Over the past few months we have shown evidence and provided actual examples of Microsoft advertisers in disguise. They occupy blogs, forums and even news sites.

Microsoft continues to have what it calls "evangelists" (effectively a more positive connotation for "shills") posting comments in places. Here is one with a disclosure. Not just an employee, mind you, but "an evangelist" (whose job is probably to concentrate on such stuff, c/f Microsoft's "Evangelism is War") that defends Silverbullet in ZDNet. In other words, innocent commenters in ZDNet need to take their arguments against those who are paid by Microsoft to do this.

In response to the article "Mozilla warns of Flash and Silverlight 'agenda'":

[...]

So far, though the technology is quite young, Silverlight has already an impressive momentum, and we do receive a very positive feedback from both our customers and partners, and the users.

Christophe Lauer -- Web & RIA Evangelist, Microsoft France (NB: I'm not working at Microsoft Corp, nor in the Silverlight product group. All I mentionned is public data and information that everyone can verify)

Look at that fearful/defensive disclaimer at the end. For what it's worth, Novell too has some boosters.

There is some good news about resistance to this horrid deformation of the World Wide Web. Remember Microsoft/Yahoo? Shortly after the Yahoo bid was made I published an article that appeared in Slashdot and said that Microsoft might want to use Yahoo to further spread Silverlight (without paying millions to achieve this, as was the case in the Library of Congress). Well, the latest news is about "Microsoft walks[ing] away from Yahoo," whatever that actually means. Remember that it's not over until the fat lady sings, as the old saying goes. They could just be playing psychological games hoping that Yahoo shareholders will sue or pressure the board by proxy. They tried this before, so wait before popping the bubbly and running back to Zimbra. The Yahoo saga might not be over yet.

Just a couple of minutes before posting away this item I actually received the following from a friend, whose opinion is similar. He says: "Many articles are yammering about Microsoft claiming to backing off from Yahoo, but few look in any depth regarding the plans to oust the board members and replace them with sock puppets. It's amazing how little investigation the 'journalists' do and how much they serve as a platform for Bill's press releases." ⬆