GoDaddy.com Inc., the world’s largest domain registrar and largest hosting provider in North America, and Microsoft Corp. today announced that GoDaddy.com is delivering mobile and group e-mail plans with Microsoft Outlook, powered by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) improve worker productivity and communications regardless of physical location.

Following the broad product, partner and customer announcements from its “Get Virtual Now” launch last month, Microsoft Corp.’s CEO Steve Ballmer today announced the final release and availability of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 in front of a crowd of 700 IT professionals during a TechNet Server and Tools event keynote address in London.

Among the first pediatric healthcare centers nationwide to adopt Amalga, Seattle Children’s will now be able to consolidate and view valuable patient data currently locked in core IT systems.

Today Zune, Microsoft Corp.’s end-to-end music and entertainment service, announced jointly with Fania Records the availability of a custom collection of Fania albums consisting of never-before-digitally-released productions.

Microsoft Corp. announced that its board of directors approved a new share repurchase program authorizing up to an additional $40 billion in share repurchases with an expiration of September 30, 2013.

New TPC-E performance benchmark results from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC)1 rank Microsoft SQL Server 2008 No. 1 for price/performance2 on industry-leading hardware using Intel Corporation’s new Dunnington x64 processor, and on another TPC-E release, SQL Server 2008 is No. 1 for performance3 using the new IBM System x3950 M2 server.

Microsoft Corp. and CNBC Inc. today announced that Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party provider of mobile WAP site display advertising to CNBC.com’s U.S. mobile audience of 1.1 million unique monthly visitors. This alliance represents Microsoft’s first mobile ad syndication deal in the U.S. and is an extension of the companies’ online advertising collaboration announced last December.

Microsoft Corp. celebrates its second anniversary of the Games for Windows initiative this month with the news that the year’s biggest blockbuster, “Grand Theft Auto IV” (Rockstar Games), will debut on the PC this November exclusively as a Games for Windows-branded title, joining a growing list of more than 85 top PC games from today’s hottest publishers.

Last week Interbrand issued its 2008 Best Global Brands rankings. While most of the top 10 remained unchanged, with IBM and Microsoft swapping places (IBM rose from 3 to 2), one big change emerged: Google rose from 20 to 10, with Mercedes-Benz dropping to 11.

Microsoft's new phase of its ad campaign, aimed at renovating the image of Windows, which began with the much criticized Seinfeld-Gates ads (three of which were filmed but only two of which were aired), seems much better than the first phase.

The new Microsoft ads went live on Thursday. And at the start of each ad is Sean Siler, a Microsoft employee who, luckily for Microsoft bears some resemblance to John Hodgman, the PC in Apple's ads. In the first and third ads, he says "I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype. In the second ad he says, "I'm a PC, and I'm not alone."

For the past two weeks, millions of people have watched the series of Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld television ads with the Windows logo at the end and wondered: “What’s next?”