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.'"

Comments

About Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time this company was recognized for all the good they bring to our world.

Re:Microsoftie

[kevin_conaway]

We all find it easy to bash Microsoft, their products, and their practices, and quite rightly so....

So why are they ranked the top company in a reputation survey? Seems a little silly since although Gates made his money from Microsoft, his spending is not related to the company.

as the saying goes

[hany]

How do a group of people who are not evil get together and do something evil?

Maybe it has something to do with the saying:

Road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Or take a look a look at story covered in following post: UK Greens Declare Vista Bad For Environment - maybe the attempt to give customers "better experience" and also "satisfying *IAA" is supported by good intentions but here you are: at least greens consider it evil.

Reminds me of the mob bosses.

[zerofoo]

Those guys used to give big-time money to their church.....and then go "whack" some guys as a matter of business.

The leaders of an organization do not necessarily reflect the true nature of their organization.

Bill and Melinda are probably very nice people, and they do very nice things with their money, but their company is a ruthless and brutal company. Microsoft has demonstrated, time and time again, that they will do anything to maintain their monopoly and stranglehold on their market. They have put the screws to their "partners" and customers, and have caused much ill will between those parties.

No amount of gift-giving, by a few at the top, will change that.

-ted

Re:Microsoftie

[thousandinone]

Companies, nations, religious groups, and any form of organization for that matter, are often judged based off of their most prominent members, which in most cases are leaders, but in other cases are just simply those who stand out. Examples of this can be seen everywhere; Many people view citizens of the United States in a rather unflattering light, but that view is based largely off of impressions given off by our leadership and those people who stand out more, who really are not representative of everyone who lives here. Many people view certain religious groups rather poorly as well, but that judgment is based largely off of observations of the extremists in that group. Why then is it strange that many people would judge Microsoft based off of Bill Gates' actions? It doesn't necessarily make a viewpoint correct, but its just the way most people work.

Factors that have changed my own mind about M$

[El Cabri]

As a former red-blooded MS basher, I really cannot say that I've become a Microsoft fanboy either. I mostly don't care, and consider that PC OS technology has become a very boring field anyway. Here's a take at a list of things that have cooled me off :

• Windows XP is a fairly stable operating system, with no serious architectural flaw for office use, software development, workstation or hobbyist use.
• William H Gates III has stepped away from the company's spotlight and is leveraging his wealth in a remarkably, socially responsible way, making this accumulation truly beneficial to the world that has created it.
• Desktop Operating System peculiarities are growing more irrelevant every year in most domains. The general indifference around the release of Vista is the best proof of this.
• No true credible alternative OS has emerged after fifteen years of trying in each and every way : free software, commercial OS companies (Be), alternative OSs pushed by proprietary hardware vendors (Apple, Sun), etc.
• In the domain of software development, MS's contributions with .NET and C# are objectively superior to most of their predecessors (I'm talking mainstream environments, not niche or academic ones like Scheme, Haskell or SmallTalk). These are probably the best contribution to mainstream application and system development environment, since Kernighan tried system programming in a high level language and made C. They also have some of the best advanced research in that domain.
• By experience, I have found out that it is easier to tweak XP to behave as a Hobbyist's or developper's UNIX box, than it os to tweak Linux into doing properly all that XP does. Install Cygwin, a proper text editor, MS's free command line compiler suite, and learn how to configure the Terminal, and you're done.

Re:Microsoftie

[hutchike]

Re: (PeopleThatKnowTheName + 2*GoodDeedsDone) - 2*BadDeedsDone = Rating.

You don't need those brackets. You could factor out the 2 like this:

PeopleThatKnowTheName + 2*(GoodDeedsDone - BadDeedsDone) = Rating

Damn I must be bored today!