I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

PayPal Mobile 2.0 [iTunes link] appeared in the App Store on March 15 with an array of new features, including the ability to “bump” money to friends. PayPal worked with the developers from Bump Technologies, the company that makes the Bump iPhone app, to make the process of sending money faster and more fun.

PayPal Mobile 2.0 for iPhone is just part of PayPal’s growing focus on mobile technologies. Last November, PayPal launched the PayPal X Developer Network to help developers integrate the company’s backend technology with mobile and web applications. Some of the early fruits of the program were on display at DEMO last month, with the announcement of the first winners of the PayPal X Developer Challenge.

In addition to the new iPhone app for consumers, PayPal also has an iPhone software development kit (SDK) in private beta, which allows developers to plug into the PayPal ecosystem with their own apps. PayPal also has plans to bring an SDK to the Android and BlackBerry platforms.

Have you used the new PayPal iPhone app? What do you think?

We are continuing to deliver on that vision today with two new announcements. First, we’re proud to announce the public beta of LinkedIn for Outlook, which will enable our millions of Office 2010 Beta users to connect the OSC to a public network for the first time. Second, we’re excited to announce partnerships with Facebook — the most popular social Web site in the world, and MySpace — a leading social platform connecting people through expression, content, and culture.

LinkedIn for Outlook brings together the most popular professional network with the world’s leading professional Inbox. Here are some of the things you can do today by downloading the beta:

• Connect to your LinkedIn account to view your colleagues’ status updates and photos next to an e-mail message they sent you.
• Your colleagues’ latest contact information from LinkedIn automatically updates his or her Outlook contact. Whenever someone changes a phone number, e-mail address, or other contact details, it’s automatically updated in Outlook — you are always up to date.
• Synchronize your mobile phone with Outlook to stay up-to-date — you don’t have to worry about keeping track of new phone numbers and contact info — contacts’ information from the Web is synchronized to your mobile phone.
• Grow your professional network directly from within your Inbox — add colleagues with one click.

We are proud to continue partnering with LinkedIn and we want to congratulate them on a job well done. With this beta, our customers are able to stay connected to their network without leaving the Outlook Inbox.

Our vision for Outlook (and the OSC) is to provide a communications hub that is vital to both professional and personal communications; by integrating with both Facebook and MySpace, Outlook 2010 enables you to connect not only to co-workers and colleagues, but with all of your friends and family within your Outlook Inbox.

Facebook for Outlook

You can view friends’ activities, photos, and status updates within Outlook — as well as grow your network by adding friends from the same view. Both Facebook for Outlook and MySpace for Outlook will be available later this year as our official release of Office 2010 approaches.

Finally, its important to mention that with multiple professional and social networks available for the Outlook Social Connector, the design of the OSC is such that your privacy and permissions settings on each of the networks you use are represented and respected within this experience. For example, if your profile photo and job title are publicly listed on a given network, then OSC users will see your photo and job title when receiving an e-mail from you (if they use that same network). Similarly, if you choose to restrict profile access on a given network, the OSC will respect that privacy. The goal of the OSC is not to create another social network or set of privacy settings for you to manage, but rather to bring the networks you already value and use to the Outlook experience.

To recap, here is what you can do today to get started with the Outlook Social Connector.

1. Download the Office 2010 Beta at www.Office.com/beta
2. Download the latest beta version of the Outlook Social Connector from the Microsoft Download Center.
3. Get the LinkedIn download for the Outlook Social Connector at www.LinkedIn.com/outlook.
4. Keep watching the Outlook team blog for availability of the Facebook and MySpace download for the Outlook Social Connector at http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/.

Note To use LinkedIn for Outlook requires the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector, which supports the 32-bit English version of the official Microsoft Office 2010 Beta. The beta of the Outlook Social Connector is provided as-is, is subject to change without notice, and does not include formal product support from Microsoft.

Now there is a new clock that shows the percentage of new apps approved within the last seven days as well as the percentage of apps updated approved within the last 7 days. Right now the percentages are locked in at 99% for updates and 98% for new apps.

This shows that Apple is striving to improve the developer experience after some bad press received from the review process.

Imagine it: Get all of Condé Nast and every New York newspaper in your pocket for five years. For the low, low price of $10,000, we’ll also throw in a free Apple iPad!

He explains on the Joe Zeff Design blog:

Love it or hate it, the iPad remains the publishing industry’s best chance at resurrection, but only if enough consumers buy in. The price tag is the biggest obstacle — $499 for an iPlane Jane model or $629 plus monthly service for 3G-powered Pad. But what if the publishing industry helped to defray that cost, bundling an iPad with a multi-year subscription to hundreds of newspapers and magazines? It’s a short-term investment that could pay off handsomely, and one of many options that should be considered in order to lure a new generation of readers to a new world of possibilities.

As Zeff notes, this is actually an old-school model.

Maybe it’s time for Sports Illustrated to bring back the sneaker phone. That’s what it took in 1991 to get people to subscribe to SI, and it might be what’s needed to sell a tablet version of the magazine two decades later.

Watch the original SI commercial for the sneaker phone.

Google has just announced the news that it’s joining the long list of companies that will no longer support IE6. Once Google begins phasing out support for the archaic browser, Google Docs and Google Sites will be the first to go, but we should expect most Google products to become much less functional in IE6 in 2010.

Google writes:

“Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet ExplorerInternet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers.”

For a more in-depth look at why IE6 is a problematic browser, take a look at this post and then read up on a few more key reasons — think security and the fact that various governments are anti-IE .

Consumer sales of Windows 7 buoyed Microsoft to report record earnings, even after deferrals were figured in. Microsoft reported net income of $6.66 billion, or 74 cents a share, on revenue of $19.02 billion, which included $1.71 billion in Windows 7 deferred revenue for the quarter.

As part of that announcement, Microsoft reported that it has sold more than 60 million Windows 7 licenses to date. The combined Windows and the Windows Live division had operating income of $5.39 billion on revenue of $6.9 billion, compared to the year-ago quarter’s operating income of $2.71 billion on revenue of $4.06 billion.

Business sales of Windows 7 — unsurprisingly, given typical enterprise sales, testing and deployment cycles — have yet to kick in for Windows 7. That isn’t because business users are waiting for Windows 7 Service Pack (SP) 1, which is widely expected to ship some time this calendar year, Microsoft officials said. In fact, Microsoft is seeing more business activity around upgrades to the latest version of Windows than it has with previous launches, according to Microsoft’s new Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein.

“People want Windows 7 on all devices on all form factors,” said Klein during today’s call with Wall Street analysts. (In case you were wondering, that question wasn’t prompted by a question about the Apple iPad. Nobody asked about it during the Q&A session.)

Klein noted that netbooks currently comprise about 11 percent of the PC market and Windows is currently on 90 percent of these machines. Windows 7 is more than half of that base (XP, and to a much lesser extent, Vista) are on the rest of the Windows netbooks.

Yes, Office is still the other big Microsoft cash cow (with revenues of $4.74 billion for the Business DIvision this quarter), and that unit ended up really kicking in for Microsoft when the economy and Vista sales were down. But in Q2, But Business Division revenues and operating income were both down, compared to the year-ago quarter. Microsoft officials attributed the decline, in part, to the imminent arrival of Office 2010. (Office sales comprise more than 90 percent of the Business Division’s revenues; Dynamics products are the other 10 percent.)

(Detailed breakdowns for each division can be found in Microsoft’s latest 10-Q, filed on January 28.)

Server and Tools held its own (revenues up two percent, primarily because of Enterprise Client Access License (CAL) suites, System Center and SQL Server). But services/consulting revenues were down two percent, or $32 million. The Online Services Division (the search/advertising unit) is still in the red. Online access (dial-up) continues to plummet, and online advertising was off. In Entertainment and Devices, gaming console and game sales were down, but Xbox Live revenues were up.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown by division of revenue and operating income (click on the image below to enlarge).

Microsoft cut 800 jobs in the second quarter of FY 2010 and spent $59 million in severance payments. No analyst on today’s call asked whether there would be more layoffs planned for this year. The Softies did say they planned to continue to keep a tight rein on costs. While the Windows division spent more than usual on sales/marketing because of Windows 7 launch-related activities and ads, other divisions cut back on not just headcount, but also sales and marketing, as well as research and development expenses.

If my friends who work with or for Apple and in the press hadn’t built it up as mind blowing it wouldn’t have been disappointing, but this was a case where expectations got too big and what showed up didn’t meet them. Come on, no radically new way to interact? No Flash? No full OS? No Camera? No Verizon?

I was expecting a 10.0 and an 8.7 showed up.

But if you compare it to what I would have given Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer at CES (I would have scored that a 4.9, mostly because they showed clips of a really cool new Halo coming later this year) then it blows away the competition (which I expected when I wrote about Steve Ballmer’s Tablet bumbles last night).
.

Watch Financial Times’ first hands on video and you get a sense of why it is so much better than Microsoft’s tablets, though. Apple delivered a consistent and deep touch experience.

But, now, where does today’s announcements leave Google and Microsoft?

I had Google’s Don Dodge (developer advocate) over to watch the Apple announcements today, and I saw several places where Apple was trying to limit Google’s ability to grow. Maps, calendar, Keynote (presentation software) and email on the iPad are all very pretty (we’ll see how good they are when we actually are able to use a device for more than 10 minutes) and compete very effectively against Google’s current offerings.

And against Microsoft I now see that Apple has just eviscerated Microsoft’s mobile strategy with a family of products that will be hard for Microsoft to compete against. But the damage to Microsoft goes further. I see Apple now going after the Xbox and putting a wall around Microsoft’s home entertainment dreams so it won’t be able to grow much further.

Many peoples are using iPhones to play games and watch videos more and more and the iPad will continue that trend. It’s clear to me, though, that Xbox has largely tapped out the home console market and will see slowing growth over next year or two and I know Microsoft has built a team around Zune to go after mobile entertainment (IE, a portable Xbox).

If Microsoft doesn’t get that shipped soon Apple will use the iPad to shore up its leverage with developers like Tapulous, who are building games for iPhone, and will ensure a whole range of games will only show up on Apple’s mobile devices and not on anything Microsoft will do. Microsoft must be very concerned by that.

Back to Google. I think the Chrome OS will prove very interesting as Google comes back against Apple with a device that costs less (Chrome OS is cheaper on hardware than Apple’s OS is, and also is cheaper in licensing fees, so I expect to see Chrome OS-based devices for around $200, instead of the $500 that Apple’s iPad starts at.

That’s where I expect to see major clashes over the next year as Google and Apple try to lock up movie, books, magazines, newspapers, and other media to make their systems better than the others. My predictions of how Google will respond? Look at Chrome OS and watch for new devices that compete with Apple head on. Look at Google Voice to be built onto. Look for Google Maps to even further extend their lead in the industry. Look for Google to come out with a microblogging competitor to Twitter and Facebook that will wrap up everyone’s experiences. Finally, look for Google and Apple to get into bidding wars over companies like Siri (wait until you see what they’ve done next week).

So, we’ve seen how Steve Jobs is setting the trends for the industry. I can’t wait to see how Google puts together its machine to compete.

One hint? There was no talk of wireless synching between iPhone and iPad. Why not? Compare to when I got my Google Nexus One phone. I entered in my email address and all my apps magically appeared. THAT gives you a hint of how Google is going to hit at Apple.

Oh, and one other weakness Apple has? Apple is clueless about social software. Google isn’t all that great either, but it is a world ahead of Apple. So, look at Google to make some major social networking moves this year to make its ecosystem a lot more interesting to the Facebook generation.

Onward, now that all the hype is done and you’ve seen it, any other ideas? I’m off to meet with iPhone game developers to get their reactions, talk to you later after I get home.

To answer Michael Gartenberg’s question, I see Microsoft as a solid loser in today’s announcements and a decent pitch has just been thrown over the plate in Google’s direction, so we’ll see if they can hit it out of the park or will Google whiff it?

In the immediate aftermath of a 7.0 earthquake that caused an unbelievable amount of destruction to Haiti’s capital, Google has been asked by relief organizations and users to show images of what’s actually happening on the ground.

In partnership with geospatial imagery company GeoEye, Google has just released a new layer for Google Earth showing post-earthquake devastation. Haiti was first added to Google Map Maker in response to hurricanes that wreaked havoc on the country more than a year ago. Read on for before-after pictures and details.

The Red Cross has stated that as many as 3 million Haitians have been affected by the earthquake, with as many as 100,000 deaths likely, according to Haiti’s prime minister. Since the quake’s epicenter was right off the capital city, Port-au-Prince, most of the official buildings, from government officials’ residences to jails and hospitals, have been significantly damaged or completely leveled. Google’s imagery shows exactly that:

Haiti on Google Earth
	Gadgets powered by Google

You’ll have to install the Google Earth plugin if you haven’t already to see this layer.

You can download the KML layer or open the file using Google Maps.

In a post just published by Googlers Dylan Lorimer and Jessica Pfund, they write, “We hope that Google Map Maker can also play a role in disaster relief efforts…Today, we have made this Map Maker data for Haiti available to the UN in its raw form for the earthquake relief efforts. If you have any local knowledge to share, please help us continue to build a better map of Haiti with Google Map Maker.”

For a list of ways you can donate money to help suffering Haitians and stay informed on Haiti-related breaking news, check out this post we published earlier today on resources, charitable organizations and news outlets.

Today’s announcement by Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft is a good example. The two tech giants announced a partnership today that is valued at $250 million.

Why are these ventures getting such an influx of revenue? If content is king, then infrastructure in the castle in the cloud.

Well, because even though search is a pretty amazing thing, the current state of [wikipop]search engines[/wikipop] has some equally amazing statistics.

So far in 2009, there are four and a half websites created EVERY SECOND as the web continues to expand. While more searchable information is cool, nearly half of all searches don’t result in the answer that people are seeking.

At the same time, the way the world searches is changing. You want more than just information. You want knowledge that leads to action.

The truth is you’ve evolved. It’s time search caught up.

So we had an idea. Start over. And we did.

We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster.

And features like cashback, where we actually give you money back on great products, and[wikipop]Price Predictor[/wikipop], which actually tells you when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price – help you make smarter decisions, and put money back in your pocket.

We sincerely hope that the next time you need to make an important decision, you’ll Bing and decide.

Click here To Visit bing.com

Tags: software | apple | internet | Keynote | wwdc | flexibility | IT | photos | launch | itunes | consumers | marketing | Upgrade | design | company | worldwide | Email | beautiful | Calendar | SERVICE | appointments | cloud | audience | computing | exchange | Desktop | contacts | eyes | june | player | rest | SENIOR | right | store | most | become | will | can | javascript | off | question | major | BITES | hardware | only | using | phil | product | success | stylish | device | created | Formidable | iPhone | chew | before | raised | six-year-old | introduced | Synchronize | onstage | legendary | promised | provider | expertise | exceedingly | framework | across | also | would | transformed | With | applying | into | itself | more | than | competes | even | Browser-based | That | believing | technically | empowered | push | notion | functional | Schiller | whether | Technology- | Tech & Biz | Mobileme | wowed | SproutCore

I can’t argue with Jobs’s verdict and I suspect you can’t either. I’ve been feeling that even my thumbs-down verdict was too generous: The silly little errors that I’d seen vanish at least briefly from the me.com Web site — like how some contacts randomly appear online stripped of all info but name and employer — seem to have returned. And many of you have clearly had much worse luck with MobileMe than I have.

What’s just as dismaying is getting so little info out of Apple about all this. Its “MobileMe Status” reports are vague to the point of uselessness, and its earlier apology seems inadequate to cover all the things that have gone wrong since then. Getting this latest news essentially by accident doesn’t help matters.

(Apple’s habit of what you could call “selective disclosure” will be part of Thursday’s column, in which I will look at how some tech companies have used the Web to communicate with their customers.)

The Ars Technica story quotes Jobs’s e-mail as concluding that “we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.” But how many MobileMe users will want to stick around to see if the company can live up to this pledge? Let’s talk about that this morning, before our scheduled blog outage kicks in at noon.

Tags: apple | mobile | Mac | iPhone | Tech & Biz | Mobileme | apple mobile

“If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal,” he wrote.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment Saturday.

In the letter, Ballmer said Yahoo’s search share and page views, two measures of the strength of the Web portal company’s business, appear to have fallen since the offer was made at the end of January. At the time, Microsoft’s cash-and-stock offer was valued at $44.6 billion, or 62 percent above Yahoo’s market value. Judging by Friday’s closing share prices, the deal is now worth just under $41 billion.

Yahoo’s board formally rejected Microsoft Corp.’s bid in February, saying it undervalues the company.

Since then, the Silicon Valley company has explored alliances with Google Inc., News Corp.’s MySpace.com and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, but no alternative to Microsoft’s offer has surfaced.

Ballmer acknowledged the alternative negotiations and questioned why, in the absence of another offer, Yahoo was still dragging its heels.

“This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares,” Ballmer wrote in the letter. Ballmer said the Microsoft offer has grown stronger as the economic climate has weakened.

“We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment,” despite a forecast recently released by Yahoo that calls for the company’s revenue to rise more than 70 percent during the next three years, he wrote.

Microsoft has said from the start that it would consider all possible ways of getting the deal done, including taking its offer directly to Yahoo’s shareholders, as well as working to elect its own candidates to fill Yahoo’s board at the company’s annual annual shareholder meeting, and thus the deadline for Microsoft to nominate its slate.

Yahoo has not set a new date for the meeting. Before Saturday, it was known that Microsoft had hired a proxy solicitation firm to help with a hostile bid, but the software maker had made no pronouncements as to when that might happen.