Officially, he may be leaving the company, but TechCrunch's Michael Arrington suggests that former Microsoft President of Platforms & Services, Kevin Johnson, was on the receiving end of an axing by CEO Steve Ballmer, who on Wednesday announced the company's latest reorganization of its online services division, after (officially) Johnson decided to leave the software giant. Johnson had the dual-role of pushing along Microsoft's Windows cash cow while building its online services division, which includes the MSN Web portal and Microsoft's suite of Windows Live services. He leaves Microsoft to become the new CEO of hardware manufacturer Juniper Networks. The …

Zynga, a San Francisco-based startup which makes free poker, puzzle and other casual games for social networking sites, received some heavy financial backing on Wednesday, announcing a $29 million round of funding led by VC heavyweight Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. KPC&B was an early backer of some major Internet winners, including Amazon.com and Google. According to The Wall Street Journal, the firm's backing of Zynga could be taken as a sign that social networking applications are set to become a real moneymaking industry. Until now, Kleiner Perkins has refrained from investing in social applications. "We have a really high …

With its failed bid for Yahoo behind it, Microsoft is promising to re-invest that cash in its Web operations. CEO Steve Ballmer says he plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the company's unprofitable Internet business. But investors have their doubts. Some Microsoft backers are losing faith in Microsoft's capacity to manage its Internet business in the wake of the Yahoo failure. Ballmer needs to "put a hot, bright light of clarity on where's all the money going," said one major investor. Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, has lost about $90 billion in market …

The OpenID project aims to make surfing the Net easier by giving everyone a single ID they can use to access all their sites. MySpace is its newest member. "All this will tie together to make it more useful for MySpace users to have MySpace accounts even when they're not on MySpace," said Jim Benedetto, the company's senior vice president of technology. But the News Corp. social network, which has more than 100 million members, isn't exactly diving in head first. MySpace has set restrictions on where the login details can be used based on whether those sites create or …

A company that makes free game applications for Facebook is about to receive a large infusion of cash from investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers -- a sign of investors' growing interest in services that plug into social networks. The company, Zynga Game Network, is also an unusual recipient for Kleiner's funding in that it's been around a while. Kleiner is known for investing in younger companies, but is making an exception in this case -- further indication of the importance placed on social networking success. The San Francisco-based startup plans to announce the funding at Facebook Inc.'s developer …

Is the black tie benefit becoming a thing of the past? Rather than spend the money on the room, the invites and the entertainment, many charities are taking their big-ticket auctions online, where they can raise their money faster and with hardly any overhead. Online charity auctions have raised at least $250 million, according to figures provided by the largest sites, including eBay, which runs a program called Giving Works. The auction site has raised $150 million for charity since 1999. Of that total, $50 million was raised in the last year alone. "It changed our lives," says Cynthia …

Are you ready for Halo3, the movie? Microsoft has struck a deal with Safran Digital Group and five directors of horror movies to make short films based on its Xbox games, which will be released on the Internet. Scott Nocas, product manager for Xbox Live's video programming and original content, said the company was treating the short films like TV pilots. Microsoft will show them in the 26 international markets that support the Xbox Live service and plans to commission more original content if the movies prove popular. "We're not in the TV business," Nocas said. "But we believe …