Getting people to say nice things about Microsoft

. . . keeping an eye on the penguin

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Jan. 23, 2007

How dumb is Microsoft? No, really: a few weeks ago, they decided to "give" bloggers a free -- as in beer -- $2,300 Acer Ferrari laptop. When some people -- like me -- suggested that this sounded like a bribe, Microsoft immediately back-peddled.

They then told the bloggers that they had to "either give the PC away or send it back when you no longer need it for product reviews."

Let's see, and these bloggers will be done using them for product reviews by, oh I don't know, next Christmas in time for another Microsoft present under the Christmas tree?

Maybe, my question should be, "How dumb does Microsoft think we are?"

It's a serious question, because they just did it again!

This time, according to Rick Jelliffe, the CTO of Topologi Pty. Ltd., an Australian XML tools company, Microsoft approached him to "provide more balance on Wikipedia concerning ODF/OOXML (Open Document Format/ Microsoft Office Open XML).

Jelliffe is rather an odd choice for Microsoft since, as he wrote, "I am hardly the poster boy of Microsoft partisanship!" and "I think I'll accept it: FUD enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see."

Still, here we have Microsoft approaching at least one person to "correct" Wikipedia for money. Why, oh why, do I think that Jelliffe is hardily the only one that Microsoft has approached?

Could it be that Microsoft is also paying others to put Microsoft in a better light on Wikipedia? Why not?

Wikipedia is a farce that far too many people assume is gospel. If Microsoft can put a pro-Microsoft spin in Wikipedia's articles, you know darn well they will. They've already bribed bloggers, now they're hiring Wikipedia authors.

The ends justify the means. If Microsoft can make itself look better by greasing bloggers and Wikipedia authors, most readers will never know the difference. Most people assume that blogs and Wikipedia are filled with the honest opinions of their authors. It's only if you pay attention, that you know that they're padded with what's little better than public relations statements from Microsoft-paid shills.

This, by the way, illustrates another reason why I don't trust Wikipedia at all.

Microsoft is a klutz at these things. If I were really clever and I had an agenda I wanted to push in Wikipedia, I'd make sure that only people who were in on my plans were writing and editing the articles. That way, no one would ever know that the "truth" of Wikipedia is the "truth" that my buddies and I want it to be.

-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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