http://seekingalpha.com/article/1095181-microsoft-is-raising-an-army

This article details a number of partnerships that Microsoft has forged to combat that evil search company that it doesn't like, in order to more effectively combat it's presence and to hopefully bring itself back into the number 1 spot for tech.

I think that it is a decent strategy, uniting the companies that have a interest in competing against google, it's just that this isn't working too well right now.  Looking at the recent market cap, google sits at 242 billion, and Microsoft at 225 billion.  This means that (242/225) google is at about 7.5% ahead of Microsoft in terms of stock price.  Google could fbe ahead by as much as 15% by the end of the year, and this isn't great news for Redmond, as many of these partnerships have existed for over a year now, and haven't turned the tide.  

What can turn the tide for Microsoft?

You have my sword

Alright well thanks. I personally love these stories of the rise and fall, and middling journeys of corporations, especially tech. If anybody has an opinion to throw in, I'll listen.

and my balls

Well this kind of behaviour got them to the top in the first place. In many ways they only really started falling by the wayside when they acted as if they could do everything by themselves and shut out partners.

I think that Sony looks like it could unravel and breakup within 4 years. If so, msft would love to buy the gaming division of Sony, and would probably make a fortune off of that, but again, this would be at least a few years away, sony ain't dying tomorrow!

Couldnt have said it better.  This is EXACTLY what MS has needed to do for awhile.

To be fair though, all of these alliances don't benefit msft equally.

the best ones are probably the FB and China Unicom alliance.  The FB deal probably just puts a FB icon on the windows phones and tablets, etc, no big deal and msft would be wise to counter google+. China Unicom will help them by giving the Chinese an alternative to android.  In the end, china likes to steal tech and strategies, and Baku will probably be the dominant force for phone OS's, but until then, they would like to keep google away from china as much as possible.  

Thenyahoomdeal helps bc it gives them free money essentially, but brings a lot of users to the yahoo website as opposed to google/bing, so it is probably only a minor gain.  The Mimi alliance also helps but, it isn't enough, bc google puts waaayyyy more into search, and the quality race is a losing battle.  Same thing with the Yelp alliance.

The Barnes & Noble alliance will help but, Barnes and noble won't use windows as an OS and how much can adding skype or IE help?

The Nokia partnership is about to be dead in the water bc it would do Microsoft no good to keep money hatting Nokia for using Windows when other manufacturers are starting to.

Just my two cents.

so THIS is what they're doing with those halo bullets!!

I think Microsoft stands to fall quite a lot, because they are no longer the only option for PC OEMs and trying to compete with them with Surface deters them from further supporting you.

MS can only be hurt via Windows and Office. If tablets become serious laptop replacements they stand to lose a lot there.