Summary: How individuals who are paid or were paid by Microsoft just carry on making Microsoft stronger

HERE WE go again. The Gartner Group and Forrester, which Microsoft pays a lot of money to advance Microsoft's agenda, are recommending Microsoft products, even those that do not quite succeed in the market [1, 2]. There is a lot more coverage about it. Paying analysts sure pays off and the term "analyst tax" is beginning to make a lot more sense.

Separately, one ought to realise that VMware can hardly make GNU/Linux-related announcements anymore, not after former Microsoft executives took over the company. This is some interesting issue because VMware is said to have violated the GPL when it ripped apart Linux to create some of its products. To quote the news from IDG:

VMware's classic ESX hypervisor includes a user space environment, known as the Console Operating System (COS) or Service Console, which is derived from a distribution of Linux. It's used as both a bootstrap for the VMware kernel and as a management interface that could be automated and queried against using Linux-style commands and scripts.

IDG also has this article about VMware and Microsoft Exchange. VMware bought a major rival of Microsoft Exchange some months ago. Remember Zimbra? There has been nothing from Zimbra in the news [1, 2], not since VMware bought it and VMware's parent company actively promoted Microsoft Exchange. Could the former Microsoft executives who run VMware have paid $100 million dollars to just bury Zimbra and protect Microsoft's unreliable cash cow? We hope not.

Here is one last article from IDG, titled "Microsoft: VMware customers are 'Windows customers first'" (again promoting Windows).

But Microsoft will maintain a limited presence at VMworld in San Francisco Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, as it did last year, and make its pitch to VMware customers. VMware, by the way, is led by CEO Paul Maritz, a former Microsoft official.

What could possibly go wrong when Microsoft people run both Microsoft and its competition? Or when Microsoft is paying 'independent' analysts... ⬆

"In January of 1994, Waggener Edstrom began recruiting 100 key editors, 32 analysts, and 150 third-party vendors for the Windows 95 bandwagon. Lining up the national media and the business press was easy. Edstrom had been massaging those relationships for over a decade, sending flowers and cartoons and reminding editors of their spouses' birthdays and wedding anniversaries, earning her "Gates's keeper" reputation. Not only would these people tout Windows 95, they would also be more inclined to show sympathy for Microsoft when competitors started ragging them."

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