02.16.10
Ashley Highfield (Formerly of the MSBBC) ‘Pulls a Ballmer’
Summary: A controversial Microsoft/BBC executive accuses Google of the very same things Microsoft is doing to one’s privacy
THE video shown above was taken in London. In it, Steve Ballmer is seen taking just one of his many cheap shots at Google; there are many more. He is being hypocritical too, but that’s not the point. Last week we mentioned Erik Huggers, a former Microsoft employee who was doing his usual mischiefs at the BBC.
There are many other Microsoft UK executives in the BBC [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] and one BBC executive, Ashley Highfield, recently moved to Microsoft UK, right after the iPlayer fiasco he was responsible for [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Highfield does throw punches and FUD. He did, for example, say: “We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users.”
That was of course an utter lie and right now he’s using channel 4 (another UK channel) to throw FUD at Google:
The one distinguishing feature according to Microsoft is privacy. The firm’s UK Managing Director Ashley Highfield told Channel 4 News: “Every website address, every URL they type in is going back to Google. I think a number of users will not want Google to know where they’ve been on the internet.
“Most people do not realise the difference between Internet Explorer 8 which does not capture any information about the websites you visit and other browsers that do capture the information and send it back to the ‘mothership’.”
“Capture the information and send it back to the ‘mothership’,” eh? Like Highfield’s own employer is doing with software that it virtually forces people to buy [1, 2]? The hypocrisy is amazing. Who does he think he is? Ballmer? And this is the type of nonsense that broadcasters and newspapers over here share with the public. We wrote about this problem yesterday. █
