09.20.10
Playing Favourites for Microsoft
Summary: Microsoft has its partners build its castle of dominance and examples are given from the news to explain how that works
Microsoft is not just Microsoft, it’s an ideology embraced and fought for by a large group of companies that work to benefit one another and especially the ‘queen termite’, Microsoft. Just like with AMD and Intel, there is a great deal of benefits/kickbacks to partners (crudest forms of bribery would be too risky) and vendors are playing favourites, meaning that just like a bunch of schoolmates or siblings they compete for affinity from the teacher or parent. This is done for self gain.
“Microsoft holds Partner Conference and Award Ceremony,” says this headline and to put this in crude terms, these are the events where Microsoft decides who to bribe best based on the dirty work done for Microsoft by the recipients. “Dirty work” can be changes to government policies, sabotage of a GNU/Linux migration, many sales of Microsoft software (with commissions), and so on.
“It’s the glue that keeps many parts of society stuck with Windows.”It is always curious to see and to keep track of names of companies once they get labeled “Gold Partner”, Microsoft partner, or something along those lines. They even turn out to have something called “innovation alliance”. Just like Microsoft “MVP”, it’s a reputation one must live up to by sucking up to Microsoft and maybe even voting against sanity (for interests rather) in some OOXML ballot. While we routinely and quite comprehensively mention Novell partners when they get named, we do not do the same for Microsoft because there are just too many of them. It’s the glue that keeps many parts of society stuck with Windows.
It does not take much to see that Microsoft continues to distribute awards to buy companies’ loyalty and this includes promotion of Microsoft DRM, which Samsung and Nokia DRM deals, for example, ensure gets used more widely. Here is a newer example:
Microsoft PlayReady is the latest DRM technology that Verimatrix is supporting through its MultiRights strategy.
The same is being done in other areas like IPTV, but since these are private businesses rather than public institutions, nothing too unethical is being done here. One can dismiss what they do here for DRM and IPTV (a lot of what they say in general) as just marketing (or “Slog”), teaches us history. They fight against the rest of industry by promoting the One Microsoft Way.
“They fight against the rest of industry by promoting the One Microsoft Way.”Microsoft will be recruiting more advocates, e.g. [1, 2], even in places like South Africa where Microsoft plays quite dirty and always needs the support of some local businesses to suppress free/open source software. Despite the PR from Microsoft’s friend Brier Dudley, for Microsoft to have friends in Africa is not beneficial to Africans. It makes them dependent.
Here is a new article which says that “Microsoft might have liked perks” (it’s the headline), using it for blackmail on tax issues, having states compete between one another at taxpayers’ expense. Microsoft should be dealt with not like any normal company. It works as a group of many companies and mapping their influence is the tricky task. Techrights will continue to explain the more important partnerships that harm society at large. The rest will be ignored due to time contraints. █
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