier, spokesman Frank Shaw told the Wall Street Journal.

A new effort in Northwest Arkansas offering $10,000 incentives to new residents is part of an increasing number of philanthropy-financed projects trying to spark economic development, promote civic and cultural life, attract skilled workers, and offset declining or sparse populations.

Chief Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith is a major company stockholder, having joined the software maker in 1993 and become its president in 2015.

As Microsoft quadruples investment in cybersecurity, there's a big problem to overcome: increased investment hasn't provided better protection against hackers.

Kelyn Rowe and Raúl Ruidíaz scored and the Seattle Sounders ran their season-opening undefeated streak to an MLS-record 13 games, beating the Houston Dynamo 2-0 on Wednesday night.

Bill Whitaker reports on how Russian spies used a popular piece of software to unleash a virus that spread to 18,000 government and private computer networks.

Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year.

When U.S. law enforcement officials need to cast a wide net for information, they’re increasingly turning to the vast digital ponds of personal data created by Big Tech companies via the devices and online services that have hooked billions of people around the world.

Rep. Jim Jordan's letter gets at the still-elusive question of how much Microsoft would be affected by the new bills.

AI is already being used for widespread surveillance in China.

Four women successfully rescued from barge with no injuries reported

The Electoral College, which has benefited Republicans in some recent elections, also factors into debate over GOP bills aiming to change state-level election laws.

Some wonder whether the U.S. political system is sliding toward minority rule. More and more Democrats say the system is out of whack.

Nobelium broke into an email marketing account used by a US aid agency to stage the email phishing campaign, Microsoft said.

Tech executives warned that democracy has to win the AI arms race, in a new BBC Panorama.

The work-from-anywhere culture of the pandemic is not going away with the vaccine, and that has created an opportunity for small cities to lure new residents.

Microsoft is pledging to allow business and public sector customers in the European Union keep cloud computing data inside the 27-nation bloc to avert concerns about U.S. government access to sensitive information.

Microsoft is pledging to let business and public sector customers in the European Union keep cloud computing data inside the 27-nation bloc to avert concerns about U.S. government access to sensitive information. Microsoft “will go beyond our existing data storage commitments and enable you to process and store all your data in the EU," said Brad Smith, the U.S. technology giant’s president. “In other words, we will not need to move your data outside the EU," Smith wrote in a blog post Thursday.

The sprawling hacking campaign came to be known as SolarWinds, for the company whose software update was seeded by Russian intelligence agents with malware to penetrate government and private networks.

Microsoft says it has won a nearly $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with its virtual reality headsets. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)Microsoft won a nearly $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with its augmented reality headsets. Microsoft and the Army separately announced the deal Wednesday. The technology is based on Microsoft's HoloLens headsets, which were originally intended for the video game and entertainment industries. The new contract will enable Microsoft to mass produce units for more than 120,000 soldiers in the Army Close Combat Force.

Microsoft and Google sparred Friday over their practices and treatment of news outlets in a battle between antitrust targets of past and present. Smith said Google relies on content from these outlets to keep its users engaged, citing his own experience with Microsoft's Bing search engine. Google swung back at Smith in a statement released ahead of the hearing, calling back to Microsoft's period of antitrust scrutiny two decades ago. The campaign was meant to point out to consumers allegedly unfair practices by Google and direct them to Microsoft's search competitor instead. Though Google never pulled its news service from Australia and ultimately struck deals with publishers, Microsoft had signaled it was ready to step in if Google removed its news service.

FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna and Microsoft President Brad Smith testify during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021 in Washington. In the first congressional hearing on the breach, representatives of technology companies involved in the response described a hack of almost breathtaking precision, ambition and scope. “We haven’t seen this kind of sophistication matched with this kind of scale,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told the Senate Intelligence Committee. U.S. national security officials have also said Russia was likely responsible for the breach, and President Joe Biden's administration is weighing punitive measures against Russia for the hack as well as other activities. Officials have said the motive for the hack, which was discovered by private security company FireEye in December, appeared to be to gather intelligence.

Smith plans to tell lawmakers that private sector companies should be required to be transparent about significant breaches of their systems. A White House cybersecurity advisor estimated last week that nine government agencies and roughly 100 private companies were affected by the attack. Smith planned to tell Congress that Microsoft identified further government and private sector victims outside the U.S. that were impacted. Smith will propose that in addition to requiring more disclosures from private companies, government should provide "faster and more comprehensive sharing" with the security community. "A private sector disclosure obligation will foster greater visibility, which can in turn strengthen a national coordination strategy with the private sector which can increase responsiveness and agility," Smith says in his written remarks.

This marks the first time in the movement’s nearly eight-year history that BLM leaders have revealed a detailed look at their finances. The foundation said it committed $21.7 million in grant funding to official and unofficial BLM chapters, as well as 30 Black-led local organizations. In its report, the BLM foundation said individual donations via its main fundraising platform averaged $30.76. “Because the BLM movement was larger than life — and it is larger than life — people made very huge assumptions about what our actual finances looked like,” Cullors said. Leaders at the BLM foundation admit that they have not been clear about the movement’s finances and governance over the years.

Russian spies went rummaging through the digital files of the U.S. departments of Justice, State, Treasury, Energy, and Commerce and for nine months had unfettered access to top-level communications, court documents, even nuclear secrets. More alarming: how the hackers got in… piggy-backing on a piece of third party software used to connect, manage and monitor computer networks. FireEye's core mission is to hunt, find, and expel cyber intruders from the computer networks of their clients - mostly governments and major companies. But FireEye used SolarWinds software, which turned the cyber hunter into the prey. Because it's only a stone's throw from a computer network attack.

Australias Parliament will debate making Google and Facebook pay for news after a Senate committee on Friday, Feb. 12, 2021 recommended no changes to the world-first draft laws. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)CANBERRA – Australia’s Parliament will debate making Google and Facebook pay for news after a Senate committee on Friday recommended no changes to drafts of the world’s first such laws. Australia's proposed code aims to make Google and Facebook pay Australian media companies fairly for using news content the tech giants source from news sites. AdBut Google is resisting the Australian plan because it would have less control over how much it would have to pay. Google announced last week that it had begun paying seven Australian news websites under its own model, Google News Showcase.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison also welcomed the support of Google rival Microsoft, which has touted Australia’s proposed laws that would make Google and Facebook pay as an example for the rest of the world. Google regional director Mel Silva told a Senate hearing last month that the company would likely make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the so-called News Media Bargaining Code forced Google and Facebook to pay for Australian news. While Google and Facebook have condemned the legislation as unworkable, Microsoft President Brad Smith said his business would be willing to pay for news if its search engine increased Australian market share. The law would initially only apply to Google and Facebook, but the government could add other platforms in the future if Google abandoned Australia. AdAlthough Bing is Australia’s second most popular search engine, it has only a 3.6% market share.

Microsoft says it supports Australia's plans to make the biggest digital platforms pay for news and would help small businesses transfer their advertising to Bing if Google quits the country. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)CANBERRA – Microsoft said on Wednesday it supports Australia’s plans to make the biggest digital platforms pay for news and would help small businesses transfer their advertising to Bing if Google quits the country. Morrison this week confirmed he had spoken to Nadella about Bing replacing Google in Australia. There are no plans to make smaller search engines such as Bing pay for linking users to Australian news, but the government has not ruled that option out. AdBut Google is resisting the Australian plan because it would have less control over how much it would have to pay.

Microsoft president Brad Smith takes part in a roundtable discussion with US President Donald Trump and industry executives on reopening the country, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC on May 29, 2020. Microsoft President and legal chief Brad Smith said Microsoft is evaluating options for the Microsoft Political Action Committee (MSPAC), which employees criticized because it helped finance the campaigns of Congress members who supported Donald Trump's unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Microsoft employees in the U.S. can give some of their income to the MSPAC, but have no direct say in which candidates it donates to. Several other companies, including Amazon, Facebook and Google, also temporarily stopped political contributions after the events. Should the PAC suspend donations to the members who voted against the Electoral College?

The tussle concerns the Microsoft Political Action Committee, known as MSPAC, through which employees can contribute money that goes to state and federal candidates and to other committees. MSPAC's first contributions on file with the U.S. Federal Election Commission date to 1988, two years after Microsoft's initial public offering. Since the election, Trump has launched multiple unsuccessful attempts to challenge election results in several states where he lost. Microsoft employee Mike O'Neill thanked Friedman for the tweet on Tuesday and said he had requested a cancellation of future donations for MSPAC. Brandon Paddock, another employee at Microsoft, suggesting discontinuing MSPAC or blocking MSPAC contributions to people who get in the way of democratic principles, which Smith had mentioned in his tweet.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, arrives for the opening of the first virtual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit, hosted by Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Friday, Nov. 20, 2020. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)KUALA LUMPUR – Leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, including U.S. President Donald Trump, pledged Friday to work toward free, open and non-discriminatory trade and investment to revive their coronavirus-battered economies. The APEC leaders’ meeting was the first since 2018 after last year’s host, Chile, canceled the annual summit due to violent domestic protests. Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his remarks, urged countries to “defend multilateralism” and called for the establishment of an “Asia-Pacific free trade zone at an early date." APEC leaders adopted the Putrajaya Vision 2040, a new 20-year growth vision to replace the Bogor Goals named after the Indonesian town where leaders agreed in 1994 to free and open trade and investment.

But a $750 million commitment by a partnership backed in part by Microsoft's affordable housing initiative helped do the trick. Urban Housing Ventures is cutting rents at 40% of the units in three buildings as part of an effort to make sure teachers, nurses and other middle-income professionals can live in the communities where they work. In August, Baker moved into her new apartment in one of three complexes recently purchased by Urban Housing Ventures, a partnership backed in part by Microsoft's affordable housing initiative. But building new affordable housing takes time. Urban Housing Ventures is immediately cutting rents for residents who earn 60% to 80% of the area's median income.

(AP Photo/Hans Pennink)BOSTON – Microsoft said it has detected attempts by state-backed Russian and North Korean hackers to steal valuable data from leading pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers. Chinese state-backed hackers have also been targeting vaccine-makers, the U.S. government said in July while announcing criminal charges. Two others were North Korea’s Lazarus Group and a group Microsoft calls Cerium. The Lazarus Group posed as job recruiters while Cerium targeted spear-phishing emails that masqueraded as missives from World Health Organization representatives, Microsoft said. Optimism about a COVID-19 vaccine has grown since pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced earlier this week that preliminary data showed its vaccine to be 90% effective.

The Virgin Hyperloop project is aiming for safety certification by 2025, with commercial operations beginning in 2030. "The Hyperloop Certification Center is the start of the hyperloop journey for West Virginia, for the United States, and for the world. John Chambers Katie Kramer | CNBCThe state got another lift this week from another Silicon Valley tech icon, former Intuit CEO Brad Smith. A state in transitionBesides Chambers and Smith, another Silicon Valley tech icon is helping to jumpstart West Virginia. West Virginia lost more than 32,700 jobs from 1994 to 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Microsoft has announced plans to build three data centers in greater Athens, providing a badly needed investment of up to $1 billion to the Greek economy which has been hammered by the pandemic. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)ATHENS – Microsoft has announced plans to build three data center sites in greater Athens, providing a badly needed investment of up to $1 billion to the Greek economy which has been hammered by the pandemic. "The creation of a data center upgrades a country as an investment destination ... Greece has the sun and now it’s getting a cloud.”Microsoft currently has data centers in 26 countries, including seven in the European Union. Microsoft officials said the timetable for the development of the data center in Greece was still being worked out, but added added that the process in other countries typically took about two years. Greece, the officials said, would comply with Microsoft's pledge to run all its data centers worldwide on renewable energy sources by 2025.

Microsoft said Thursday it will not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States, at least until there is a federal law to regulate the technology. Microsoft president Brad Smith said any legislation on facial recognition should be firmly grounded in human rights. Studies have shown that commercial facial recognition algorithms frequently misidentify minorities and people of color. The company said Wednesday it will put a one-year hold on sales of its facial recognition technology to law enforcement, in hopes of giving Congress time to "implement appropriate rules." This is not the first time Microsoft has called for comprehensive facial recognition rules.

Microsoft has become the third big tech company this week to say it wont sell its facial recognition software to police, following similar moves by Amazon and IBM. Weve decided we will not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology, Smith said. Smith said Thursday that Microsoft currently doesn't sell its face recognition software to any U.S. police departments. Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are calling on Congress to set national rules over how police use facial recognition something that's now being considered as part of a police reform package sparked by the protests following Floyd's death. "We need Congress to act, not just tech companies alone.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said Friday that the company's relationship with Bill Gates still is strong. "The relationship will Bill is very deep," Smith told CNBC's "Squawk Box." Gates said in late March that he's leaving the company's board to focus on philanthropic efforts, such as global health, education and climate change. Smith said he heard from Gates this week, who wanted to discuss remote interactivity and the pandemic. Smith said he and Gates talked about "tech issues, remote interactivity, Covid-19, what he's seeing around the world, what we're seeing around the world, what businesses should be doing, what governments need to do."

President Donald Trump speaks at the South Lawn of the White House on June 10, 2019. The Trump administration is planning a 5G summit at the White House in early April as part of its global effort to ensure that Chinese telecom giant Huawei does not become dominant in next generation communications technologies, officials told CNBC. The president's top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, told reporters Friday that such a meeting would happen. "We're going to have a lot of them in the White House to have a discussion. That would include Samsung, that would include all of our guys," Kudlow said.

Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith, CEO Satya Nadella, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood and Chairman John Thompson pictured at the Microsoft annual meeting of shareholders in Bellevue, Washington, on November 30, 2016. Judson Althoff: The salesmanJudson Althoff, Microsoft's executive vice president for worldwide commercial business, at Microsoft's 2017 Inspire conference in Washington. Giorgio Perottino | Getty Images | OGRCourtois, known by his initials JPC, is an executive vice president and president of Microsoft global sales, marketing and operations. Then he became executive vice president and president for global sales, marketing and operations. In 2012 his wife, Suzan DelBene, a former Microsoft executive herself, became a U.S. representative for Washington's 1st Congressional district.

MUNICH As America prepares for the 2020 presidential election, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said tech companies have a 'fundamental responsibility' to safeguard America's democratic process. "We have a fundamental responsibility as companies and as a technology sector to help protect our candidates from attacks and hacking. To help protect the integrity of voting, from voting polls to voting results and certainly the voting process itself," Smith explained at the annual Munich Security Conference. "We have a fundamental responsibility not just to address but to fight disinformation and I think we have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that our business models do not sap the strength of democracy itself by creating polarized communities that eat away at the core of what makes every democracy successful," he added. Smith's comments Saturday at the security forum followed those of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said that social media companies need more guidance and regulation from governments in order to tackle the growing problem of harmful online content.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. Amazon's decision to protest the Pentagon's cloud computing contract hasn't delayed Microsoft from working on the colossal Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, deal. The JEDI contract, which could be worth up to $10 billion for services rendered over as many as 10 years, was awarded to Microsoft on October 25. Last month, Amazon filed a notice in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims indicating a plan to protest the Pentagon's decision to award Microsoft the multibillion-dollar cloud contract. "Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias and it's important that these matters be examined and rectified," Amazon told CNBC in an email. Trump said in July that companies conveyed that the specifications of the JEDI cloud contract favored Amazon.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Bloomberg on Sunday that licenses allowing US companies to sell to Huawei "will be forthcoming very shortly." The US Commerce Department in May added Huawei to its Entity List, citing national security concerns. The action barred American companies from selling to Huawei without a license, though some have found limited ways around the restriction. US officials have long accused Huawei of working to undermine US national security and foreign policy interests. Ross has previously said that licenses will only be granted for sales of products that do not pose a national security risk.