Anyone who's ever worked in IT knows tons of skilled, experienced and unemployed programmers who can't find work - while companies are crying they can't fill jobs. This has been going on for a really long time, and during a time when American jobs are so badly needed, politicians shouldn't be helping them with this shell game:

What IT labor shortage? That's what reps for unemployed programmers and other IT workers are asking in response to Microsoft's claim that it needs to import more foreign help because the United States isn't producing enough individuals with the high-tech skills it needs.

Workers' advocates say that if big tech companies are having a tough time finding qualified employees it's only because they are limiting their searches to younger, less expensive workers.

"Experienced IT workers who are over 40 years old have a hard time even getting noticed by companies like Microsoft," said Rennie Sawade, communications director for WashTech, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America. "They're really after the younger, more inexpensive workers."

Sawade also rejects claims by Microsoft and other high-tech employers that more experienced IT workers are not getting hired because they lack skills in hot new areas like cloud and mobility. "I doubt the ones they are bringing over on H-1B visas necessarily have those skills. They give them a three-week crash course and then call them a Java programmer."

Sawade's comments come on the heels of controversial testimony that Microsoft senior counsel Brad Smith gave last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration, refugees, and border security. Smith said the software maker has thousands of open positions going unfilled. "Filling our talent need remains a serious challenge," said Smith.

As of May, Microsoft had 4,551 job openings--including 2,629 computer science positions--but it's taking the company up to 65 days on average to find qualified workers for open spots, Smith said.

Smith argued that, until more Americans are available to fill high-tech jobs, U.S. immigration policies need to be relaxed to make it easier for companies like Microsoft to import workers from tech hot spots like India and China to fill the gap. "Our continued ability to help fuel the American economy depends heavily on continued access to the best possible talent. This cannot be achieved, and certainly not in the near term, exclusively through educational improvements to 'skill up' the American workforce."

According to a report in the Financial Times, Microsoft has approached News Corp. about de-listing their sites from Google, which would be an apparent escalation in the search engine wars.

It appears that Microsoft isn’t limiting this to just News Corp either. It’s reported that they are approaching numerous online publishers and offering to pay them for content if they delist from Google. One publisher approached by Microsoft said this is all about “Microsoft hurting Google’s margin”.

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing is their latest attempt to give Google a run for the money. Here are the October search engine market shares, and as you can see Microsoft has a long way to go to beat out Google:

Bing has increased at the same rate that Google has, but what is interesting is that it appears their shares are coming from Yahoo. In July of this year Microsoft and Yahoo entered a deal for Yahoo to use the Bing search engine on their sites in exchange for a split on advertising revenue, so Yahoo’s decrease in the market share also directly effects Microsoft.

Of course the whole basis of this plan depends upon the belief that Google is actually “stealing” content, something that is in serious debate in both the tech and legal worlds. If this war does escalate and end up in the courts then we could finally see a ruling come out on exactly what the “fair use doctrine” covers – something we have been running blind on for years. Given the fact that Google only reproduces the headline and first few words of an article and that this use is both for research and archival purposes, it appears that Google would have a very strong case in the courts. To really solidify their case and put the final nail in the coffin of this war, Google could remove advertising from the news section of their search engine, which is the only questionable part of “fair use” when it comes to their service. Even better would be for Google to spin off the news part of their search engine and make it a non-profit partnered with Google. Google can surely afford it, and this would destroy any battle Microsoft or News Corp may be planning.

Whatever happens with this, it is clear that Murdoch still isn’t set on removing his sites from Google. I just checked again and what I reported a couple of weeks ago still stands – News Corp sites have explicit directions asking Google to index them. This could also be used against the Murdoch/Microsoft plan. What would happen if Google showed that News Corp sites saw a large percentage of their visits originate from Google? I know that they have records of those kind of metrics, and it would be interesting to hear News Corp argue that they didn’t mind Google increasing their online visibility all these years for free.

(cross posted at IntoxiNation)

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Microsoft accepts the Corporate Vision Award, recognizing companies that exhibit leadership in advancing the cause of gays and lesbians.

AmericaBlog has more here and here

Associated Press : After being criticized for quietly dropping support for a state gay rights bill, Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve Ballmer told employees Friday that management would publicly back such legislation in the future.
Ballmer's commitment came two weeks after activists accused the company of caving to pressure from an evangelical pastor who had threatened to launch a nationwide boycott of the software company.

''After looking at the question from all sides, I've concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda,'' Ballmer wrote in an e-mail.

I have a feeling that the video we posted with Microsoft accepting the Gay and Lesbian award played a small role in their decision. Probably not...

Joe in DC says: Microsoft's switch: what's it mean? Think about it. Microsoft, the corporate behemoth that doesn't take any crap from anyone, just had to publicly admit they screwed up. That doesn't happen every day.