02.15.09
Moles Watch: Will Poole, Sprint Nextel, Wipro, Slate
WE OCCASIONALLY take a glimpse at Microsoft seniors/alumni and especially where they happen to land after leaving Microsoft. Such shady figures can cause more damage from inside other companies, which they are likely to ‘marry’ with Microsoft. Unless there is sufficient opposition and sanity, companies might wed an eternal betrayer, just like EMC did.
As a bit of background on this topic, consider:
Today we look at 4 more reports that are worth keeping an eye on.
NComputing/Will Poole
Will Poole prefers to present himself as a man of goodwill, but he helped the sabotage of GNU/Linux-based OLPC XOs (leading, eventually, to the possible destruction of this charity as a whole). He also participated in programmes and groups that are related dumping techniques (EDGI) against GNU/Linux [1, 2]. It’s about getting children “addicted” to Microsoft, to borrow Bill Gates' explanation of this situation.
Will Poole recently entered a company that distributes many GNU/Linux solutions to schools and we have already explained why this is troubling [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. There is this new article about him with a portion that ties him to another malicious part of Microsoft.
Poole is one of the most prominent ex-Microsofties to leave the company in the past year. Until last September, he was vice president of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group (one of the better division names, in my opinion), and was in charge of providing software to markets in less-developed nations around the world. Before that, he was responsible for the Windows desktop operating system, so he knows a few things about shipping large-scale products. He first came to Microsoft in 1996 through its acquisition of eShop, a company he co-founded in 1991. Some of his post-Microsoft insights can be found on his “creative capitalism” website here.
[...]
Poole says NComputing is having a “profound effect on markets that were previously unable to use computer infrastructure because of cost.” His role is to help the company build its business from a strategic perspective, using his knowledge and contacts from around the world. “The exciting thing about NComputing is they’re already at scale,” he says. “It’s cheaper to fill up a school [with these PCs] than any other choice out there.” Poole says NComputing has about 150 employees in 14 countries, and they’re currently selling into 90 countries.
This can be more sinister than it sounds assuming children are turned into clients of foreign companies, only to be exposed to artificial limitations such as DRM.
Sprint Nextel
Another Microsoft executive has landed inside the board of another company, this time Sprint Nextel. It’s worth bearing in mind in case Microsoft signs some deal or collaborates with Sprint Nextel in the not-so-distant future.
Sprint Nextel Corp. has appointed a former Microsoft executive to the Clearwire Corp. board.
Brian McAndrews’ appointment to the Clearwire board took effect immediately, Clearwire said in a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He most recently led the advertiser and publisher solutions group of Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) as senior vice president and also is a director of Fisher Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: FSCI).
Wipro
Wipro was recently banned for malpractice, but most people may recognise Wipro as Microsoft’s ’shill’ in India [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] because it helps suppression of GNU/Linux and freedom across the country. Here is Wipro doing a lot more legwork for Microsoft, based on this new report.
Wipro says that it has deployed Office Communications Server 2007 to more than 80 customers, who range in size from 10,000 to 80,000 employees.
Wipro has a role in what locals sometimes call Microsoft's “Axis of Evil”, which together with the EDGI programme (see above) makes it clear that the country is exploited, as opposed to offered any real help. As we noted before, the India Daily said that “Wipro is just a servant of Microsoft facilitating Indian cyber slavery under the American corporate banners.”
Slate
We have already dissected Microsoft's relationship with Slate and further elaborated this in an analysis of the Microsoft-Abramoff tie. This new article from the New York Times (a Microsoft hostage too [1, 2]) reiterates important facts:
SOMEWHERE at Microsoft, there is a closet packed with leftover Slate umbrellas — a monument to the folly of asking people to pay for what they read on the Internet. These umbrellas — a $20 value! — were the premium we offered to people who would pay $19 for a year’s subscription to Slate, the Microsoft-owned online magazine (later purchased by The Washington Post). We were quite self-righteous about the alleged principle that “content” should not be free. The word itself was an insult — as if we were just making Jell-O salad in order to sell Tupperware.
This is why people must be skeptical about what they see in the media. Microsoft owns portions of it and as we demonstrated just hours ago, it shows. █
