Summary: An appointment of Penn to the role of "chief strategy officer" says a lot about Microsoft's strategy

IN ADDITION to trolling Google with patents (via proxies) Microsoft is running smear campaigns against Google. Microsoft is a political movement, not a technology company, and now it is hiring political astroturf figures and promoting them to the very top [1]. To quote this new report: "For Washingtonians, Penn's appointment is of particular interest, given his time on the Clinton presidential campaign and his subsequent resignation after his public relations work raised conflict-of-interest issues. During his year and half at Microsoft, he has helped the firm use his penchant for negative advertising against tech competitors."

Writing about this man's promotion to "chief strategy officer", Glyn Moody says that "if Nadella thinks "scroogled" is strategy, MS is truly in finished" (Nadella is not really in charge, Ballmer and Gates still control him behind the scenes and he serves mostly as a public face).

So the official Microsoft strategy now revolves around throwing libel at Google, based on Penn's promotion. Sam Dean, often an apologist for Microsoft, asked yesterday [3]: "How Will Microsoft Respond to the Success of Chromebooks?"

Well, we think it's very clear now: smears and patent litigation/extortion.

Welcome the 'new' Microsoft. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Former Clinton strategist to help shape Microsoft’s future





2. Microsoft Is Said to Shake Up Staff With Penn’s Appointment

   Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s newly-appointed Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, in an effort to reignite growth, is shuffling management and putting former political operative Mark Penn in the new role of chief strategy officer, according to people with knowledge of the matter.





3. How Will Microsoft Respond to the Success of Chromebooks?

   As we've reported, although market research findings have been very bleak for PCs and PC equipment makers, Chromebooks--portable computers based on Google's Chrome OS platform--have continued to sell well, and did especially well during the 2013 holiday season. These devices feature low prices, with some of the them going for $200, and a cloud-centric approach to working with apps and data. They also increasingly come with freebies, such as large amounts of free, online storage.