Summary: Some of Microsoft's latest 'studies' (from the past week) are looked upon more closely for their true purpose to be understood

A few weeks ago we found out that Microsoft was "phone-spamming" potential clients. Now that Microsoft settles a case of IM spam, one can't help recalling the many incidents where Microsoft spammed people, sometimes specifically targeting GNU/Linux users by scraping their names off GNU/Linux Web sites. In addition, Microsoft is a considered a major cause for the world's SPAM (E-mail).

“Now that Microsoft settles a case of IM spam, one can’t help recalling the many incidents where Microsoft spammed people, sometimes specifically targeting GNU/Linux users by scraping their names off GNU/Linux Web sites.”Microsoft does a lot of things in bulk, including "spamming" the government last month. Going further back, we find many more examples [1, 2], including fake letters from dead people and rigging of polls against GNU/Linux and Java.

At the end of last year we showed that Microsoft was again paying IDC (IDG) to assist with lobbying, probably by producing biased results based on selective populations being massively inquired [1, 2]. Microsoft has used these tricks with IDC to belittle GNU/Linux, as we showed using Comes vs Microsoft exhibits. These self-serving 'surveys' and 'studies' (sometimes carried out jointly with entities like AARP) may take time for their purpose to be realised. As we showed this morning, the Gates Foundation uses the same tactics by sponsoring so-called 'studies'. Microsoft doesn't do this out of curiosity or as a service to others. It simple cannot because it would have to justify the expenses to investors. Microsoft's latest such 'studies' are leading to headlines like this one: "Microsoft helps remote workers"

Remote-working programmes can benefit employees and employers through increased productivity, reduced overhead and happier workers, according to a recent survey from Microsoft.

How is Microsoft going to use these results that it paid for?

There are more new examples like this, one of which involves smart grids [1, 2, 3] and may lead to nonsense/PR such as: "Microsoft To Cut Data Center Costs in Half"

How about this for a headline: "PayPal, Microsoft team up with Foursquare to Save The Children"

How lovely. Microsoft is now saving our children. All bow in awe. In the coming weeks it will become even clearer what Microsoft intends to do with those 'studies' that it bought. ⬆