Here are this week’s stock briefs for Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT). Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) company shares ended the week at 27.77 (as of 2/4/2011).

Weekly News Roundup: Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Monday 31 January

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has shifted some work out of Egypt, as protests continue in the country.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), one of the 120 companies located in Smart Village IT Office Park in Cairo, said that it has shifted some work, especially customer support -related jobs, to other locations due to the political unrest and internet connection issues in the country.

According to the reports, “Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is constantly assessing the impact of the unrest and Internet connection issues on our properties and services.

What limited service the company as a whole provides to and through the region, mainly call-center service, has been largely distributed to other locations.”

Tuesday 1 February

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has confirmed that Yahoo Mail is the culprit behind a phantom data leak.
The software giant had earlier blamed a third party for this phantom data leak that had caused so many subscribers to exceed the limits of their data plan, and has now identified that Yahoo Mail is responsible for unexpected data consumption.

Many Windows Phone 7 users had complained on data usage.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) began looking into the matter when several complaints were received from AT&T saying that many users had exceeded their 2GB download limit without their knowledge.

Wednesday 2 February

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Israel has plans to hire 100 new employees to their cloud projects.
Moshe Lichtman, the president of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s R&D center, said at the annual press conference of the company that is considering the recruitment of 100 more employees to its cloud computing projects.

“Just over a year ago, we launched a free security product. The product has had 100 million downloads in the past year, and it has the second largest share of the global market for free products. This product was developed entirely in Israel, and it will stay free”.

Thursday 3 February

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has fired back at Google over a recent search results dispute.
One of the top level internet executives at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) commented on the issue as ‘insulting’.

Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) senior vice president, said that, “We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting.”

Friday 4 February

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has announced a security patch containing 22 updates.
The company said in an official statement yesterday that it will be addressing 22 security vulnerabilities on next week’s patch Tuesday. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) said that three of the vulnerabilities are critical.

Although all patches were categorized as ‘important,’ the critical ones were the ones affecting Windows itself and Internet Explorer.

A Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) blog post says that vulnerabilities include those affecting Windows Graphics Rendering Engine and a CSS exploit in Internet Explorer.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on the Microsoft Corp. share price for developments over the next few weeks.