SEVERAL years ago we criticised Sarah Perez for spreading FUD about Microsoft's competitors, such as Firefox. It took a little effort to see that the publication she wrote for was pro-Microsoft by design. But there is a simple explanation for it. Sarah Perez continues to smear Microsoft's competitors [1] and as she used to work for Microsoft (blogging for the company while on the payroll, as her LinkedIn account reveals) it all makes a lot of sense. The sad thing is, she now writes for AOL (TechCrunch), so unless we shine light on this bias, it is likely to continue silently, unchallenged.
The ironic thing is, Sarah Perez once worked for the company that provides video/audio snoops without warrants, doing so liberally to the point where the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) takes revenge [2-6] and seemingly accuses Microsoft of aiding NSA surveillance. To quote one article, "Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has struck at Microsoft's voice, video and chat network Skype and posted to its Twitter feed and blog."
Keep a close eye on Sarah Perez, just as we should keep an eye on other Microsoft moles (some current Microsoft staff also works for tech tabloid ZDNet at the moment). If they know they are being watched it limits their ability to smear the competition (without adding disclosures or making the editors unhappy for reducing the platform's credibility). ZDNet (CBS) will continue to spread GNU/Linux FUD (latest example in [7,8]) because it has no credibility to maintain; it's the Pravda is the tech world. Remember when TechCrunch was actually a seemingly reliable site (before AOL took over)? Well, to be fair, TechCrunch too accepted Microsoft bribes in order to embed Microsoft messages into the content of articles (this scandal goes years back), so Microsoft's corruption of bloggers is a tradition and an official strategy, not a side effect. ⬆
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