Microsoft’s CRITICIZED Culture and 4 Busy Stocks

Zillow (NASDAQ:Z) and Yahoo’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) partnership, which currently covers home sale listings on Yahoo Homes, will now include rentals. A ramification of the move is that Zillow, which just bought RentJuice for $40 million, will now displace Apartments.com. The joint effort’s Yahoo Homes claimed 25 million visitors as of May.

Microsoft ‘s (NASDAQ:MSFT) culture is under the magnifying glass, as Vanity Fair, spurred by emails and interviews, takes an in-depth look. Something had to have led to the company becoming an ‘also ran’ in mobile devices and Internet services, and a lot of the blame is thought to have been a ranking system that led to in-fighting, plus the failure of the firm to recognize the effects of concepts such as touchscreens and news feeds, while it was obsessed with shoring up Windows and Office.

GlaxoSmithKline’s (NYSE:GSK) scandals and memory of its past aggressive marketing strategies have led the firm to clean up its act, especially following its pleading guilty recently to illegally marketing drugs and withholding safety data. However, as the regulatory environment constricts, pipelines attenuate and sales pressures increase, several scars from the past are still visable.

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) is not allowed to prevent its software licenses from being re-sold, including the situation when the software has been downloaded rather than sold via disc, says a European Union court. The ruling might contribute additional pressure to Oracle’s near-term sales in Europe, as companies on The Continent search out ways to reduce expenditures on IT spending in the face of an unpromising macro environment.