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Microsoft Tops Corporate-Reputation Survey
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Microsoft beat out Johnson & Johnson for the top spot in the annual Wall Street Journal survey of the reputations of U.S. companies. Bill Gates's personal philanthropy boosted the public's opinion of Microsoft, helping to end J&J's seven-year run at No. 1. From the article: 'Mr. Gates demonstrates how much the reputation of a corporate leader can rub off on his company. Formerly chief executive officer and now chairman of Microsoft, he contributed to a marked improvement in the company's emotional appeal. Jeanie Cummins, a survey respondent and homemaker in Olive Hill, Ky., says Mr. Gates's philanthropy made her a much bigger fan of Microsoft. "He showed he cared more for people than all the money he made building Microsoft from the ground up," she says. "I wish all the other big shots could do something like this." To be sure, some respondents still complain that Microsoft bullies its competitors and unfairly monopolizes the software business. But such criticism is less biting and less pervasive than it was just a few years ago.'"
- Lying to the US-DoJ in Video taped testomony?
- Letters from dead people campaign?
- Caught dead-to-rights in outright theft of IP from competitors?
- Abusing the US legal system by funding scam lawsuits to FUD the competitions?
- Filing about 40 bogus patents every week for week for years?
- Secretly rigging supposedly independant benchmarks, and TOC studies?
- Payola to bloggers, and wikipedia contributors?
- Payola to "journalists" like Enderle?
- Payola to fake think-tanks like AdTI?
- Threatening to sue all Linux users and contributors over fake IP issues?
Should I go on? Msft really is organized crime. As a libertarian, I can assue you is not just anti-capitalists who have low regard for msft.
> they are guilty of misdeeds which have not
> and cannot be corrected
If they cannot be corrected, then why does it matter if they have not been? Indeed, why does it matter at all? Guilt only has relevance when there's something that can be done to correct it. Once it's beyond that point, it's just history.
> Some lost $50 by being forced to buy Dos or
> Windows.
Oh, please. How many times have I been forced to buy features I didn't want or need on my motherboard? I have a SCSI RAID box and don't need IDE on my machine, but that's too bad. I never use floppies and don't need a floppy drive, but that's too bad. I'm building a server and don't need graphics or sound, but that's too bad. I buy things I don't need on my machines all the time, because if you put it on everything, it gets cheaper for everybody. Why should the software have been handled differently?
> Others lost their livelihoods by daring to
> compete on a rigged playing field.
The field is always rigged. If you can't handle the competition, don't play.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
So Gates finally learned the trick that John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie figured out: philanthropy. You can be a convicted monopolist, you can pay your employees slave wages under brutal conditions, and then knowingly murder them when you send in the "strike breakers", but you throw a little money around here and there-- start a university or set up a charitable arm of your company-- and history will remember you as a great philanthropist.
/.'s summary is an idiot.
I don't mean to belittle the charitable giving that Gates has done. I'm certain that he has had a direct influence on the course of poverty, ignorance, and disease, especially in places like India. But like those capitalists of old, Gates' company still merrily chugs along, willfully breaking the law, churning out a shitty product, and locking their customers in. Before we shower the guy with praise, let's remember what he did to amass all that wealth, and consider the fact that he's still doing it. He may not be a bastard to the degree that Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie were, but he's still a bastard. The homemaker quoted in