For reasons that are not immediately clear to me, it seems that a lot of developers who attended Microsoft's recent PDC event were surprised to hear that the company now sees HTML5 as the way forward for developing rich Internet applications—and not, as they had been expecting, Silverlight. Their surprise surprises me, because past statements by the company had already made this repositioning obvious, though perhaps not explicit.

Microsoft has announced the final names and pricing for its upcoming Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2011 editions. The three products will be available through all current Microsoft server licensing channels.

Codename Aurora will be known as Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials. Priced at $545, it is slated for release in the first half of 2011. Windows SBS 2011 Essentials is targeted at small businesses that want to deploy their first server. It protects your data, lets you organize and access business information from virtually anywhere, supports business applications, and connects to online services such as Office 365, hosted e-mail, collaboration, and CRM. It can be used by up to 25 users and requires no CALs for user access.

Codename SBS 7 will be known as Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard. Priced at $1,096, with CALs going for approximately $72, it is slated for release in December 2010 (available through OEMs and System Builders in February 2011). It is aimed at small businesses with up to 75 users that want enterprise-class server technology, automatic daily server backups, and features like e-mail, Internet connectivity, internal websites, remote access, as well as file and printer sharing. Licensing is consistent with previous versions of Windows SBS 2008 Standard, which required a Server License and CALs for each user.

Finally, there will be a server add-on known as Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-on. Priced at $1,604, with client-access licenses going for approximately $92, it too is slated for release in December 2010 from Microsoft and February 2011 from OEMs and System Builders. The add-on consists of an additional server that provides support for SQL Server-based LOB applications and access to Window Server 2008 R2 technologies. It includes Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard as well as SQL Server 2008 R2 for Small Business, and can be added to both previously mentioned SBS 2011 products. Access to the Windows Server components for the add-on will be covered by the Windows SBS 2011 CAL model, but SQL Server access will require Premium Add-on CALs. Microsoft said it decided to move to an add-on model to give its customers "more flexibility and deployment options providing the ability to purchase additional servers either up front or as needed."

Microsoft has two more Windows Server products on the way. We've known about codename Vail, the second version of Windows Home Server, for a while now, but there's another one: Windows Server codename Breckenridge, according to a Microsoft Connect page titled "Windows Server Solutions Log Collector Privacy Statement" (via ZDNet). Breckenridge will reportedly be a derivative of Windows Home Server Vail optimized to function as a storage server. The release details about these two have yet to be finalized.

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Google has set its sights on the business of the United States government, much to the dismay of the government. The company filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior on Friday over its request for proposals and quotes for a system to handle messaging needs. The request stated that the solutions had to use the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite, a requirement that Google is saying is "unduly restrictive of competition."

In its Request for Quotes (RFQ), a document asking companies to design a solution and quote the department a price, the DOI restricted the candidates to using the Microsoft suite only. The problem is that such a restriction is akin to putting money directly in Microsoft's pocket, as the contract can't be completed without Microsoft taking part at some point.

According to the lawsuit Google filed, the DOI tried to justify the requirement by saying its suite offered consolidated e-mail and "enhanced security." The 37-page filing details several volleys between Google and the DOI, wherein Google points out that Microsoft products still have downtime issues and makes a case for its own Google Apps as a suitable alternative. 

The only sticking point is that, while Google appears to have been jockeying for DOI viability since at least June 2009, it did not obtain accreditation from the General Services Administration or Federal Information Security Management Act certification until July 2010. Without them, it couldn't qualify as "interested party" in the contract. But those uncertified times are distant in Google's memory, and now it's out for federal blood.

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Last month was a mix of good news and bad news for Microsoft. The good? Windows XP finally fell below the 60 percent mark. The bad? Internet Explorer continues to explore new market share lows as IE8 lost market share for the first time and the IE9 beta failed to capture the attention of the browsing public. Meanwhile Firefox slips a tad farther away from the 25 percent market share mark, while Chrome and Safari continue their growth. Before we go into detail on the browser front, let's check in on our old friend, Windows XP.

At PDC yesterday, Microsoft unveiled its roadmap for the Windows Azure cloud computing platform. Moving beyond mere Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), the company is positioning Windows Azure as a Platform-as-a-Service offering: a comprehensive set of development tools, services, and management systems to allow developers to concentrate on creating available, scalable applications.

Over the next 12-18 months, a raft of new functionality will be rolled out to Windows Azure customers. These features will both make it easier to move existing applications into the cloud, and enhance the services available to cloud-hosted applications.

At the close of trading Thursday, Microsoft announced the results for its first quarter of fiscal year 2011, which ended September 30, 2010. Revenue of $16.20 billion, a 25 percent increase from the same period in 2009, set a new first quarter record for the company. The three other financial measures—operating income ($7.12 billion), net income ($5.41 billion), and earnings per share (62¢)—were all up year-over-year: 59 percent, 51 percent, and 55 percent, respectively. The company said it reported yearly growth across all business segments.

Microsoft's explanation for positive growth across the board is once again its latest client operating system (and the "PC refresh cycle"). Windows 7 sold 240 million licenses in its first year. Three months after release, Microsoft said it had sold more than 60 million Windows 7 licenses. Some basic math shows sales haven't slowed, which is great news for Microsoft. The Windows division had its revenue rise from $2.9 billion to $4.8 billion. Profit was $3.3 billion.

Office 2010 saw revenue growing over 15 percent in its first full quarter on the market. Revenue for the company's business unit, which includes Microsoft Office, rose from $4.5 billion to $5.1 billion for a profit of $3.4 billion.

Sales of Xbox 360 consoles grew 38 percent after outselling every competing console in the US for the past four months. Revenue for the Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes the Xbox line, rose from $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion and a tidy $382 million profit.

Microsoft also pointed out that Bing continued to grow market share for yet another quarter (without Yahoo's help). This came at the cost of the performance of its Online Services Division, which continues to lose money. Revenue rose from $487 million to $527 million, but it posted a wider loss of $560 million. Microsoft just started powering paid search ads on Yahoo, meaning next quarter we'll begin seeing how much money it can make on the Yahoo search deal.

"This was an exceptional quarter, combining solid enterprise growth and continued strong consumer demand for Office 2010, Windows 7, and Xbox 360 consoles and games," Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft, said in a statement. "Our ability to grow revenue while continuing to control costs allowed us to deliver another quarter of year-over-year margin expansion."

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Microsoft demoed the latest developer preview of IE9 during the PDC 2010 keynote. Much like earlier previews, this one doesn't have much in the way of a UI. It's effectively a toolbar and the new rendering engine. The engine is wicked fast, however, and Microsoft has a number of demos that really put it through its paces.

The lack of UI is kind of a bore, so we asked how to make it more useful (and Microsoft told us). If you'd like to make it look and act like the beta (including all the chrome and new UI features), we have instructions. But first... a video!

Microsoft announced Tuesday that Office 2011 for Mac is now available. The update to the ubiquitous productivity suite includes a number of major additions, including the return of Visual Basic scripting, the replacement of Entourage with a Mac version of Outlook, and integration with Microsoft's online collaboration tools.

In addition to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint—essentially the standards for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations in the business world—Office 2011 also includes a brand new version of Outlook, the combination e-mail, calendar, and contact management application. Outlook 2011 is engineered to connect with Microsoft's Exchange enterprise e-mail servers, so Mac users in corporate environments will most appreciate the change.