Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's Fan Press is Crumbling

"Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition's technology part of the mythology of the computer industry."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]



For obvious reasons, geographical at the very least, Seattle P-I has always been pro-Microsoft about 90% of the time. The bad news for them (and positive news to competitors of Microsoft) is that this "fan press" won't last for much longer, not in its current form anyway.

Hearst announced today that it's putting the Seattle Post-Intelligencer up for sale. If no buyer is found in 60 days, the newspaper will either cease operations or move entirely online. Whatever happens, it looks like a lot of good journalists will be losing jobs.

[...]

"Awful. Angry. Depressed. Stunned," were the four words P-I reporter Mike Lewis used when asked to describe how he was feeling after the news was announced internally today following a report by KING 5 last night.

The P-I has been around in various forms since 1863, making it one of the oldest businesses in the city. It has survived dozens of ups and downs over the years.


Ziff Davis (notoriously called "Ziff|Gates" because of the editorship, funds, and the Microsoft employees who post there under pseudonyms) declared that it was on the verge of bankruptcy last year and CNET, which had received investments from Microsoft's co-founder, suffered staff cuts too.

In absence of such publications, Microsoft's ability to control minds is diminishing. Well, it can always bribe bloggers and employ "technical evangelists". It also keeps publications of IDG alive [1, 2, 3] by paying excessively for IDC contracts (anti-GNU/Linux 'studies' and the likes of them). We'll have more details about that soon. The corresponding antitrust documents require further processing.

"Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!"

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

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