Buying friends, fans and influencing people?

Boycott Novell, being an independent Web site, is not sympathetic towards Apple, but when practices that are illegal (at least in the European Union) are used by Microsoft, then we are willing to defend even Apple's position. When Microsoft is believed to be attacking Apple by proxy, then we wish to intervene too. After all, GNU/Linux suffers from similar types of Microsoft attacks [1, 2], so learning the anatomy of one helps understand another.

Now, will the world's regulatory bodies please have a look at this? Microsoft is quietly approaching Apple/Mac bloggers, offering them $15,000 to attack Apple. One of the recipients of such a sellout proposition leaked out the request in order to expose Microsoft.

Microsoft to Mac enterprise bloggers: How much to sell out Apple?

[...]

One of our customers has asked us write up a technical marketing case for Windows Vista over Mac OSX in the enterprise. I’m contacting you to see if you know anyone who would be interested and capable of writing this based on background materials we have.

The candidate should have a good understanding of client systems in the enterprise and the technologies behind issues that are important in the enterprise (deployment, manageability, work group and policy management, security, suitability of developer platforms for line of business applications, tech support, licensing, TCO).

We have some background materials that include a 75 page technical document called “Apple in the Enterprise” and other summaries of technical points, but it all needs to be put together to make the case.

It’s not too hard to figure out who the customer is here. The price to sell out the Mac in the enterprise is $15,000. But my guess is that this fee may be negotiable upwards depending on the brand of the author in question.

Can it be that the Mac and the iPhone are gaining enough traction in the enterprise to start ringing alarm bells in Redmond? It appears so.

Mind the part about "[o]ne of our customers." As we warned and showed many times before, Microsoft does these jobs by proxy, through marketing agencies that it hires [1, 2, 3, 4]. It gives them a 'buffer zone', but it's clear where the funding is coming from and whose motives are at play.

How many GNU/Linux bloggers out there have already been offered huge sums of money to attack Free software? Given that Microsoft considers GNU/Linux a threat greater than Apple, it's only natural to assume so. Bruce Perens had interesting inside information to share about this. To quote an older reference that we have in our collection:

Microsoft has announced the "Microsoft BlogStars" contest, to Hunts for Developer Bloggers in India. After feeling the power and increase of the Bloggers community in India, Microsoft tries to trap and hunt Bloggers in India to buildup the blogging community, for writing blog posts supporting towards Microsoft Technologies.

Wonderful, eh?

Well, wait. It's not over yet. Just a few days ago, Microsoft publicly slammed Google Apps on Gartner's own soapbox that they gave the CEO.

Steve 'Footnote' Ballmer in denial over Google Docs

As I write this article using Google Docs, I can't help wondering whether Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer really believed when he publicly told two Gartner analysts last week on stage that nobody uses it. Is Ballmer in denial or privately sweating bullets?

Steve Ballmer is using as a press platform his well-paid friends at the Gartner Group [1, 2, 3] where he can spew out this FUD. There is nobody to challenge his claims there, despite the fact that Microsoft loses fat contracts due to Google Docs. Several months ago, Gartner and Microsoft jointly confessed that Windows has back doors, having been exposed a little too much. These two parties are joined by the hip.

Previously it was Microsoft's relationship with the Burton Group [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24] that may have helped disseminate anti-Google material, slamming Google Apps (Office competitor) as well. It's more credible when it comes from seemingly-independent sources and it's then being picked up by Microsoft and added to its arsenal in its own domain. ⬆