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Microsoft Caught Rigging ZD Net Poll

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-thats-funny-stuff dept.

Dj writes "Microsoft have been found to be rigging a ZDNet poll". Apparently they didn't dig on the idea of .NET losing. Of course as anyone knows, never trust an online poll because this sort of stuff is obviosly happening all the time. I just wonder how many comments posted around the net are posted with the same goals in mind.

11 of 768 comments (clear)

  1. Boy, what a surprise... by KC7GR · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Does this REALLY surprise anyone?

    --

    Bruce Lane, KC7GR,

    Blue Feather Technologies

  2. Slashdot Polls by antarctican · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I always knew I shouldn't trust those slashdot polls, and the bunch of shifty guys behind the scenes.... No wonder Cowboy Neal always wins.
    ;-)

  3. Re:Did Microsoft bother... by Sklivvz · · Score: 0, Redundant

    According to the original article some did. Most of the votes came from an internal Microsoft email titled "STOP AND VOTE FOR .NET" though.

    It's funny how the ZDNet script blocked multiple votes, but some people moronicly kept on trying to submit votes. One guy tried 228 (!) times!

    --
    My Stack Overflow user
  4. Thank goodness by sh0rtie · · Score: 0, Redundant



    i base all our global corporate buying decisions and software policys on a zdnet web poll :)

  5. Re:and their directors aren't... by theancient2 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    ... because everyone knows online polls aren't statistically valid by any stretch of the imagination.

    ... because their directors weren't behind it. It sounds like it was just an chain letter people passed around saying "go vote for us!"

    How many times have I seen a message saying "go vote in this poll"? Slashdot has linked to stories that happened to contain polls, and the results were clearly skewed afterwords. Remember the discussion last week about IMDB being skewed towards sci-fi in the early days? Web polls are inherently untrustworthy. Everyone knows this. No big deal.

  6. Don't ask Simon, ask your real friend by fleener · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Web polls are often rigged, and are entirely unscientific and meaningless anyway. Consumer opinions are often fake. (Hell, legitimate reviews in major media are often heavily influenced too.) The bottom line is... word-of-mouth is your most trustworthy tool.

  7. Referrer Tags? by imadork · · Score: 2, Redundant
    What's most entertaining about this is that this "Get Out The Vote" E-mail -- I hesitate to call it deliberate vote-rigging -- was found out about because MS Exchange is a bit too loose with the information it gives out in referrer tags. In other words, their technology was used against them.

    Is sending out this much information an Exchange-specific thing?

  8. Re:So why didn't ZDnet pull the poll? by nzgeek · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Thankfully they've fixed it up now. There's a disclaimer at the top stating:

    On 21 December, ZDNet posted a story reporting the preliminary results of this poll, which showed a large majority of respondents who said they planned to deliver applications via Web services by the end of 2002 favoured Java for the job. At the time, Java outranked .Net by a factor of three in this poll. By early January, the position had reversed; the results are shown here. An investigation indicated that Microsoft employees used vote-rigging to distort the results. The full story can be found here.
    --
    gadgetophile.com
  9. Now it does by danro · · Score: 0, Redundant

    If you check again you will see that ZDNet now states that the poll has been rigged by MS. Too bad this probably happens all the time. At one point I actually held some hopes of that MS was going to play (almost) fair in the future. Then I woke up... Really it's a shame a company that size can't show some common sense or style.

    --

    "First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
  10. Re:So why didn't ZDnet pull the poll? by Jchrome · · Score: 0, Redundant

    As of today, the poll is finished and ZDNET describse how computers originating from MS's domain where responsible for most of the multiple vote attempts.

  11. Re:So why didn't ZDnet pull the poll? by nanojath · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Maybe not when you posted this link, but the poll I looked at had the following:


    On 21 December, ZDNet posted a story reporting the preliminary results of this poll, which showed a large majority of respondents who said they planned to deliver applications via Web services by the end of 2002 favoured Java for the job. At the time, Java outranked .Net by a factor of three in this poll. By early January, the position had reversed; the results are shown here. An investigation indicated that Microsoft employees used vote-rigging to distort the results. The full story can be found here."


    I added the emphasis.

    --

    It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries