Summary: The Gartner Group has no shame when controlling people's speech by intimidation

THE GARTNER Group is boycotted by us for reasons that we wrote about in:

• Gartner et al Fixing the Price for the Entire Industry?
• How Jim Allchin, Gartner and Enderle Lied to the Whole World
• IDC, Gartner and Yankee Group's Latest Press Attack on Customer's Competitors
• Analyst Firms, Including IDC and Gartner, Named and Shamed for Serving as Microsoft Mouthpieces
• Another Hopeful 'Prophecy' From the Gartner Group('s Paying Clients)
• Microsoft 'Bribes' Mac Bloggers to Slam Apple, Gartner Hosts Google FUD

There are some more recent examples where Gartner attacks GNU/Linux for Microsoft's sake and we have antitrust exhibits to show this, e.g. [1, 2, 3].

"David Smith commented that Gartner will not bash MS if MS chooses to slip Vista."

--Jamin Spilzer, Microsoft

Thanks to a writer who was bold enough to talk about this publicly, we finally can learn just how Gartner is guarding its image/identity -- by censorship.

When censorship goes too far, we cannot say Gar-ner anymore

[...]

So all of the information I posted and used was sent to me by vendors to make sure I knew the news. But Gar-ner does not see it that way; I still have no idea why. But what I did was to delete all blogs that have this company name in it. By deleting them I am telling them that they mean nothing to me anymore, I will no longer use their name or even care about the square they use. I know some vendors called me on Friday and Saturday to talk to me about the deleted post.

[...]

To be clear to all of my readers, we will not use, publish or mention the Gar-ner name or any reports in the future. We will come up with our own when it comes to networking, voices, video and other areas. I am sure we can do a better job any way.

TechDirt has an article about this too.

Gartner Tells Reporter: You're Not Allowed To Mention Gartner Research Without Our Permission

Rich Kulawiec alerts us to the news that Gartner (which absolutely should know better) sent a legal nastygram to a Network World blogger, Larry Chaffin, for the mortal sin of mentioning Gartner without Gartner's permission.

[...]

Chaffin actually did take down the posts after being threatened, claiming that in doing so he's showing how meaningless Gartner is. He also promises never to post about any Gartner reports ever again in the future -- but did talk up Gartner's ridiculous policies and demands (amusingly referring to the company as Gar-ner).

Beyond just being of questionable legality, Gartner's actions also seem incredibly short-sighted (especially for a firm that's supposed to be known for being forward looking). Everyone knows the real value in a Gartner report is not in any actual analysis, but in the PR it might generate for companies that find their way into the infamous (and silly) "magic quadrant." By forcing reporters not to talk about who's in that magic quadrant, Gartner has just made its reports significantly less valuable. Now that's foresight.

We wrote about the magic quadrant in [1, 2, 3]. It is almost as though Gartner is 'selling' recommendation to companies, but then again, that's how their business works. ⬆

“Analysts sell out - that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]