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Microsoft Spending $120M To Look Smaller

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the someone-alert-alanis dept.

Ant writes "Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Microsoft Corp. will spend $120 million a year on an advertising campaign to fight its image as "a huge American company." That sound you heard while reading the article is my head exploding.

5 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Incredible by Karma+Farmer · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is a company with more employees than most cities have citizens,

    Ummm... no. Microsoft has something like 50,000 employees. That won't even fill many major sports arenas and concert venues. Unless you live in Wyoming, it really doesn't compare to the population of a "real" city.

  2. Microsoft? A huge company?! whadda ya mean?! by syukton · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's not like they've got 110,000 employees or anything...

    --
    Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
  3. Re:It is small(ish) by Mr.+Sane · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not sure what data you are referring to, but Microsoft's market cap is significantly larger than Wal-Mart's.

    The market cap (taken from http://finance.yahoo.com/ of listed companies as of January 23, 2005:
        Microsoft: 280.49B
        Wal-Mart: 188.40B
        Apple: 65.46B
        Dell: 71.12B

  4. Incorrect Title, RTFA please by Sean0michael · · Score: 5, Informative
    The article isn't about Microsoft trying to look smaller. It is about microsoft looking less American-centered. Since 1/3 of its business comes from outside the US, it only makes sense to start looking like Microsoft cares about each country that it sells in. It wants people to believe it cares about issues facing each country and region, not just American consumers far far away.

    Kudos to those who have posted similar replies. Hopefully people will read these enough to get the message. Or perhaps this just proves that most of the /. community would rather read what they want than what is on the page.

    --
    Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
  5. Smoke and noise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    More smoke and noise to hide yet another patent infringement case against MS. MS is alleged to have infringed on Softvault's DRM patents for security components to enable or disable systems using a remote server. Included in this infringement Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Microsoft Office XP, Access 2002, Excel 2002, Vision 2002, Visual Studio Net, Office 2000 SR-1, Project 2000 SR-1, Powerpoint, and many other products including Word.

    Not that MS is going to give a shit about Softvault, except to stomp them. But the bad press from the suit is something it appears to want to avoid.

    Face it. MS is a movement, not a technology company.