Pretty funny — in court documents released recently, an ex-Microsoft employee describes a meeting in which Steve Balmer, Microsoft CEO, referred to Google CEO, Eric Schmidt a a f**king p**sy and warned that he would “kill Google.”

Steve, on the other hand, admitted that the he strongly urged the employee not to defect to Google but said in the same written statement that the ex-emplyee’s description was not accurate.

The U.S. Government has apparently changed its mind with regard to the anti-competitive practices of Microsoft.

In order to use FEMA’s online Individual Assistance Center, you have to be running Microsoft. Firefox users need not apply (nor Linux or Opera users). You’ll just get this message.

From battling Microsoft’s anti-competitive practices last year to requiring the latest Microsoft software this year, the federal government has come a long way.

Never noticed it before, but in looking for articles about the passing of Chief Justice Rehnquist, I noticed that if you search Google for “rehnquist,” the Washington Post and the NY Times are both bidding, presumably the minimum nickel, to drive traffic to their respective articles about this great American who served on the high court for more than thirty years.

It seems to me that this is a great idea. But wouldn’t they be better off, not just to grab the one-time site visitor, but capture an email address and try to build their subscriber list.

Perhaps they could allow viisitors to read the first part of the article for free and require registration to read the rest? Or perhaps they’re better served to give the whole article for free — but why not at least have an offer at the end “To keep informed and subscribe to the New York Times online — it’s free and it’s fast” or
something like that.

What say you?

In other news, (politically-slanted adjective deleted) Alan Dershowitz of Harvard took the first opportunity in an interview less than three hours after the public announcement of Rehnquist’s death to refer to him as a “thug.” Gotta love the Academic Left.

Advertising on MSN via “Overture” (as it’s still called on MSN — Overture calls itself “Yahoo! Search Marketing)?

Soon, MSN will have its own PPC options. Watch Steve Balmer talking about it here.

You can’t signup yet, but register to receive updates here.

Hat Tip to Guest Blogger, Matt Lewis. Article in ZDNet Asia.

Some people say that telling customers you’re giving a portion of proceeds to disaster relief is terrible because you’re “making money off the misfortunes of others.”

I’ve seen several emails doing this today, and other emails saying it’s terrible.

Other people say that giving up a significant share of revenues is a noble way to contribute what you can to the relief effort.

For example, Ken McCarthy, one of the pioneers of internet marketing, has launched an entire blog to help business owners with fundraising to use their businesses to contribute more to help.

Check out Ken’s blog here.

Read The Onion’s scoop on the Google’s plan to destroy all the data that it can’t index.

Hat tip: Kyle Allen