Oh, Microsoft and the DOJ

I have also been an MVP since 1999 and have never received “constant pleas to help out in its fight against the government” or “write letters to editors, tell our friends all about how Microsoft was being persecuted”.

I for one am quite happy for Google to have Doubleclick. Doubleclick were directly implicated in the Winfixer malware outbreak on the AOL advertising network that I tracked down (their distribution network was used as a conduit for displaying the dangerous creatives on computers).

My personal belief is that the ongoing, growing, problem of malware/spyware/hijackware being distributed via online advertisements such as flash and banner ads via rogue affiliates makes investment in online advertising risky – not only because of the steps more and more people are taking to avoid advertising but also because of the steps that may be taken by the authorities to stop the highjacking of ad networks, not to mention the legal responsibility that will eventually be laid at the feet of companies like doubleclick for allowing their networks to be used as malware conduits.

Scoble,

You know full well that any emails sent to you by Microsoft about “Freedom to Innovate” were completely unrelated to your being an MVP.

MS pumped out that crap to the millions on their mailing lists.

Why are you trying to mislead your readers?
Why are you trying to spin it that way?
What is in it for you?

You not stupid, so I must assume your doing this for some other reason.

Regards
Mark

The faster MS become less relevant, the better for all of us. MS is the bully that is now getting someone who fights back and is running to the teacher. *whine*

I’m hoping MS gets slammed by multiple governments over time, and realizes they need to play fair and use nothing but open standards.

Some people disagree with me about open source winning this war slowly, but it’s inevitable. You cannot compete with open standards and hope to survive. Not anymore.

Europe is starting to realize this, as are individual countries. I’m really looking forward to seeing Europe topple the software patent thing.

Mark: I seem to remember that MVPs were personally asked too. I might have that wrong. We were getting asked from so many different directions. It might have simply been other members asking us to kick in and help out too. I wish I had my old email readily available to check.

click on my name to go on a microsoft bastard sit and let everyone know

Mark: I seem to remember that MVPs were personally asked too. I might have that wrong. We were getting asked from so many different directions. It might have simply been other members asking us to kick in and help out too. I wish I had my old email readily available to check.

Scoble,

You know full well that any emails sent to you by Microsoft about “Freedom to Innovate” were completely unrelated to your being an MVP.

MS pumped out that crap to the millions on their mailing lists.

Why are you trying to mislead your readers?
Why are you trying to spin it that way?
What is in it for you?

You not stupid, so I must assume your doing this for some other reason.

Regards
Mark

Scoble,
I have been an MVP for a few years and I have never gotten requests to support Microsoft in any ways. You are trying to tie up the “freedom to innovate” newsletter to the MVP program for no good reason.

The sooner you realize that this kind of noise that you spew makes you lose your credibility to your loyal readers, the better it is for you.

A minor point that I know people will ignore, but it’s important.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong, illegal, or immoral in being a monopoly. There are times it just happens. Natural monopolies.

What is illegal in the US is for a monopoly to use the power that a monopoly has to create artificially high barriers to competition so as to preserve or increase their monopoly status.

Had Microsoft not been such a bunch of bastards about everyone else in the computer industry, they’d have not gotten hammered TWICE for being a bad monopoly.

They aren’t alone here. IBM and AT&T made Microsoft look like the friggin’ Smurf Village when it came to being evil.

Being a monopoly = okay
Abusing monopoly status = not okay.

When you say MVP’s you imply all of us.

Maybe you could try painting with a smaller brush. Your experience is your own, not all of a subsets.

You may have been personally asked but that probably speaks more to your career as a marketer or your personal connections with MS.

In 7 years as an MVP I have never been asked to campaign about anything. I’d tell them to shove the award up their … the moment they tried that sort of crap, I am surprised you didn’t tell them the same. Maybe you did.

I checked in with about 25 other MVP’s and they say the same, they have never been asked to write letters or spruik to their friends.

Cheers

@ Mark Dormner

This is what I see. I see what used to be a very pro MS Evangelist (Robert Scoble) hitting the other extreme. It was Rob wearing those ridiculous cow horns and mooooooo’ing in the early days of Longhorn, not MVPs (although I admit an MVP stole his horns, but that was a *prank*, not pro Longhorn evangelism.

As Robert says “I was sympathetic to Microsoft back then.” I suppose that’s the biggest difference between Robert and MVPs – sympathy for MS just isn’t on our radar screen of a real MS MVP – it never has been and never will be – our primary focus is what is best for the users, and we don’t let our “sympathy” for any one corporation influence our words or actions… nor do we allow our words or actions to be influenced when we have a falling out with said employer or corporation.

Heck, while Rob was busy tossing the horns and moooooing, I was advertising DeepNet Explorer on my Web site (despite being an Internet Explorer MVP) because I believed that for some it was a better choice, just like I recommended Opera to users who needed a decent Download Manager.

Robert was employed by MS. Now he’s not. And since he has parted ways with MS his attitude to all things MS has changed. It makes you wonder how much of his current soapbox is “flavour of the month” and knowing which side his pay-packet is buttered on.

Google *will* fall out of favour – it is inevitable as they become more and more powerful. Robert *will* change jobs again eventually. Only time will tell if history will repeat itself when he has another parting of the ways with an employer and goes on to different things. Will he become as anti-current current employer as he is MS now?

Sandi: it’s interesting the revisionism thats going on here. You’re attacking as hard as you are perceiving being attacked. Why is so much of your identity tied up with being an MVP?

Before I was a Microsoft employee I regularly told Microsoft what I thought it was doing wrong. Just like you. I was quoted in Time Magazine telling Bill Gates to split the company up. That was BEFORE I was an employee. They still hired me. I told Steve Ballmer to get a more human face — in front of all the MVPs and got a signed dollar for doing that. Did you tell Ballmer something? Did you get a signed dollar for putting forth an interesting idea or criticism of the company? I don’t remember.

The problem with my being an MVP is I can’t remove that from everything Microsoft did or does. Microsoft sent a lot of email and asked us to do a lot of things. Maybe it wasn’t on behalf of the MVP program. Who the hell really cares? Why is so much of your identity wrapped up in a program? Is it cause you want to get a free copy of MSDN Universal next year again?

I told people about Firefox WHEN I was working at Microsoft. And told them I liked Google and other companies better WHEN I was getting a paycheck too.

Interesting that you’re trying to forget all that and are getting in the same gutter you claim I’m in.

It is called Aikido. Use the enemy’s force against him. In the past, MS’s competitors used anti-trust crap again MS. Now it is payback time.

Nothing ironic about it.

Sandi: it’s interesting the revisionism thats going on here. You’re attacking as hard as you are perceiving being attacked. Why is so much of your identity tied up with being an MVP?

Swag, status, and a bigger tech-dick than non-MVPs.

“Being a monopoly = okay
Abusing monopoly status = not okay.”

Welch, the DOJ blocks buyouts/mergers if they feel that competition would be harmed, *before* there has been any “abuse”. This happens all the time. And there was no “abuse” in the MS/Intuit deal, and the DOJ still blocked it. You despise Microsoft, but that’s not relevant to Google’s case. If Google/DoubleClick merger would harm competition too much, then the DOJ can block it. Your hatred of Microsoft is not relevant to that.

Scoble, NOBODY GIVES A DAMN ABOUT YOUR PAST MVP STATUS. Good grief. Why did this thread devolve into your obsessing over MVPs? Totally irrelevant to Google/DoubleClick.

@39,

Agreed. MVPs tend to think they are so much better than anyone else, which is patently false. I’ve been into computers since the early 80s, and I can tell you for a fact that the ones who are not certified or have alphabet soup after their names are by far the more knowledgeable of the two species.

I remember in the late 90s early 00s, when MCSE came to be know an “Must Consult Someone Experienced”, or “Microsoft Certified Solitaire Engineer”.

The best developers I know are title-free and are self-taught. The best techs I know are the same way. They are driven by personal satisfaction and could care less about the titles.

I knew one man who was very quiet, had to be Mensa material, who simply refused to use business cards and loathed titles. He described himself simply as a “techie” even though we suspected he had a Ph.D. in computer science. These are the kinds of people I like to surround myself with.

Title and alphabet soup only impress those who worship at the same alter. Real tech just want to get the job done.

Piotr

Attack of the MVPs, nothing worse than rabid fanboys on a mission from “God”…

Give someone a tad of fame, toss in some freebies, set the groundwork for external Consultancy work, you got a small army of 24/7 workers for nearly free. But it creates an Entitlement mentality that will be impossible to kill or reform, and eventually oversight costs and handouts can make it a royal (and eternal) headache. Good on paper, but as with all such programs, they all look good in theory.

@38 “Before I was a Microsoft employee I regularly told Microsoft what I thought it was doing wrong. Just like you. I was quoted in Time Magazine telling Bill Gates to split the company up. That was BEFORE I was an employee. They still hired me. I told Steve Ballmer to get a more human face — in front of all the MVPs and got a signed dollar for doing that. Did you tell Ballmer something? Did you get a signed dollar for putting forth an interesting idea or criticism of the company? I don’t remember.”

Again with the narcissim? No one cares!!! And even more important, it apparently is hasn’t mattered.

@38 “Why is so much of your identity wrapped up in a program?”

Good question. Here’s another. Why is so much of your internet identity still wrapped up in being a “former Microsoft blogger”?

“Being a monopoly = okay
Abusing monopoly status = not okay.”

Welch, the DOJ blocks buyouts/mergers if they feel that competition would be harmed, *before* there has been any “abuse”. This happens all the time. And there was no “abuse” in the MS/Intuit deal, and the DOJ still blocked it. You despise Microsoft, but that’s not relevant to Google’s case. If Google/DoubleClick merger would harm competition too much, then the DOJ can block it. Your hatred of Microsoft is not relevant to that.

Actually, I wasn’t speaking of the Intuit deal. I was speaking of the first consent decree from the first antitrust action against Microsoft, PRIOR to the one Judge Jackson oversaw, where you had Microsoft agree that they couldn’t make hardware OEMs pay them for a Windows license on every machine sold, *whether it had Windows installed on it or not*, as a condition of being able to get a Windows OEM license. That was, correctly I would add, seen as a barrier to other OS vendors being able to have their OS shipped on various PCs.

Aww, I’m sorry, did I bring up a mean old fact that cast a shadow on your shrine to BallmerGates?

You got it all wrong again, Scoble. Microsoft’s “competitors” didn’t go whining to the government because they couldn’t win. They brought complaints of Microsoft’s illegal activity to the government and the government prosecuted. Microsoft was found guilty of felony violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

That’s not at all the case with what Microsoft is doing here. It’s just plain whining. Doesn’t Microsoft have $billions? It can buy doubleclick many times over. Why is it not doing so?

If I were a lawyer at Google, I’d file a complaint against Microsoft for bidding up the price on doubleclick without having any intention to buy it.

@Piotr: the majority of people working in the tech industry are charlatans. They have no hands-on experience with developing technology and are merely consumers of products. They form large groups via blogs and aggregators like techmeme and techcrunch, then apply a culture of “consensus by committee” and consequently, through a potent combination of political activity, incompetence, ignorance and plain lack of understanding select the worse possible product or solution to a problem by popular or unanimous vote. Not only do they think they are qualified to select a solution on behalf of other people, but oftentimes they do to the detriment of the people they are to represent.

It’s not democracy.

It’s the rule of mediocrity, by which a product that is “good enough for everybody” because it is “easy to use” or “pretty” is never actually good enough for any single person. And that is the essence of the software world, in a nutshell.

“Microsoft sent a lot of email and asked us to do a lot of things. Maybe it wasn’t on behalf of the MVP program. Who the hell really cares? Why is so much of your identity wrapped up in a program? Is it cause you want to get a free copy of MSDN Universal next year again?”

Who the hell really cares whether it was or wasn’t on behalf of the MVP Programme? I do!! And so do every other person who expects you to publish corrections appropriately. Its called telling the truth. To bury your backpeddling and “maybe it wasn’t” statements in your comments, where half the world won’t see it, instead of editing your original post, which the world *does* see, is simply wrong.

It’s got nothing to do with what my identity is wrapped up in. It’s got everything to do with your posting first and thinking later, and not bothering to fess up properly .. you do the strike through and update with other blog posts, why not with this?

Sandi, your indignation is hilarious. Microsoft lobbied governments to “lay off” Microsoft shortly after the antitrust verdict using form letters sent with the names of dead people.
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=microlob23&date=20010823

In 2001, Microsoft employees banded together to throw off the results of a zdnet poll on .net services.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2102244,00.htm

Most recently, Microsoft used lobbyists to pressure members of the Senate Committee on Governmental Operations (COGO) to remove the words they didn’t like from a Senate bill requiring open standards in government computing. http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/16/2020210&from=rss

And here you are, spending time you should be working for your employer attacking Scoble on his blog for suggesting Microsoft used the MVP program to write on its behalf during the antitrust trial. History paints a different picture of Microsoft employee roles than you describe.

Just what percentage of time do Microsoft employees spend on the net, in blogs, chat rooms, messageboards attacking its competitors or providing false testimonials of the quality of Microsoft’s products? Is it 10%? 20%? Is it part of the average Microsoft employee’s job description?

Microsoft’s passion is squashing other companies’ potential. Your efforts are misplaced. Office 2007 and Windows Vista don’t look like $8 billion+ worth of improvements. Get back to work or it will all come crashing down no matter how many debates you win on the internet.