12.03.08
News Warping and Microsoft
A month ago we spotted Microsoft bribing people for positive reviews of Vista 7 [sic], which is just a horrible variant of Windows Vista. The reviews are a case of naked emperor, which aligns with our previous (fairly old by now) evidence and observations [1, 2].
Microsoft goes exceptionally far in order to police public perception. It’s not just about false and manipulated advertising, but it’s also about AstroTurfing and personal attacks against potential critics.
In certain cases, Microsoft would even try to push people out of their jobs. We’ve covered several such examples before and another recent one that we missed in 2008 involves a video game reviewer.
Not content with denying me my request to be able to, y’know, pay for my Xbox Live services, they’ve now taken to flat-out attacking me by trying to lose me a writing job.
There is more information about this incident here. An example of coordinated effects to manufacture news is documented with solid court evidence in [1, 2].
In response to this latest news about the army getting cracked for choosing Windows, interesting comments appeared in LinuxToday. Here are a couple, starting with some history.
But then I know that Microsoft is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect their image and to get _their_ story told. Remember, it was Microsoft who hounded a magazine chief editor to have a story told about one of their new projects. When the editor did assign the article to be written and a writer assigned, it was later found out that Microsoft assigned over a dozen Microsoft employees to this writer. They preplanned phone conversations, passed scripts around so everyone was on the same page, invited the writer to their site and took real good care that the _Microsoft_ version of the project was what was written. But in this case, they made one mistake and that was they accidentally included the writer in one of their planning emails.
They are The Puppe Masters. How else could you explain the great lengths many of these authors go to _not_ say that Microsoft has anything to do with these problems. As this current example shows.
Microsoft spends $BILLIONS$ propping up it’s products - and with great success.
Astroturfing, opinion shaping, advertising, paid endorsements, even techniques like elevator marketing at any IT trade show - “Hey Bob, you should see what Microsoft is showing off at their booth!”, “Yeah I have - they own the market”.
Don’t even get me started about Microsoft’s ample bag of dirty tricks and influence purchasing.
We will continue to document examples, as we have already done over the years.
Don’t miss the ‘news’ about Microsoft pulling (reusing) a 1-year-old ’study’ against Free software.
Microsoft disparages open-source TCO with year-old case study
[...]
The Speedy Hire case study is not new. It dates back to December 2007. So why is Microsoft touting it today? Perhaps due to the recession and desire by companies to find ways to cut costs by using more free software?
We’re seeing a lot of Microsoft 'studies' these days. Who peddles this stuff? As usual, all the paid Microsoft fans, who sing in harmony in hope of saving the convicted monopolist. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
SubSonica said,
December 4, 2008 at 3:59 am
For the first time MSFT OS market share already fell below 90%. Remember MAC OS is UNIX-based. Also good news for Internet standards, since Firefox share is consistently above 20% worldwide now:
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/01/mac-internet-share-hits-record-882-windows-drops-below-90/
Also notice how the fastest growing OS is Linux…
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 4, 2008 at 4:16 am
These figures are not correct. See explanation here.
Let’s not point to them because it legitimises them.
SubSonica said,
December 4, 2008 at 4:33 am
Yes, I know Gnu/Linux and Free Software market share is minimised/marginalised in every commercially motivated study/report (in the press the advertisers command, publishers obey, take into account that it is an “apple” blog). The relevant thing here is Microsoft losing its iron grip on the market as well as Gnu/Linux being the fastest-growing player in the OS market. Readers of the article are nos to easily fooled, as a commenter says:
“In reply to Louis Kindear:
I see no sign of Linux fading into irrelevance in these stats. In fact, it has the largest relative growth of the top three.
This is something that should make you as a consumer happy, because the threat of Linux is what keeps both Microsoft and Apple (somewhat) on their toes — there is a free alternative they have to compete with, that won’t go away.”
It is also worth noting that Gnu/Linux is growing a lot in emerging countries that produce a minority of Internet traffic, so while studies based on internet traffic/visits are useful, they are misleading about the real number of people using Gnu/Linux.
Roy Schestowitz said,
December 4, 2008 at 5:01 am
There is more to it. It’s referrals, not Internet traffic. The methods used there are laughable and they deserve more scrutiny.