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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.'"
Two words: Tax Shelter
Once you have more money than anyone on the planet, being 'charitable' is easy - and provides a nice tax shelter for the money you don't show us that is still in your financial instruments. The good will that builds for the company you founded (and certainly hold large amounts of stock in) is just stock-value-inflating icing on the cake.
Bravo! Don't be upset when I fail to give you a standing ovation.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
bingo. Microsoft's willful negligence in making their email readers and web browsers insecure has cost consumers hundreds of billions of dollars, and they're doing their best to cripple their customers computers in order to extort more money from them. They still manage to effectively impose a significant tax on the vast majority of computers sold, even if the consumer never uses Windows.
There seems to be something in American culture that causes many people here to reserve their greatest admiration for the politicians and companies that abuse them the most.
What makes you think they're nice people? We already know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Billy Boy is not. Hell, he lied, cheated, and stole his way to the top and fucked customers over from the very beginning. If you got a defective paper tape of their Altair BASIC software, Bill would not replace it. And yes, in those days, you dealt directly with him.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not to mention that they hold refugee children hostage
It would have been nice if the parent poster had included an example (maybe with a link) of a clinic 'left with almost nothing' just the same.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran