An investment vehicle owned by Bill Gates reported a 5.2% stake in Eastman Kodak (NYSE: EK) this morning. The investment was disclosed in a form 13-G filed with the SEC, which indicates that the investment is passive in nature: Cascade Investment LLC does not have plans to become involved with the company's operations, or press for governance changes.

Bloomberg reports that the Kodak stake is Cascade's ninth-largest investment.

President Obama is now searching for a third candidate to fill the Commerce Secretary position now that Senator Judd Gregg has withdrawn his name from consideration for the position. Scouring the Intrawebs, it seems that the word that most people are using for this rebuff is "embarrassment." While I am a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, I don't know if I would go as far as saying this is an embarrassment - the President tried to reach across party lines and got bit. In fact (and I am watching out for lightning here), Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel hit the nail on the head when he said, "It's better we discovered it now than later ... If I said it wasn't a disappointment, that would lack credibility."

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today joined the ever-growing parade of companies firing employees.

The world's largest software maker is laying off 5,000 people, about 5% of its staff, in its first company-wide dismissal of workers. The move is not surprising.

Though the Redmond, Washington-based company is a cash-generating machine, investors are worried that it will be hurt by the slowdown in corporate IT spending. Last month, Forrester Research projected that spending by businesses on technology would rise 1.6% in the U.S. That's down from a projection of more than 6% made in August.

Have you seen the ads? If not, you can watch the first one below.

My first reaction was -- 'Huh? What was that all about? What is it trying to say?' And it seems I wasn't alone. One review after another says pretty much the same thing: Just as Seinfeld was a show about nothing, so are the ads. Or as my fellow blogger Jonathan Berr said: "It was like a bad Seinfeld episode."

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is looking to counter the bad publicity of Windows Vista and the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) successful commercials with this $300 million ad campaign (of which a cool $10 million goes to Jerry Seinfeld himself), but many question if this is the right use of the money.

According to Moneyweb, software giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is hooking up with Jerry Seinfeld. No, they're not trying to revive the comedian's sitcom career (although that would be cool). It seems Microsoft is feeling a bit blah about its brand equity, so it's looking to initiate a hip advertising campaign that will tout the company's image and its powerful Windows Vista technology.

No doubt, the advertising campaign from Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) that makes fun of the PC-Windows platform has a lot to do with it. I love those commercials, and I think it's about time Microsoft came to its senses and decided to do something serious to answer them. A campaign with Seinfeld, if done with a maximum amount of creative wit, will work wonders. But of course, that's the point -- it has to be done right. Seinfeld is a big name, and his presence carries a lot of weight with consumers.

Still, I have reservations about using him in an ad campaign. Am I the only one who wasn't impressed by his American Express commercials? I liked Seinfeld in his famous television show, but seeing him pitch charge cards didn't make me want to apply for one. I thought he was boring in the format.

Apparently, ad firm Crispin Porter + Bogusky will be doing the ads featuring Seinfeld, and they were the creative force behind the Burger King commercials with the creepy King mascot. Those commercials rock. It would be nice if the firm could do something as edgy with Seinfeld and Microsoft, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm not sure that kind of lightning could strike twice.

It should be no surprise to anyone that despite all the ranting and raving to the contrary Mr. Carl Icahn, billionaire investor, shareholder white knight and corporate raider is heating up things in the Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO) boardroom.

It has been reported that he purchased a sizable chunk of the company in the neighborhood of $25 per share, hoping to make another fortune pushing Yahoo back to the negotiating table with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT).

This morning AP reported that Jerry Yang, CEO and company are lobbying major shareholders to rally support for their position that Yahoo! should get a higher offer or stand alone as an independent company. It seems to me that they are standing on lose ground given that many large and small shareholders alike have already spoken, and they would have taken the deal.

The market has spoken as well, with Yahoo stock losing over a third of it's value recently and nearing $20 per share this morning Icahn is losing 20% of his investment as things look today. This is turning into the battle of the billionaires.

One small problem the billionaire boys in Redmond are not that hot on the deal any more because, as Gates Leaves Microsoft, he Calls Yahoo Deal Unlikely.

I think this whole saga might make a cute Neil Simon play if they would let him into the meetings to take some notes.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares in the stocks mentioned in this story.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates is riding off into the sunset today, at least he sort of is. The man who made nerds and geeks "cool" is shifting his focus away from the world's largest software company to his philanthropic work.

Gates contributions to modern society cannot be understated. When he gets older, my 20-month-old son will no doubt be surprised to learn that there was a time when computers were expensive, impersonal devices the size of several refrigerators. Gates helped make the computer personal. Of that there is no doubt. How he did it remains open to debate. The elite geeks despise Microsoft for developing expensive, inferior operating systems that are prone to crashes and computer viruses.

The shift by Gates, which has been expected for some time, comes as the Redmond, Washington-based company is at a crossroads. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Microsoft was the underdog that upended the tech establishment lead by International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM).

In a bit of investigative reporting that no one will care about, The Wall Street Journal has discovered that a series of disputes between Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates eight years ago caused a changing of the guard at the company. The paper writes that "The conflict between the two men paralyzed business-strategy decisions that the company still wrestles with today. Board members stepped in to try to mediate a truce."

The piece in the Journal is a nice human interest story, but that it would be the top story at the paper is a bit odd. That is until the reader considers that the cult of personality is still alive and well in American business. Chiefs like Lee Iaccoca and Jack Welch have written best-selling books. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) customers and shareholders worship Steve Jobs.

All of that, to a large extent, takes the eye off of the ball. The people who run large companies, even those that are fabulously successful, are only doing the jobs that the investing public expects of them. Even if they are founders. Gates and Jobs decided to take their companies public. After that, the only reasonable question is whether they made shareholders money.

In many ways, the transition from Gates to Ballmer has been a failure. Eight years ago, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) traded at $53. Now its stands at under $28. Gates may have turned the CEO job over to Ballmer, but neither has done the stockholders any favors.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Recently I posted a Serious Money metrics story that included Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) comparisons along with six other stocks. Until now I have not felt very strongly about the merits of Microsoft's offer to acquire Yahoo! and merge assets and features.

I was leaning toward the price is too high camp, but now, after Microsoft has withdrawn the offer and I have looked at the current state of affairs of both companies, I think it did the right thing and may have avoided a nightmare.

To bring Yahoo! into the fold, Microsoft would have had to find enough cost savings by eliminating overlapping departments or it would have had to hope it could double Yahoo's earnings. If not, the acquisition would unduly weigh down the mother ship, because Microsoft's P/E Ratio of 17.08 is half that of Yahoo!'s 34.25.

According to Forbes, Bill Gates of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is no longer the richest man in the U.S. The honor now belongs to Warren Buffett, the head of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A). Buffett is worth $62 billion to Gates's $58 billion.

This says more about the shift in the American business landscape than it does about anything else. The Berkshire Hathaway stock is up 30% over the last year, while Microsoft's is flat. Since Berkshire owns an insurance company, it would make sense that the financial crisis would hurt its value, but Buffett has stayed away from the investments that have hurt other companies.

Microsoft may be a safe investment now with its large cash position and steady income from Windows, but it is probably no longer a growth stock. Microsoft software runs on 95% of the world's PCs and many of its servers. That leaves the question of what the company can do to expand rapidly again. The answer may be that it can't.

Buffett's company is in more than a hundred businesses. He can make the argument that diversification is the foundation of a successful corporation. The firm's operations make everything from uniforms for police to concrete block, roofing systems to fabrics. Berkshire also owns large parts of companies from American Express (NYSE: AXP) to Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC).

The new Forbes ranking shows that a large bucket of good investments trumps owning a piece of one successful company in a market that is no longer growing quickly.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) loves social networking. No doubt, the company thinks there's a potential goldmine there.

Hey, the firm recently invested $240 million in Facebook -- at a whopping $15 billion valuation. In fact, Bill Gates even setup a public profile on the social network. But there was a problem; that is, too many people wanted to be his friend. Bill was actually getting about 8,000 requests per day.

As a result, he shut down his profile.

Well, Bill hasn't given up. He's now going to go on LinkedIn and answer questions regarding his philanthropic efforts (this is according to a story in C/NET).

To me, LinkedIn's Q&A feature is great (I've even used it to get sources for my stories). Although, as for Bill, I'm sure there will be a flood of questions. Keep in mind that LinkedIn has 19 million registered users.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Finally, a business parody worth featuring. Several videos have laid claim to the throne, there was ... uhhhh ... hmmmm and uhhhhh ... okay; maybe this is the first laugh-out-loud business parody, and it comes from none other than William Henry Gates III of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) from Redmond, WA:



You want some market predictions, here you go: Bill Gates is the next YouTube superstar!

Timothy Sykes writes the blog timothysykes.com, is a former hedge fund manager, the star of the TV show Wall Street Warriors and author of the book, An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund

With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in full swing this morning, yesterday's cream of the crop kickoff event featured a keynote speech from CES long-time keynoter Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). In his final keynote speech at the CES show before he drops his full-time gig with the world's largest software company, Gates introduced a prototype navigation device that stores photos, music and videos while also suggesting options for shopping and dining. Sounds pretty un-revolutionary for Gates' swan song, eh?

Many of Microsoft's CES introductions since 2000 have fallen flat in the real world, which is not surprising. By trying to keep customers entrenched in its proprietary Windows PC operating system, Ol' Softie puts millions of savvy consumers off its products. Now, there are many other companies guilty of this as well, but they're way better marketers -- Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the best example.

Microsoft, though, is realizing that Windows on the PC, along with its Office software franchise, can't sustain it forever. Gates told the audience that consumers want to "interact with digital devices in new ways, such as getting directions from their phones and speaking to their cars." This is true, and it's a reason why Microsoft's Sync has become a hit in some new Ford Motor Corp. (NYSE: F) cars. Now that Apple iPhone owners are interacting with data on their portable devices more than ever, Microsoft -- of course -- wants to ensure that functionality lends itself to devices that feature . . . wait for it . . . software from Microsoft as well. This really is not a new fight for the software giant. It's hard, though, to tell what is different with this version of it.

Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) -

Bill Gates will give the pre-show keynote address at International CES on January 6 in Las Vegas. CES features 2,700 exhibitors spanning 30 product categories.

MSFT is expected to report EPS on January 24th.

MSFT overall option implied volatility of 27 is near its 26-week average of 25 according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional risk.

Options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) -- Bill Gates will give the pre-show keynote address at CES on January 6th in Las Vegas. CES features 2,700 exhibitors spanning 30 product categories. MSFT overall option implied volatility of 29 is above its 26-week average of 24 according to Track Data, suggesting larger risk.

E-Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC) -- ETFC is recently down 65 cents to $4.04. On November 29, ETFC announced a $2.5 billion cash infusion deal from Citadel Investment Group. Bank of America says: "Downgrade to sell (PT goes to $2) as we no longer believe the value of the ETFC's retail brokerage business, a dwindling asset (which has lost 17% of assets already), can offset negative value at the bank." ETFC overall option implied volatility of 111 is above its 26-week average of 72, according to Track Data, suggesting larger price fluctuations.

Daily Options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com