09.11.09
Microsoft Uses Novell to Shill for Microsoft in Government (Videos)
Summary: Microsoft uses Novell as a promoter in the O’Reilly Media Gov 2.0 Summit
YOUTUBE has two new videos that are very interesting, especially in light of Microsoft's "open government" nonsense that we wrote about this morning. Watch how Microsoft tries to portray itself as an “open source” player/collaborator, letting Novell do much of the talking.
Here is the second new video where Microsoft and Novell are sort of shown as a couple. It’s like they are reading from a script and Susan Heystee (previously mentioned here) repeats some of the above explanations. It’s to be expected from marketing people who lack understanding of technical jargon.
It will hopefully not be interpreted as sexism, but Novell happens to be the female in this promotional video that seemingly depicts a (professional) relationship. It’s probably just a coincidence though, an interesting one nonetheless.
The above videos serve Microsoft a lot better than they serve Novell, which probably will alienate some of its remaining customers (Novell’s business declines every quarter). Microsoft also uses its government lobbyists against Google, as the following new post reminds us.
According to the AOL Daily Finance article–Microsoft Secret ‘Screw Google’ Meetings in D.C.– where this story broke, the general purpose of this group of people is to talk trash about Google to government regulators and policy makers in order to throw road blocks in front of Google.
[...]
Microsoft has had its share of run-ins with government regulators both in the United States and in the European Union. One of the reasons they were so successful in the 90s was because of well-publicizied anti-trust activities around Windows sales, which the US Government forced them to stop doing. More recently, Microsoft has had even bigger regulatory headaches from the EU. You would think they might be a little sensitive to this approach, given their history.
Both Novell and Microsoft are losing business to Google in government, so maybe they can make a good pairing after all. In that first video, watch how the speaker insists on putting a Vista 7 advert on her machine. They supposedly try to promote this successor of Windows Vista even in public conferences that target the government.
Wall Street is still worrying over the netbook impact on Vista 7 sales, argues Mary Jo Foley. It’s all about GNU/Linux.
How much will netbooks dent Microsoft’s Windows sales?
It’s a question that continues to preoccupy many a Wall Street analyst, especially as Microsoft marches toward the October 22 launch of Windows 7. No matter how many times Microsoft officials claim that they believe the company will be able to charge premium prices for Windows 7, even on netbooks, Microsoft watchers ask again about just how elastic Windows’ pricing really can be, given that netbooks go for a few hundred dollars.
Microsoft will have to face the fact that operating systems are now a commodity. Nothing will change this, certainly not artificial crippling of hardware and software, not even blackmail and shameless FUD. Operating systems are now a commodity, but a lot of the world does not know this yet. █
“Acer and Intel, for example, are already complaining that Windows 7 Starter Edition simply won’t sell.”
bclaybrook said,
September 12, 2009 at 7:51 am
As a former employee of Novell, it is embarassing to see Novell “supporting” Microsoft as an open source player. Privately, Microsoft hates open source and has since the early 2000′s when they used to come by my office at Aberdeen Group in Boston. I told Jason Matusow that Microsoft was being stupid railing against open source and Linux. Microsoft saw the threat of open source from day one and thought that it could derail it.