11.25.09
Boycott Google, Says Microsoft to Publishers
“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”
–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO
Summary: Microsoft is using companies against other companies that pose a threat to Microsoft’s revenue
Those among Microsoft evangelists who want to boycott Firefox and Opera may actually feel comfortable with Microsoft’s scheme to boycott Google through publishers. According to new reports, Microsoft’s plan may gain more members for this boycott. Will they be paid by Microsoft for this? Or will the bad publicity for Google be sufficiently worthwhile? As it stands, many people are sympathetic towards Google and disgusted by Microsoft’s strategy which leads to this service degradation:
MediaNews Group Inc., the Post’s publisher, will block Google News when it starts charging readers in Pennsylvania and California for online content next year, Chief Executive Officer Dean Singleton said in an interview. Morning News owner A.H. Belo Corp. may introduce online subscription fees and also block Google, Executive Vice President James Moroney said.
As a little bit of background, see:
- Microsoft Colludes Against Google
- Microsoft’s Search Endeavours: Resorting to Bribery, Deception, and Intimidation
- Microsoft’s Use of Bribes for Search, Only 4% of Microsoft/Razorfish Clients Used Microsoft Search
- Mainstream Media Finally Discovers Microsoft’s Anti-Google AstroTurf
- Microsoft’s Anti-Google Whisper Campaign
- What Makes Mr. Murdoch Tick
- Spoof: Behind the Google Scenes
- Google’s (Staff) Index Poisoned by Microsoft
- Confirmed: Murdoch Waves Goodbye to Google in Order to Please Ballmer
This whole idea of using companies to attack your main rival is rather familiar. Microsoft also paid SCO a lot of money when it attacked Linux. Here is another nice refresher:
First you had to convince the United States Department of Justice that you were not being monopolistic when it comes to the desktop operating system and web browser. You sited Apple, Linux, and Netscape as competitors in this space. Lost but later you settled with the Unitied States while litigating Netscape to death. Your 750 million settlement with AOL/Netscape bought you browser market share. Even though you supposedly out of court by 2003, you were funding SCO in hopes of killing Linux. Now that SCO is bankrupt, you are busy defending your office suite in court with the Word patent suit and Novell is still suing you over Word Perfect. Do you still find it profitable to sue smaller companies that use Linux in their talking-devices based on the Linux kernel like the TomTom?
It proceeds to showing why Microsoft has failed:
You lost…
* The kernel behind Google Android phones like the Droid is Linux.
* Netscape is now the open source browser Firefox. There have been over 400 million downloads since I made the bet with Nick in June 2009.
* Sun Microsystems, one your targets via SCO suits, is still sponsoring Open Office. In a few short months, you will have lost majority market share to the Open Office suite.
* The Google/Ubuntu hybrid web-optimized Linux system called ChromeOS will hit your operating system, browser, and office suite market share hard.
It may all be true, but Microsoft is now using SAP against OpenOffice.org and Java (the rivals of the main cash cow and Microsoft’s development universe, respectively). Microsoft is always finding someone who is corruptible or coercible enough to do its battles.
Matt Asay has just explained why Microsoft is so fearful of Free software and Google. It is a clear explanation:
Google makes money by making it easy to discover others’ content. So does Apple’s iTunes. Google can afford to give away lots of free software (and even free hardware) to nudge people into its advertising model.
That’s hugely disruptive.
In software, Microsoft doesn’t like competing with free Linux. Microsoft spends a lot of money developing Windows. It must seem unfair to have to compete with the rest of the industry, which increasingly coalesces around Linux (or Android, or MySQL, or…).
But that’s life in the open-source economy. Your core competence is always going to be someone else’s throwaway complement, and ripe for open-source commoditization.
Microsoft is still run by thugs, so the idea of using third parties to do the “dirty job” (like a mafia) is not far fetched, it’s already a reality. █
“[Microsoft's] Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”
–Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO
dyfet said,
November 25, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Again, I do not see how this can ultimately end other than badly for Microsoft. Restraint of trade and anti-trust come to immediate mind. Unless of course the “fix” is already in at the DOJ. This also demonstrates how a criminal organization ran by sociopaths can, if sufficiently large, damage society as a whole, and all for short term gains at the expense of the children and future of the world.
In Lakotah one is taught to consider the potential footprint of our choices and actions, as they may extend over and effect the next 7 generations. In choosing that particular terminology, I do like to think I have clean feet
.
What about the feet of common Microsoft “employees” and those that receive research grants who might only see what they work on as a paycheck causing no direct harm, but by supporting such a criminal organization even through their bargained labor, do in a small way help enable it to commit crimes? There worse things than being unemployed, and to me far worse things do include enabling, however minor it might at first seem in an individual’s work, in destroying future society that all our descendants must then live in.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
In cultures where money is God (or God is literally printed on the money), the end justifies any means.
“Do you feel like you’re screwing a porcupine and you’re one prick against thousands?” the OSCON audience member asked Ramji. Ramji politely replied: “It takes time to change and I knew that I’d be unpopular when I took this job…”
–Microsoft: Not worried about open source patents
dyfet Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
In the end it is a question of what kind of society you want for yourself and your children. In the United States, so very often, the real needs of the many are openly sacrificed for the greed of a few.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Upbringing glorifies consumerism, but that seems to be the end of it as nations of consumers falls into deep debt and must become producers to repay it.
NotZed Reply:
November 26th, 2009 at 2:14 am
“Upbringing glorifies consumerism, but that seems to be the end of it as nations of consumers falls into deep debt and must become producers to repay it. ”
It’s quite interesting to be at the fall of an empire (even if it probably has some time to go). I wonder if other falls of empire have been so obvious at the time.
(it might not be that fun eventually but it will still be interesting)
How is a democratic population ever going to be able to change their lot if it is so undermined by monied interests? Will there need to be a popular uprising? Not whilst there is bread and circuses (food stamps/dole and hollywood) anyway.
Time will tell all.