05.04.09
Did Microsoft Hire Consumer Watchdog to Attack Google?
Rent a bulldog
Summary: A look beneath the surface reveals that ConsumerWatchdog.org is “the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights”, which is affiliated with/derived from Grassroots Enterprise, a Washington/SF-based AstroTurfer for hire
FOR A verifiable fact, Microsoft is the biggest lobbying monster in its area. Someone has just informed us that ConsumerWatchdog.org is apparently a lobby used by Microsoft (mostly to attack Google), so we decided to investigate this. Having already found some Microsoft-backed anti-Google lobbies in the past [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], we took a look at this latest company’s background and dug a lot deeper. Let’s see what ConsumerWatchdog.org says about Microsoft and what ConsumerWatchdog.org has to say about Google. What a striking difference.
Looking at ConsumerWatchdog.org using enhanced tools (the likes of them sometimes use services like DomainsByProxy.com), we find the following record:
Domain ID:D863261-LROR Domain Name:CONSUMERWATCHDOG.ORG Created On:03-Jun-1997 04:00:00 UTC Last Updated On:07-Jun-2008 00:26:36 UTC Expiration Date:02-Jun-2010 04:00:00 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:GoDaddy.com, Inc. (R91-LROR) Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED Registrant ID:GODA-044511122 Registrant Name:Doug Heller Registrant Organization:Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rig Registrant Street1:1750 Ocean Park Blvd. Registrant Street2:Ste 200 Registrant Street3: Registrant City:Santa Monica Registrant State/Province:California Registrant Postal Code:90405 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.3103920522 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX: Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:webmaster@consumerwatchdog.org Admin ID:GODA-244511122 Admin Name:Doug Heller Admin Organization:Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rig Admin Street1:1750 Ocean Park Blvd. Admin Street2:Ste 200 Admin Street3: Admin City:Santa Monica Admin State/Province:California Admin Postal Code:90405 Admin Country:US Admin Phone:+1.3103920522 Admin Phone Ext.: Admin FAX: Admin FAX Ext.: Admin Email:doug@consumerwatchdog.org Tech ID:GODA-144511122 Tech Name:Domain Direct Tech Organization:TUCOWS.com Inc. Tech Street1:96 Mowat Avenue Tech Street2: Tech Street3: Tech City:Toronto Tech State/Province:Ontario Tech Postal Code:M6K3M1 Tech Country:CA Tech Phone:+1.4165350123 Tech Phone Ext.: Tech FAX:+1.4165315584 Tech FAX Ext.: Tech Email:dnstech@domaindirect.com Name Server:NS1.GRASSROOTS.COM Name Server:NS2.GRASSROOTS.COM
See that last bit? It’s important. Consumerwatchdog.org is linked to Grassroots.com, which is Grassroots Enterprise.
Grassroots Enterprise is not about grassroots. It’s about AstroTurfing. Sourcewatch wrote:
According to the company’s web site, Grassroots Enterprise, Inc., led by its CEO, John Hlinko, “combines online technology and communications strategy to help our clients achieve their public affairs objectives. Our proprietary technology Grassroots Multiplier® uses the Internet to centralize and simplify the recruitment, management, and mobilization of our clients’ supporters – employees, members, customers, vendors and other stakeholders who can grow into a long-term asset to our clients’ business.”
It’s a business. It hires people to do jobs for companies (clients).
According to Wikipedia, “Consumer Watchdog (USA), [is] an organization which advocates for taxpayer and consumer interests in the United States,” but it also states that it is “formerly the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.” So they change names; that’s what companies and lobbies typically do when they get exposed or absorb a bad reputation. It’s a well known and basic strategy in PR.
Oiaohm found out that the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (aka Consumerwatchdog.org) even has a subsite on Grassroots.com. Why is this not surprising? They probably just try to escape the obvious affiliation which would be damaging to their credibility. Lobbyists tend to have multiple umbrellas, which make them runaway targets. See for example Jonathan Zuck, who seems to have turned ATL into ACT after it had been exposed massively (think about fake letters from dead people).
Going back to Grassroots Enterprise, watch just what they boast about:
Are you ready to get your volunteers and members to mobilize the vote for you in 2008?
With the Grassroots Multiplier℠ PhoneTheVote application, they can actually be mobile as they mobilize. This innovative alternative to traditional phonebanks gives your activists and volunteers the ability to carry a powerful political application right in their pocket!
Grassroots Multiplier℠ PhoneTheVote takes the traditional phone bank into the web 2.0 generation by empowering your stakeholders to log on and make phone calls on your behalf — for get out the vote efforts, fundraising, grassroots mobilization, or just for rapid dissemination of information.
With Grassroots Multiplier℠ PhoneTheVote your volunteer callers can be directed to make calls wherever they are need — by geographic location, demographic, political affiliation, or any number of categories. Your volunteers can also be given dynamically generated “just-in-time” customized phone scripts to maximize their impact. And best of all, the information that the volunteers collect is feed into a central database in real time.
They brag about AstroTurfing patents/trademarks, just like the ones from Waggener Edstrom. How deep can this really go? █
Microsoft AstroTurf stories:
- The Microsoft Connection with Dewey Square Group and DCI/New Media
- Microsoft ‘Bribes’ Mac Bloggers to Slam Apple, Gartner Hosts Google FUD
- Microsoft, TCS, DCI, Edelman, and Those Fake Letters About IP/SCO/Monopoly
- James Plamondon: Microsoft Guerrilla
- FullSIX and Mr. Youth LLC May Be Ruining the Web (AstroTurfing) on Microsoft’s Behalf
- Microsoft: 800 lb. Guerrilla
- Astroturfing Examples: Learning How Microsoft Tames the Internet
- Waggener Edstrom, Maureen O’Gara and Other Microsoft Shills
- Partial Index: Summary of Bribed Sites, Journalists, and Bloggers (Vista 7)
- Waggener-Edstrom Behind the 2008 Laptop Bribes, Edelman Behind 2006′s
- Manipulation, Astroturfing, and What Governments Can Do
- Beware the OOXML AstroTurfer: “The Wraith”, “multivac1”, “hAl”, Among Other Nyms
- Microsoft May Have Bribed India for OOXML Pressure
- Microsoft Has Been Rigging Votes/Polls for Ages
- Gary M. Stewart (aka “Flatfish”) About Microsoft AstroTurfing: “It’s made me A LOT of money….”
- Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does This
- Respecting AstroTurfers?
- Some New (But Very Old) Microsoft AstroTurfing Examples
- Joe Barr, Linux.com Editor – My Obituary
- Joe Barr Knew Microsoft’s Tactics All Too Well
- 66 Pages of Microsoft Evilness
- Another AstroTurf Scam Exposed?
- Quick Mention: Sony is AstroTurfing, Just Like Microsoft
- Memo to Novell: Leave YouTube Alone
- Microsoft Blast from the Past: Ads Banned for Spurring Violence
- Is YouTube’s “NovellVideo” a Novell AstroTurfer?
- Microsoft/Munchkin ‘Breaks’ the Web to Break Open Document Standards (Again)
- Rob Enderle Guarantees “Amazing Numbers”, Show E-mails to Microsoft
- Microsoft Agents from Waggener Edstrom Airbrush Wikipedia, Glorify Paymaster
- Microsoft Unleashes Proxies at Journalists to Defend Vulnerable Vista
- Microsoft’s OOXML Viral Marketing Reaches YouTube
Doug Heller said,
May 4, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Please see http://www.consumerwatchdog.org for our 20+year record. As you will see, our consumer advocacy work has saved consumers over $60 billion on auto insurance alone. We’ve also won patient rights laws and fought electricity deregulation and attempts to bail out utilities with ratepayer money.
As for Grassroots Enterprise, that company is our website host. We pay them for their server space and to use their webpage templates in order to build our site. We are no more “affiliated with/derived from” them than we are with our telephone service provider Verizon or Apple Computer, which sold us some iMacs.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 4th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Hi,
This does not address the subject of this post however. I also hear about ACT “helping small businesses, yadda yadda…”
I was unable to find a products/services page in Grassroots.com, but this one seems like the equivalent section:
http://www.grassroots.com/what/
Are they also doing hosting? I can’t find any information about that. How many companies do they provide hosting for? Where can one sign up?
Shane Coyle Reply:
May 4th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Firstly, as always, thank you to Mr Heller for stopping by and contributing to the discussion. Clarifications are always welcome.
I just checked out that grassroots.com/what link and I can’t help but feel like I need a shower, I’m just not sure they make water hot enough to make me feel clean again.
Perhaps a new name is in order for grassroots.com, since Astroturf hasn’t any roots that I’m aware of.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 4th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
When someone pays you to just attack something you don’t even care about, then it’s even worse than AstroTurfing. The non-technical term is “attack dog”, I suspect.
Doug Heller said,
May 4, 2009 at 2:56 pm
As you will see from the reporting on our battle with Google, it is funded with a grant from the privacy rights oriented Rose Foundation, based in California. At one point, Google contacted that charitable foundation trying to defund us. Here’s more on that from Congressional Quarterly: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/corporateering/articles/?storyId=25070 and a detailed rundown from my colleague: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/corporateering/articles/?storyId=25152
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 4th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
So it’s true that you are basically hired as a gun against Google. What’s in it for them?
I notice that you also avoid my questions, which seems like a diversion tactic.
Eruaran said,
May 5, 2009 at 10:32 am
Sorry Doug, but your website is so outrageously biased that it is impossible to take you seriously. I find it extraordinary that an alleged “consumer watchdog” has so much time for attacking Google that a search for “Microsoft” on your website delivers up *not* articles that might in any way at all relate to Microsoft’s ongoing harms to competitors and consumers alike, but rather it delivers up a veritable catwalk of articles which attack Google.
Even some of the most notorious Microsoft boosting sellouts can to a better job at the appearance of impartiality.
And Grassroots Enterprise is not something that any reputable consumer watchdog group would want their name in any way associated with, purely for the sake of credibility.
As someone who works in this industry daily and all too frequently sees and experiences the fruits of Microsoft’s anticompetitive activities I for one have no time for diplomacy with people like you who so mendaciously ignore the biggest elephant in the room.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am
This elephant is getting less big today.