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Microsoft Found Guilty of Misleading Advertising

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the everybody-play-nicely dept.

gtoomey writes "The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints that Microsoft misled consumers by running advertisements claiming Linux is 10 times more expensive than Windows. The print advertisements used "independent research" to compare the cost of Linux on an expensive mainframe to Windows on a PC."

11 of 608 comments (clear)

  1. Marketing slime... by kmmatthews · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From TFA:

    The advert appeared in an IT magazine and was headed: "Weighing the cost of Linux vs Windows? Let's review the facts". The ad contained a graph comparing the cost in US dollars between a Linux images running on two z900 mainframe CPUs and a Windows Server 2003 image running two 900MHz Intel Xeons chips.

    Hmm, who wants to help me do some "independent research" of our own? We could compare Linux running on a WRT54G versus the cost of, say, a dual CPU P4 XEON system with 4 gbs RAM, SCSI array, redundant everything, and dual 19" LCD monitors.

    Lesse, that makes linux roughly 100 times cheaper (70$ vs. 7000$). Didn't I also see this ad on slashdot and in Linux Journal?

    Not intended to be a flamebait, it's not just a Microsoft problem - all marketing people are evil. Perhaps we should enact the death penalty for marketing droids?

    --
    feh. stuff.
    1. Re:Marketing slime... by Epistax · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To be fair Microsoft does somewhat have a point as IBM, one of the foremost advocates of Linux, is pushing the virtual-Linux-on-a-mainframe concept, and a lot of people are buying. It seems that Microsoft was tageting that competitor rather than Linux-running-on-obsoleted-developer-PC.

      Right, and Microsoft clearly states this whenever they make any outrageous claim.
      ... no wait

    2. Re:Marketing slime... by rben · · Score: 5, Insightful
      To be fair Microsoft does somewhat have a point as IBM, one of the foremost advocates of Linux, is pushing the virtual-Linux-on-a-mainframe concept, and a lot of people are buying. It seems that Microsoft was tageting that competitor rather than Linux-running-on-obsoleted-developer-PC.

      In fact, what IBM is pushing is running hundreds of virtual Linux machines on a single IBM mainframe. This substantially reduces the cost of maintaining a large Linux installation. What would have been fair would have been a comparison between an IBM mainframe running hundreds of virtual Linux servers and hundreds of PC's running Windows.

      Oh wait... That is the kind of comparison that IBM is using to sell such systems...

      --

      -All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
      www.ra

    3. Re:Marketing slime... by Mark_in_Brazil · · Score: 5, Insightful
      all marketing people are evil. Perhaps we should enact the death penalty for marketing droids?
      Sigh...

      Marketing is not the same as advertising. In fact, the most important functions of marketing are not from the company to the customer, but the other way around. A good marketing department listens to the market or the customer, determines what the market or customer needs, and helps orient production within the company to produce products that meet some identified need.
      I am in the process of starting a company that will be heavily dependent on its marketing department. I expect the top marketing exec in the company (in Brazil, I think it's more appropriate to use the title of Director than VP) to be the second-most influential person in the company after the "big boss" (probably with the title of Director-President), who is writing this post. Some special things in our business model will allow us to do some marketing things in innovative ways. But you wanna know something? I think advertising might not end up under marketing. To me it seems that advertising, as communication from the company to the market/customer, belongs more with sales than with marketing.
      I think of it this way: Sales is responsible for communicating from the company to the market in order to sell the product or service, and Marketing is responsible for the communication in the other direction, from the market to the company.
      In any case, wherever advertising ends up falling in the company I'm starting, it certainly won't be the main activity for the marketing department.
      Marketing people are not all evil. Competent marketing people can help companies provide the products and services customers want or need. That's not only not evil, it's good!
      On the other hand, many advertising people are evil, and seek to mislead the customer. But a good marketing department can obviate the need for deceptive advertising, because a company with a good marketing department doesn't need to deceive the customer- it really is making what the customer wants or needs and simply needs to communicate that in its advertising.
      By the way, I guess I should mention that my background is technical - I have a PhD in physics and had a career doing technical things (and the technical part of sales) in IT companies. So I'm not a "marketing droid" defending his profession. I'm just a person who has studied some marketing on his own time and understood how a well-run marketing department can benefit not just a company, but also that company's customers.

      --Mark
      --
      "It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
  2. Shocking News about Statistics by stecoop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are you surprised that statistics can be bought and bartered? Everyone knows that the person paying for the data can make it show whatever they want.

    1. Re:Shocking News about Statistics by I+confirm+I'm+not+a · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Are you surprised that statistics can be bought and bartered?

      No, we're surprised that a government agency saw through the bullshit and has done something about it.

      Incidentally, the ASA is one of Britain's better agencies. It seems to have - some - real power, and doesn't seem to abuse it. Another poster has already mentioned Apple's tussles with the ASA (re: 64bit CPUs, IIRC) and other corporations have also been shouted down by the ASA. I'm sure they've made some bad calls in the past, but I'd be hard-pressed to recall any.

      --
      This is where the serious fun begins.
  3. Re:What about back across the pond? by Anita+Coney · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the US the government works FOR corporations, not against them.

    --
    If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
  4. Still misleading... by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They should have run the two operating systems on identical (PC) hardware. After all, the x86 platform is the original platform of Linux too, and probably the best supported. So this would be fair to both systems.
    Thus, the hardware costs would be a draw and the cost comparison would actually be about software.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
  5. When will they really be punished? by DrugCheese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most government have heavy laws to try and help protect people from corporations. Yet if a person is brought in to court on so many charges in a time frame the court adds them all up hoping to get a better view of how the person is acting in (and hurting) the society. But giant corporations, they can get hauled to court constantly even over the same charge again and again and courts treat them all as seperate cases. Why not look at the big picture and see what these giants are doing to society and pass judgement trying to change something rather then trying to say something the corperations obviously aren't going to listen to?

    --
    *DrugCheese rants*
  6. the Bikini thing by Abundantes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As my old math prof said:

    Statistics are like a Bikini: showing interesting details but hiding the important stuff.

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    This is good for nothing. Ignore it or send it to the Customer Care Dept.
  7. Re:Rate of posted Microsoft articles on Slashdot by WNight · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As long as Slashdot carries all the stories about the Monopoly that owns Linux trying to intentionally build incompatibilities into Linux to keep it from working with any other products. The stories about Linus dancing around shouting "Developers! Developers! Developers!". The stories about how Alan Cox was being flown around the world offering sweetheart deals to huge companies in order to keep them from considering alternatives.

    Oh, and don't forget about the exposes of how the Business Software Alliance performs unannounced searches of businesses, shutting down running machines and having untrained flunkies search for any unlicensed copies of Linux. Don't forget to detail how receipts for the product don't seem to count as proof of purchase - an unlicensed copy of Linux (one sold for different hardware doesn't count!) can cost your company $25k or more in "damages", which thankfully can be waived if you just sign the exclusive software purchase deal for the next ten years and agree to periodic audits...

    Also, how during the middle of a federal anti-trust lawsuit the people in charge of writing Linux wrote about using any means necessary to kill the competition.

    Oh yeah, Linus and Linux don't seem to generate that kind of news.

    Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Microsoft has so many negative articles written about it because they actually do these things?