“Analysts sell out - that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: A lot of news about Microsoft in the search arena

EARLIER THIS month we warned that comScore would probably be used to market Microsoft, just after signing a deal with Microsoft.

It took a very short time for this expectation to be actualised. Watch what comScore is doing.

According to comScore Inc. (SCOR), Yahoo and Microsoft have an opportunity to make marketshare headway...

This report from The Wall Street Journal (among other sources) was then used to spread the illusion that Bing has a fighting chance.

"The recently announced search partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo! certainly makes the combined entity a more formidable competitor to Google in the U.S. search marketplace," said Eli Goodman, comScore Search Evangelist.

It says nothing about the new comScore-Microsoft partnership. How much of a role does that play? There is another possible angle here. It is not unusual for Google-hostile remarks to come from former employees of Microsoft or those who are paid by Microsoft to do so. Money voids trust.

Speaking of paid-for analysis, watch what Microsoft is doing with IDC at the moment.

Microsoft has enlisted the dedicated cheerleadership of IDC to write a report that says how Windows 7 will boost employment and revenue for the IT industry as a whole - and for companies in the Microsoft partner ecosystem in particular.

This was expected. They do this every time an operating system is released by Microsoft even if they get it totally wrong [1, 2].

The Bing-sponsored news site is letting some Seattle-based person spew FUD against Google to essentially promote Bing. There is more of the same in the Seattle press, which is in favour of Microsoft and against those 'evil' regulators. Could the bias be any more transparent? They basically try to stave off regulators, who may stands in the way of the horrible Microsoft-Yahoo! deal [1, 2, 3]. Forbes has published the following discussion about it.

Microsoft-Yahoo! 'Partnership' Is Anti-Competitive

Now that Microsoft and Yahoo! have finally reached terms on an Internet search deal, it's time to focus on a critical question: Will antitrust laws permit it?

The proposed "partnership," which calls for Yahoo! to exit the search business and rely exclusively on Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, has been billed as the first real (and, according to the parties, only) challenge to Google's leadership of the Internet search market. Yet, if the U.S. Department of Justice applies traditional antitrust analysis to the proposed deal, it's dead. And that, ultimately, is as it should be.

An op-ed from IDG has this to say:

Google has little to fear from Microsoft-Yahoo deal

[...]

The 10-year agreement calls for Microsoft's new Bing search engine to power Yahoo's search sites, and for Yahoo to sell premium search advertising services for both companies. The companies said they expect the deal, which must be reviewed by U.S. and European regulators, to close early next year.

Some believe that regulators won't stand in the way, whereas the pro-big business Wall Street Journal seems to be favouring this sad elimination of Yahoo! as a search option after sheer abuse against it by an unaccountable monopoly with a track record at the DoJ.

Speaking of the DoJ, they are losing sight of Microsoft's many abuses such as racketeering. From CNN's wire:

Microsoft Still On Track To End Government Antitrust Oversight

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is still on schedule to be released from under the thumb of strict government oversight by 2011, the federal judge monitoring its antitrust compliance efforts said Thursday.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the software company appears to be on track to complete by May 2011 the requirements agreed upon in the antitrust settlement reached in 2002 with state and federal regulators.

They must not be paying attention or maybe the impact of cronyism is to blame here. Watch what Microsoft has done to Yahoo! in recent weeks alone.

The Web portal alienated much of Wall Street with the terms of its search deal with Microsoft. But, with the shares now off 16% since the deal was announced, investors may want to step back and look at the bigger picture.

Microsoft is already spending loads of money on advertising (increasing losses for Microsoft in this area) and also returning to bribing of users ("bribing" being a word which was used by some reporters in the mainstream media [1, 2]). This new press release from Arlington suggests that Microsoft still profits from bad drugs that are promoted via the grey Internet. ⬆