On the other hand, if they fail to keep their independence, then they will lose users and eventually money. Although they may do some damage along the way. Technology and game sites seem to be most prone to this – or maybe that is because those are the ones I tend to read.

Unfortunately of course there are many more ms ‘fanbois’ out there than otherwise — who don’t see any problem and in fact may be attracted to such marketing on a blog roll (hell, even groklaw has been spruiking MS PR lately if not intentionally), so maybe it is just a deliberate tactic to gain users. And getting the more rabid fanbois (e.g. apple, etc) riled up never hurt a site’s traffic too much did it?