"To illustrate how someone could react to this mudslinging by Microsoft, I have written a hypothetical complaint titled ‘Microsoft is looting the nation in alliance with Indian IT giants'. While constructing this hypothetical complaint, I have used what I call the ‘Microsoft patented mud-slinging algorithm’. I have included it as a stand alone appendix (Annexure A) to this letter. The purpose is to demonstrate that such complaints and counter complaints would lead all of us to disaster. This hypothetical counter complaint shows Microsoft as working at national and International forums to maintain and enhance its monopoly in global markets, and as attempting to ensure its monopoly strangle-hold on Indian desktop Market. It also paints INFOSYS, TCS, WIPRO and NASSCOM as willfully helping Microsoft in this evil design, and thus acting grossly against Indian National interests."

--Professor Deepak Phatak

India Gate

Summary: Microsoft's internal IT services are to be run by Infosys in India; Indian call centres used for scam calls that exploit and abuse Microsoft customers

Microsoft is gradually outsourcing staff and particular business tasks to India. We wrote about this many times before and referenced dozens of articles. It's not just engineers and support staff that Microsoft moves to India; parts of Microsoft's legal team are also being shifted to India. Sometimes it is not Microsoft which directly deals with its tasks; one prominent example of this is the PR agencies of Microsoft. Microsoft can conveniently distance itself from AstroTurfing this way.

In India, Microsoft has de facto subsidiaries like Infosys [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17], which carries out some of Microsoft's very own (internal) operations after changes that Microsoft announced earlier this year. Infosys also played Microsoft's part in the software patents and OOXML debates, offering cheaper labour and local lobby for the software giant from Redmond. There are all sorts of words that describe Infosys' behaviour and disservice to India. British colonialism relied on the likes of Infosys.

We have just found the following item in the news (again bumped up by Google News):

Microsoft and Infosys Joins Each Other | IT Services Out Sourcing

Two big companies of IT sector MICROSOFT and INFOSYS have signed a contract for next three years, according to this deal now INFOSYS and MICROSOFT will work together rand INFOSYS will organize the internal IT services of the Microsoft Company.

What can possibly go wrong? Well, Indian workers are skilled but they are also underpaid and Microsoft is allowed to get away with it (same for IBM and other multinationals). In other unrelated news:

Microsoft Scam Run From Indian call Centres

Cold callers pretending to be Microsoft's support service have targeted Britons with a new scam.

According to an investigation conducted by The Guardian, people receive a call on their home phone line from someone with an Indian accent, are quoted their name and address before being told that their PC is infested with viruses that could irreparably damage their files.

Microsoft considers legal action against cold call cons

Microsoft is considering legal action against companies in its Microsoft Partner Network that claim to be calling on its behalf to tell people their PCs have been infected with malicious software.

This would be a defensible lawsuit. Yesterday we posted a warning about incidents of this kind at Dell (relying on Windows though). ⬆

"In Ballmer's naively managerial mind-set, if Wood said it would take two months, then in reality it could be done in one—if only people would get fired up."

--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft's PR mogul