Microsoft Inks Deals with Lenovo, CareerBuilder

In two separate deals announced Wednesday, Microsoft will acquire a 4% stake in CareerBuilder.com for an undisclosed sum, and will preload Lenovo PCs with its Office suite for a total price of as much as $1.3 billion. In addition, CareerBuilder will pay $443 million over seven years to be the exclusive job listings provider on MSN Careers. CareerBuilder is currently co-owned by newspaper owners McClatchy, Tribune Co. and Gannett. The Lenovo deal comes on the heels of a Chinese government law enacted to crack down on rampant software piracy there. Lenovo became the first PC builder to pre-install Windows on all of its China product lines in November 2005.

Sources: Press Release, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Seattle PI, Hemscott
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Stocks/ETFs to watch: Microsoft (MSFT), Lenovo (LNVGY.PK). Competitors: Yahoo (YHOO), Google (GOOG), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL). ETFs: Internet HOLDRs (HHH), First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index (FDN), Software HOLDRS (SWH)

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