Microsoft’s stock dropped sharply today because the company’s latest quarterly profits didn’t quite meet Wall Street’s expectations. Meanwhile, The VAR Guy and other open source bloggers continue to hype Red Hat and Linux as growing threats to Microsoft. But before you suggest open source will destroy Microsoft’s profits, take a look at these stagging financial figures.

Reaffirmation of Microsoft's problems comes from its sympathisers; Microsoft FUD ensues

Some new numbers suggest that Windows keeps declining, so the trend is probably confirmed (an analyst says that Windows Phone 7 [1, 2] won't be out until next year, either)

Microsoft has no immediate response to sharply-declining margins, so it hastily points to products that do not exist yet

A YEAR ago, ASUS told the press that it was "closely tied up with Microsoft.” This happened just months after ASUS had expressed its future commitment to the GNU/Linux platform and recently we learned that Microsoft probably offered kickbacks to ASUS. It is almost confirmed now. The effect on ASUS appears to be devastating as liaising with Microsoft did not really pay off.

Using flawed and partly Microsoft-funded numbers, the advocates of proprietary software beg to suggest that GNU/Linux is declining (which it's not)

Microsoft fails to slow Google down; Google harms Microsoft's profits; Windows-only Microsoft Web rationalises temporary support of Google

BOTH MICROSOFT and Novell will have a role or at least some impact at a formal, national level. Mundie's involvement is a subject that we covered yesterday [1, 2], but we wrote not as much about Schmidt's impact. Sun, Google, and Novell are all places where he worked, so his affinity towards particular companies cannot be ignored.

Microsoft folks occupy Neowin; Citrix income down sharply; OQO possibly finished