Lobbyists Drive Technology

WE wrote about the personal contributions from Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates to politicians only about a fortnight ago. This leaves a lot of room for political corruption, which comes in the form of favours or bribes. Nepotism and favouritism are to blame. On many occasions we also explained the degree of political manipulation in the Yahoo! saga. Microsoft just has too much control over the government, and it shows.

In Jerry Yang's last stand he not only discovered but also pretty much confessed that Microsoft had ruined his planned deal with Google (Susan Decker was involved too). Microsoft virtually runs the country -- at least in its area or scope -- because it invariantly shoots down all sorts of peripheral deals which it does not like, as we showed many times before [1, 2, 3].

What a change. Back in the late 1990s, when Microsoft was busy fending off hordes of government antitrust lawyers, the company took a remarkable step: it actually asked Congress to reduce funding for the Justice Department's antitrust division.

Gates Fundation [sic] and Pollution

To those who are new to what the Gates Fundation [sic] is doing, a good start would be this post. In short, the Gates Foundation is investing in companies that are responsible for a lot of pollution and also cause death. It's hard for ordinary people to know the true stories though because Gates and Microsoft are also acquiring media companies, then manipulating them. They tell the stories that they want to be told.

Anyway, here is the latest example of an investment with negative impact.

Gates, who previously reported a 5.5 percent stake in AutoNation, said on Friday that his Cascade Investment LLC owned 9.4 million shares in AutoNation and that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust holds more than 8.3 million shares.

Making the would better place, one car at a time. That's what charity and philanthropy are apparently about. Tax exceptions are only a bonus.

Gartner and Other Sellouts

There is a lot of goodness coming from Microsoft's latest crime. As more E-mails are divulged, it becomes clearer that Microsoft is muscling journalists and exploiting the Gartner Group too.

For example, the summary of Microsoft's meeting with several Gartner analysts in October of 2006 is fascinating, and made more so by Jamin Spitzer, group manager of Worldwide Analyst Relations at Microsoft, who suggests that two objectives of the meeting with Gartner were to create "confidence in the Vista product, OEM/Retail channel, and device/app compatibility," as well as "provide Gartner 'wiggle room'."

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More generally, these emails as well as the others demonstrate that Microsoft does a good job of managing the media, including analysts and reporters. I think it would be too strong to suggest that Microsoft manipulates the media; if anything, the emails reveal a collegial but respectful interaction with the media.

Gartner's recent anti-ODF 'study' (composed by a Microsoft turncoat) and anti-FOSS 'brochureport' are part of a pattern. For some background about this Partner Group is, see:

• Gartner et al Fixing the Price for the Entire Industry?
• How Jim Allchin, Gartner and Enderle Lied to the Whole World
• IDC, Gartner and Yankee Group's Latest Press Attack on Customer's Competitors
• Analyst Firms, Including IDC and Gartner, Named and Shamed for Serving as Microsoft Mouthpieces
• Another Hopeful 'Prophecy' From the Gartner Group('s Paying Clients)
• Microsoft 'Bribes' Mac Bloggers to Slam Apple, Gartner Hosts Google FUD
• Analyst Lies and Novell Business Growth
• Larry Dignan, His Loaner Laptop, and Microsoft Shills (Gartner Group)

It is sad to see the system declining like this because of manipulation. It's even more sad to the see sources of information being subverted by those very same manipulators who want their bogus story to be told and remembered rather than the truth. ⬆

Cronyism at its finest