Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
How does Bill Gates giving away his fortune turn Microsoft into a "good" company?
Let's say I own company X. I have a personal wealth of $300 million. I decide that I should give away $150 million to various charities. I'm still bloody rich, but now look like a "good guy". How does comany X get any credit? No one else at the company is giving away money. The money I gave away was out of my personal bank account, not company X's. Company X is not any better perceptually becuase I gave away money. Why would Company X get put on the "good" list?
Last I checked, there's still plenty of money grubbing rich folk at the top of the pyramid which is Microsoft. What Bill Gates does with his own money shouldn't have any bearing on the comany's status.
And finally, please mod me up because this is my 1,000th post to Slashdot.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Obviously, the Wall Street Journal (and apparently many other readers) haven't seen this:
- na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story
- na-gates8jan08,0,7911824.story
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la
or this, for another example (and many others):
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la
Go watch the movie "The Corporation" and your question will be answered. And no, it's not a propaganda film--it's a very even-handed documentary that analyzes the concept of a corporation. It examines just what you said--that the people in a company are often kind folks outside of work, but how the attitude of the group can change when they gather towards a common goal of making money. On the flip side, it also examines how the public often mis-perceives corporations as evil when the corporation is really simply just doing what it was designed to do--make a profit. Highly recommended viewing. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
OK, but that's now. In the past it wasn't like that! In the past, if you bought a PC (from Dell, HP, or the guy on the corner that puts the boxes together) you paid for Windows because if you wanted to resell Windows at all, no matter who you were, there was only one way to do it, and that was by paying a fee per computer distributed.
> desire to dominate the industry
Isn't this normal?
> complete intolerance of competition
I don't believe this is true. Consider RealNetworks. When they led the pack in streaming audio with the RealAudio format, they made a deal to put that technology in Windows Media Player. They were going to make a lot of money from that deal. Microsoft, in turn, were going to get a great popular format supported in Media Player.
Hearsay follows. I have no proof or inside information on this; I was just living in the Seattle area when it happened, and everyone was talking about it. Some or all of it may be apocryphal.
When the time came to integrate the RA support into MP, Real supposedly delivered a crippled version of the technology that only worked at low bit rates and advertised Real's own Media Player replacement when higher bit rates were encountered. Microsoft rejected the submission, demanding that they provide a version that played all bit rates and didn't advertise the Media Player replacement. Real complied, sort of - they linked their logo to the web site for their Media Player replacement instead of their home page, and fixed the player to downsample high bit rates instead of refusing to play them. You still couldn't get the higher bit rates without paying Real and replacing Windows Media Player.
When Microsoft went back and complained, Real smugly observed that they were the 800-pound gorilla in the streaming audio space, and Microsoft should already know how that works. So Microsoft told them where to shove their technology, and built their own WMA format. Now Real is an also-ran, doing most of their business in the mobile market.
Is this because Microsoft is intolerant of competition, or because they are intolerant of being cheated? More to the point, wasn't Real trying to cheat *us*, too? Didn't Microsoft also make the choice that was best for us, siding with the consumer instead of with their business partner?
I've not always been on Microsoft's side in this argument, but I've seen a pattern: Microsoft, since the DOJ debacle, *appear* to be making an honest effort to do the Right Thing. They also appear to be getting pretty good at figuring out what the Right Thing is. I'm wondering why the rest of the world doesn't see this.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
Remember this was a WSJ survey, not a consumer or programmer survey. Any experienced or well-informed stock investor would have J&J on their radar.
From the perspective of people who are familiar with the business side of Microsoft (investors, partners, clients, etc.) and the business world in general, MS has apparently been doing a really great job.
I suspect MS makes more of their money selling to and working with corporate customers than consumers, even though the average Joe doesn't think about what coporations want and what Microsoft is doing to help. The perspective of an open-source slashdot-hippie is obviously going to be different.
"Mr. Gates's philanthropy made her a much bigger fan of Microsoft"
D'OH!
"It's about time this company was recognized for all the good they bring to our world."
Double D'OH!
I love how the zombies out there never do any research. Gates' philanthropy started immediately after the big cout snafu. The video of Gates acting like an ego-centric a-hole while under oath was incredibly telling about Gates and Microsoft. It has taken years of PR and philanthopic hype to get past this! There is still more to this story, but I will leave that as an exercise.
If everyone demanded Windows anyway, I cannot see the reason to put those extremely anti-competitive clauses in the contracts with the OEM's. They did though, and it is now a part of the image of Microsoft in the eyes of those in the trade.