"Our friends up north [Microsoft] spend over five billion dollars on research and development and all they seem to do is copy Google and Apple."

--Steve Jobs, 2006

Summary: Microsoft's Bling is imitation and the T3 lawsuit is another SCO A LOT of material has already been written about the fiasco which is Bling, a so-called "decisions engine" which is just a new skin (i.e. bling) on an antiquated search engine whose results are tweaked so as to advance Microsoft's business objectives. For more deficiencies, see for example:

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Nessuno has found this article about Microsoft copying another search engine, not just Google. Watch the picture in the article.

There’s no question Bing feels like Kayak. When Microsoft showed us the search engine under embargo, this reporter’s first comment upon seeing the travel page demo’d was “This looks like Kayak.” Our Bing review described its interface as “uncomfortably close to Kayak’s,” an observation that others made as well.

As Nessuno points out, "How do you find time for innovation when you're so busy threatening companies with nonexistent patents, handing cash under the table to finance anti-Linux suits, bribing Congressmen and EU parliament members, corrupting standards bodies, managing armies of trolls on newsgroups, bribing third-world governments to cut off OLPC, inventing new "Get the Lies" campaigns, paying people to use Bing, fixing security holes in your swiss-cheese OS, copying features from OS/X and iPhone, strong-arming OEMs not to install Linux, etc etc?  No wonder other companies (Apple, Google, ...) run circles around MS in real innovation---they have a lot less distracting them." Speaking of "handing cash under the table to finance anti-Linux suits," watch this new article about T3's lawsuit against Linux-powered mainframes. Microsoft sponsors this lawsuit and it also pays professors to write in favour of this lawsuit.

IBM's antitrust cage gets rattled

[...] Microsoft, which has managed to dodge antitrust bullets matrix style for years, also chimed into the discussion, with a spokesvoles calling for "greater openness and choice" in the mainframe market. Excuse us while we choke.

It's just like another SCO where IBM and Linux are targeted. Larry Goldfarb, the key investor in SCO, said that "Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux." He also added that Microsoft's "Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would 'backstop,' or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment.... Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investment in SCO." Keep it classy, Microsoft. â–ˆ "On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO's strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO's financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital."

--Bruce Perens