12.09.09
How Microsoft Breaks the Internet – Latest Examples
“The Internet? We are not interested in it.”
–Bill Gates, 1993
Summary: 3 new examples of ways in which Microsoft ruins the Internet for everyone
SPAM
LAST YEAR we wrote about Microsoft's role in destroying E-mail for everyone (never mind the fight against web standards). Almost half of all Windows PCs are said to be zombies and the large botnets are estimated to still be sending about 1011 SPAM per day. The following new report agrees with figures that we have seen before.
Compromised (zombie) machines accounted for more than four in five (83.4 per cent) of an estimated global volume of 107 billion junk mail messages sent out every day during 2009.
[...]
MessageLabs, a web and email filtering service owned by Symantec since last year, reports that 10 heavyweight botnets (including Cutwail, Rustock and Mega-D) control a combined zombie hoard of at least five million compromised computers. Cutwail was the worst of he bunch and blamed by MessageLabs for 29 percent of all spam or 8,500 billion junk mail messages between April and November 2009.
[...]
Cutwail was also used to send out spam email contaminated with infected attachments carrying the Bredolab Trojan dropper, disguised as an innocuous ZIP file. Machines infected with Bredolab were used to run botnet agents or spyware on compromised machines. Spam runs punting Bredolab-infected messages rose steadily throughout 2009 to reach an October peak of 3.6 billion Bredolab contaminated emails.
[...]
The infamous Conficker worm haunted the threat landscape during 2009. An estimated six million machines are infected by the malware. However this vast cybercrime resource has remained dormant throughout the year, possibly because the hackers who created it were far more successful than they originally intended and know anything they do with the uber-botnet now is likely to bring a great deal of unwelcome attention.
The worms above are Windows worms.
Scam
Jose X has sent us this pointer, quoting the parts which say: “With a little sleight of hand, con artists can dupe them into giving top billing to fraudulent Web sites that prey on consumers, making unwitting accomplices of companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. [..] He then used his knowledge of how search engines rank Web sites to achieve something that shocked him: His phony site got a No. 2 ranking on Yahoo Inc.’s search engine and landed in the top slot on Microsoft Corp.’s Bing, ahead of even the credit union’s real site. [...] Google Inc., which handles two-thirds of U.S. search requests, didn’t fall into Stickley’s trap.”
Jose argues: “If Microsoft weren’t so sloppy, they would be extremely dangerous… or maybe that is part of the act.”
We previously gave examples to show that Microsoft is gaming and censoring its own search results. That’s why Microsoft must never gain any control over search. Microsoft is far too unethical to handle such a task.
“Another One Bites the Dust”
That’s the description offered by one of our readers, who has contributed the following bit of analysis about what Microsoft did to Yahoo!
Yahoo Search is Bunged
Microsoft friendly sources report that Yahoo is losing search share:
UPDATE: Yahoo CEO Says Search Share Hit By Lost Toolbar Deals
Bartz: Yahoo’s Search Decline Due To Dead Toolbar DealsThe loss is blamed on failure to maintain “toolbar” deals with computer vendors but this begs the question with a flimsy excuse. Because toolbar deals are just another form of market share, saying that Yahoo has lost market share because they have lost toolbar deals is not a convincing explanation. Why is it that vendors like HP and Acer have dumped Yahoo toolbars? Have so many computers been turned over in the last six months as the share decline indicates?
Not mentioned in the above stories is the recent replacement of Yahoo’s search engine. This was the end result of Microsoft’s long, ugly proxy fight and slog against Yahoo. Soon after replacing founder Yang with an interloper from Autodesk, Microsoft replaced Yahoo’s popular search with the “decision engine” Bing, an advertisement that pretends to be a search engine.
Microsoft’s Proxy Fight Against Yahoo! Turns it to Puppet State
No Yahoo! for Microsoft, Carl Icahn Sued by Goldman SachsIt did not take long for the market to correct itself and prove Microsoft critics correct. Microsoft advocates bragged that their coup over Yahoo search instantly gave Bing 20% of the market. Sensible people predicted that Microsoft would wreck Yahoo the same way they ruined Hotmail. The fall is reportedly to from 18.8% in September to 18% in October. That is a stunning 5% drop in a month. Looking back at other earlier months, we see an accelerating loss from 0.0, 0.3 and 0.5% declines to the whopping 0.8% that Bing delivered. Net statistics from the usual suspects should be treated with caution but it is not surprising to see Bing take Yahoo’s search share
down. Others statistic sites show similar trends with different but proportional levels of Google dominance and gains. What is surprising is how quickly Microsoft’s deal has damaged their former competitor.comScore Releases October 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings
Search Engine Market ShareWhen will stock holders and regulators wake up? Is this the kind of performance stock holders expected from Bartz, the AutoDesk interloper? Getting tied up with Microsoft was supposed to be good for Yahoo. Will regulators sit on their hands as another innovative and economically important American company is destroyed?
That too was a recent lesson in how vicious Microsoft still is. The company is a curse and a threat to the Internet. █
“Spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time.”
–Bill Gates, 2004
wallclimber said,
December 9, 2009 at 10:14 am
Regarding the Yahoo search bar…
Maybe vendors like HP and Acer have dumped Yahoo toolbars so they can replace it with Microsoft’s awesome new “Bing Bar”. Yup, Microsoft has a new toolbar.
eWeek explains it as “Windows/Microsoft Raises Bing Bar Against Google” (No need for a link, just Google it).
According to eWeek:
[snip] Microsoft now offers the Bing Bar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. The downloadable application grafts a tool bar to your Web browser, allowing one-click access to various Bing features such as Shopping, Video, Web Search and Maps, as well as instant access to news, stocks, weather and Hotmail.”[snip]
Wow! A new toolbar! That’s some seriously original and innovative stuff, don’t you think? Google must surely be shaking with fear…lol.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 10:21 am
It’s not an article actually, it’s PR. It’s “Microsoft Nick” (Nicholas Kolakowski from Microsoft Watch) doing his usual thing.
Robotron 2084 said,
December 9, 2009 at 10:46 am
That 40% figure wasn’t correct last year when Roy used it and it remains incorrect. Rather, out of all the statistics he could find, this was the highest one.
As for the “scam”, all the search engines share this problem. My father almost fell victim to this using Google. He searched for “itunes” and clicked on the first sponsored link. He thought it was the company website because the green address under the sponsored link said “apple.com”, but in fact that was false information entered by the ad buyer. Instead the link went to a 3rd party site trying to sell an expensive music membership. In fact, scam artists are more likely to try and game Google’s results because they are the most popular.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am
One or two months ago Microsoft reported that it found malware on 1 in 3 machines it had scanned.