History has already demonstrated how Microsoft reacts when they are fully in control of technology. How do you think they would act if they are in control of vital Internet search results? Do you think they would serve the interests of the general public or their own pecuniary interests? Do you think they would stilfe search results that are critical of Microsoft or promote true free speech? Do you think if they were the dominant search engine they would use it to leverage themselves unfairly into other markets or compete fairly?

I don't need to answer these questions; as I already said history has shown us what they are willing to do. I think we the users have the final say though. I use Google and Yahoo! and have found that bing results, while typically fair aren't necessarily much better. As a matter of preference I have no reason to switch from Google, et al, and won't, even if the top 1,000 top-dogs switch to Microsoft. If that happens they lost me, I didn't lose them.

The only reason I do not own an iPhone is that AT&T pulled too much crap like overcharging customers and forcing them into restrictive agreements. It's unfortunate that Verizon is playing ball like this, I am unlikely now to actually buy a DROID unless they make their phones available on the Sprint network.

My $0.02.

"CAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNN!!!"

Why redact the headhunter and headhunting firm's name from your story? If the facts are true it seems they should stand on their own merits. I say spill their name and let it serve as a warning to all. Even better, submit your story with all of the relevant facts to The Consumerist.

Apologies in advance to David Letterman:

* Pin the tail on the Ballmer

* Simon says "UAC needs your permission to continue"

* Monopoly

* Your files in a haystack

* Twenty clippy questions

* Musical thrown chairs

* Darl McBride pinata

* Red Light, Green Light, Blue Screen

* DRM may I?

* Phone Home Scruples

I have to say that one thing I've always admired about Microsoft is how aggressive they are at going after spammers, malware creators, etc. It's easy to know who to root for in these cases.

So what if I have a domain name promoting bankruptcy related legal services, or a travel website for Fairbanks Alaska, or snowbanking, etc. There's probably a huge list of things I haven't already thought of, but... it seems to not really address the problem with financial service website forgery. I doubt some identity thief will go "Well snap!, lets wrap it up boys, Sweden finally put an end to our tomfoolery!, the game is up!"

We will purposefully never reveal a location to a consumer customer," said John Livingston, chief executive of Absolute Software. The company's Computrace package ($14 to $53 a year) is marketed as "Lojack for Laptops," and is available as a preinstalled option on computers from Lenovo, Dell, HP and other manufacturers. "We won't do it. Once you declare that it's lost or stolen, we take control over the location at that point. We purposely keep some safe distance between the end user and the thief."

Let me get this straight, if I pay for Lojack and my property is stolen, you will purposefully keep information on where my property is, from me?

Looks like I will never be using your service. I say let the customer decide what course of action to take. If that customer wishes to contact the police themselves Lojack should divulge the information. Customer's property, customer pays for service, customer isn't always right?

Just looking at Bing you see that aside from being heavily laden with background graphics it is more or less a functional copy of google's search engine. Why is it that microsoft has never been able to innovate anything interesting on their own? What's the matter M$ can't you succeed in the market without copying others' hard work? Every little bit of success they've ever had has involved stealing or copying from the success of others. Ballmer's past vitriol against google demonstrates an important internal mindset: they are VERY jealous of success and long for the early glory days when microsoft first had a taste of this. Their past actions towards Netscape show that they will do anything to return to these days.

I for one will never switch from google -- besides the fact that they take the minimalist approach they also provided a search engine with the mindset "what can we do to enrich the world" vs. the microsoft mentality of "how can the world enrich microsoft".

This reminds me of the WSJ "Missing Millionaires" article

In fact, let us all take a moment to remember the children he touched...

I live and work in San Francisco and quite frankly I love it. I've never experienced any of the issues the article claims plague our city (I'm not sure what iJacking is, but my eye sockets are just fine).

It's another talented, unethical scumbag joining up with the even bigger scumbags in government

Why the hell do you say that? Do you even know Jeff? As someone who does I can tell you your statements are ridiculous, why don't you shut the fuck up before you end up looking even stupider than you already do?

Really google serves all my needs pretty well and I can't imagine using anything else everyday. There is a new search engine called topsy.com and it seems pretty cool but it seems more directed towards tweets, blogs, forums, etc..

That's fair, I mean everyone on the Internet doesn't think Sony was worth it either.