Information Technology World

Ballmer: Microsoft Will Stay in China   Microsoft does not plan to follow Google's lead in pulling out of China, the software giant's CEO told news outlets on Thursday. "We've been quite clear that we're going to operate in China," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an interview on CNBC. However, his hopes for China to produce growing revenue for the company seem to hinge on a thorny issue: a reduction of piracy and intellectual-property theft. "China ought to be a source of growth," Ballmer said. "Intellectual-property protection in China is very, very bad. Abysmal. ... We're buying a lot of goods from China but the things that U.S. companies can sell -- pharmaceutical products, media, software -- it's all intellectual property and design, and that stuff's not getting paid for in China. It's got to change." His reference to the problem of IP theft points to bigger challenges Microsoft could face if it decide...