Microsoft laptop scandal
p2pnet.net News:- “Any publicity is good publicity,” the saying goes. And Bill and the Boyz, AMD and Acer clearly believe that’s true because their freebie gift of expensive laptops to carefully identified bloggers continues to reverberate around the Net, with much of the comment distinctly unfavourable.
The ‘Ferrari’ laptops aren’t really free, of course. Like any hand-out, they’re meant to generate coverage. But there’s a big difference between a ‘gift’ of the latest software release, a baseball cap, a t-shirt, a ballpoint pen, a carry bag, or whatever, and a fully functional, $2,300 computer loaded with Microsoft Vista.
The laptops went only to some 90 digi-scribes who are, in the eyes of Bill and the Boyz, potentially able to generate all kinds of good press for Microsoft ——– the kind money can’t buy.
Many in the blogging community, “accused Microsoft of bribery and their peers of unethical behavior,” says The New York Times.
Microsoft, AMD and Acer may be venal – Microsoft in particular – but they’re not stupid and they’ll have known in advance this would happen, to an extent. But presumably, that’s cool and will be well worth the resultant slagging, they figured.
“A Microsoft spokesperson was quoted as saying that generally speaking the blogging community ‘is highly intelligent and quite cynical. Anyone who thinks they can be easily swayed is fooling themselves’ and that ‘no editorial commentary was expected or required’,” says John Pospisil on Tech.Blorge, continuing:
In which case, my question is, why is the company bothering to send out the laptops if it expects nothing in return? Last time I checked Microsoft was in the business of making money. If what the Microsoft spokesperson is saying is true, than the company is spending its PR budget very unwisely. I would be quite upset by this if I was a shareholder, and would be calling for the head of Microsoft PR to be sacked.
But of course that`s not the case. This is a cynical exercise where the aim is to improve the coverage of Vista in the blogosphere. Everyone knows that, and Microsoft`s ‘no editorial commentary is expected or required’ further demonstrates just how cynical the company is.
Meanwhile, the approximate retail value of the gifts (excluding whatever Vista would have gone for) was about $207,000. But the real physical cost would have been far lower.
Was it worth it? Sure it was.
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Also See:
expensive laptops – Tacky Microsoft Ferrari promo, December 29, 2006
The New York Times – Costly Gift From Microsoft Is an Invitation to Blog, January 1, 2007
Tech.Blorge – Microsoft`s cynical response to laptop scandal, December 31, 2006
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January 2nd, 2007 at 5:03 pm
If Microsoft made good products they wouldn’t have to bribe bloggers. Everyone I’ve talked to who knows the slightest thing about computers is saying to avoid Vista.