Gross domestic product fell 0.2% in the first quarter from the final three months of 2012, according to a report Wednesday from the European Union's statistics office Eurostat. GDP fell 0.6% in the fourth quarter. The current downturn has now stretched for longer than the 2008-2009 recession, though the drop in output isn't yet as severe as it was four years ago.

Business surveys for April suggest the bloc's economy will likely decline again this quarter. Euro-zone GDP last expanded during the third quarter of 2011, a time when Germany was growing at rates of 3% or more and recessions were largely limited to small countries such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

But Germany, which accounts for nearly one-third of euro-zone output, shows little sign of rebounding quickly this year. Its GDP expanded just 0.1% on a quarterly basis from the fourth quarter, a much weaker gain than economists had expected. Weak investment offset higher levels of consumer spending,EPUB Converter Germany's statistics office said, while the harsh winter trimmed construction.

Meanwhile, an economic downturn that started in Greece three years ago has spread to the euro zone's three biggest economies after Germany—France, Italy and Spain—which account for half the bloc's GDP.

French GDP fell 0.2% from the fourth quarter due to drops in consumer spending and exports, its second-straight contraction. Economists in Europe commonly define recession as back-to-back quarterly declines in output. Italy's GDP fell 0.5%, its seventh-straight drop.

Record-low interest rates and abundant liquidity from the European Central Bank have stabilized European debt markets in recent months and led to surging equities. But the ECB's accommodative monetary policies—including an interest-rate cut two weeks ago—have yet to filter through to new spending, investment and hiring, especially in southern Europe.

I suspect many of us have Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop and a favorite disk writer, so why bother with untrusted ones at GOTD?

Lessons: I had free developers versions of Acrobat 5.0 and 6.0 pro which I used for years; learned to love it. Now I have a paid v11 pro. If I had not used the free product for years, its doubtful I'd have paid Adobe's outrageous price for v11.

I got a sample Photoshop lite more than a decade ago with a PC purchase. Used it up to the release of XP. As a result, I have about 5 different paid versions of Elements and PhotoShop CSS 3.0 and 5.0. Would never have purchased those extremely oppressively overpriced products without the extended use of the free licensed copies.

I have used WordPerfect since 2.0 and have every version up to the X series. Obtained all versions up to 6.1 for no cost to me. WP6.1 was so awesome I bought the CD immediately when I saw it (the only one I have ever seen on the shelf in the USA). Since then have purchased every version up to the X series. I stopped because the product now mimics MSFT's theory of "code bloat equals a new version to foist on unsuspecting consumers". Except for Lightning, a fast note maker, the new versions offer nothing substantially new to warrant a new purchase. Novell had better coders and more vision than Corel. If they re-coded 6.1 for 32 bit, I'd buy a few copies.

Aside: Let me make one thing perfectly clear, MSFT Office is in an inferior league when it come to word processing. Nonetheless, I received a free developers version of Office 2007 for which I had to endure a droning 4 hour presentation of Vista (my XP computers did everything they proffered as "new" and used a third the memory). I use it sparingly, but unlike the other products mentioned, this product won't sell itself. Did I mention the endless security up dates for Office? Exchange is interesting but user unfriendly with a bad user interface, poor back-up, bad search and atrocious file control. Did I mention the endless security up dates? Why anyone would buy Office escapes me. Why businesses and government continue to foolishly buy it is stupefying.

The list goes on. Hopefully the pattern is obvious. Every software writer/company is foolish not to offer a basic version for free to certain users (maybe not the world at large). When users realize the full potential (that definitely takes more than 15 or 30 days, sometimes years) of good product, they'll buy future advanced versions even if the company is a gouger like Adobe.

As for Giovanni, he is a latent Maynard G. Krebs apparently, I am still waiting for him to identify what he does professionally and to accept my offer to do that for me for free, as he thinks the world should be. Whatever he does, I am positive I need a lot of it!! However, his alternative software examples are much more tasteful that the clutterware GOTD offers these days. ©2013

Anyone have a favorite alternative to GOTD? 

Vandamme: so true. I don't check in with GOTD every day as I used to. I wish 'em well, as we all do: bringing not only some great test-and-use software opportunities in the past AND Ashraf AND Giovanni has to be pretty good going for any website.

As for any GOTD off-days, it's clearly not exclusive to them. Ashraf's right (I now see) about the way GOTD and Glarysoft are very often mining the same seam. And having seen BDJ trip up in the past with percentage discount offers (as distinct from the freebies) it's clear that its own off-days are still continuing: today the well-known Revo PRO is available at a discount of 30% from BDJ, but that's a very odd kind of bargain seeing as it's actually on a 50% discount on Revo's very own website.

The only good thing about it is that I found out about DotTech there.

If you think about it, developers with quality products likely don't need to continue giving away freebies; people will eventually recognize a good program for what it is and buy it. Poor products, and new products, are the ones that need the attention. That is just the nature of the beast. There will be more "off days" than "on days".

It used to be the case that GOTD had the occasional mis-fire but they're beginning to look rather more than merely 'occasional'. Today's offering of $60sworth of program that the developer effectively retails for $51 less (though may well be worth exactly $0 at all in terms of quality and performance) highlights the problem of give-aways of "licensed software" -- with all that such description implies -- whose quoted retail prices aren't remotely genuine or are factually deceitful (Ashampoo is an expert in give-aways of commercial products that don't really exist.) If it's not hypeware or ghostware then it's crippleware, typified last week by iObit and its "giveaway" of half of the normal full annual licence that any computer user reasonably expects to be standard to any software product.

I have a great fondness for GOTD. I was lucky enough to be a user from its first day, and to enjoy real insights and entertainment in the writings of a regular contributor who preceded Ashraf (then in his political theologian guise.) The offers were, for want of a better word, 'solid', whether or not they were consistently relevant to an individual need. But since those heady days, GOTD seems to be losing some of its shine: a few more rotating pdf pages, 'now-you-can-share-your-photos-with-friends-on-the-Web' and $9 hypeware, and that hard won lustre might just fade clean away.

By comparison, I track Glarysoft's giveaways of the day, and even a cursory glance through its archive -- dating back to November last year -- shows that the substance and quality of the programs being offered on 24-hour download availability there have almost always been the equal of GOTD and now, increasingly often, superior. Glarysoft actually seems to be succeeding where Bits Du Jour failed -- at least in regard to BDJ's '100%-off discounts', marred of late by software offerings so disastrously unchecked that they had to be pulled by BDJ before the 'discount' period was even over. (That said, BDJ's reduced-price offers represent good value -- not all the time, but enough of the time to be worth considering after doing some independent research first.)

For many, if GOTD doesn't have something of appeal on a particular day, then no big deal: just like buses, another freebie will be along soon. For some who believe that something-for-nothing just has to be a bargain regardless of its true price, provenance or ability, even an observation such as this one is treated as rank ingratitude for "all the great work that GOTD does" -- either that, or a failure to realize how very very difficult it must be to "find something new" every day of tjhe week. (There's certainly some truth in the latter argument.)

For me though, I'm thinking that everyone can have an off-day, and perhaps GOTD is stringing a few of 'em together at the moment. I hope such is the case, because GOTD it was a pioneering website and I'm quite fond of it despite its stubborn daftness over the blatantly manipulated 'user' thumbs up/thumbs down system and spam-bomb "comments". After all: GOTD was the means via which we first discovered the amazing Ashraf. And life really has never been quite the same after that. . .

I've been an avid fan of GOTD (Giveaway of the Day) for a couple of years now, and pay particular attention to Ashraf's reviews there, as well as checking out his detailed reviews on dotTech of software that I'm particularly interested in.

As an avid to extreme fan of freeware, Ashraf's "freeware alternatives" on his reviews are especially appreciated!!

Thanks so much, Ashraf, for your dedication and effort in the software review niche!! 

After purchasing one piece of software, and paying by PayPal, I had to invoke the PayPal disputes process just to get the company to send me a link to the download page so that I could get what I had paid for.

Hoping that this was, in their words, just a problem with their servers, I then bought a separate piece of software.

All went well until I had a major system crash and had to install a new HD. No problem I thought, I'll just reinstall the software. Nope. When you install the software it asks for the registration key which it then validates on-line. However, if you have already registered the prog's it reports that you can only have one copy of the software. I only have one copy, I just want to use it. I can't afford over $100 per item again!

So I wrote to the company, asking for them to reallocate the keys or delete the old ones from their database. As before, until PayPal got involved, NO REPLY. I sent request form after request form via their website but they refused to reply. I wrote directly to the person I had dealt with for the 1st prog' - no reply. I can't afford to phone Australia again and again either.

So, if you are looking to purchase any of their software be warned, although it (was) really good software, if there's a problem, you'll be on your own and out of pocket 

if you realy want to lose weightt start by drinking 4 liters of water as the body only needs 2 liters daily , the acces will rinse the fat ,, second move more, and stay a way from mc donalds,, eat red fruits and stay a way from bananas eat turkey & fish instead of meat and chicken,, walk to near places like grocery store and such leave the car at home, use the car ONLY for far places..

The thing is if you realy want to loose weight, or lets say FAT,, then start doing so,, dont let nothing and nobody hold you back,, in the end -- its your life and body

SPAM.

Many thanks to Randy 4150 for starting this comment thread but if it's possible to be spared the other 4,149 Randys, that'd be even better.