Submission + - Microsoft very particular style of "competing" now in the open (nytimes.com)
Penn made a name for himself in Washington by bulldozing opponents through smear campaigns. Now he spends his days trying to do the same to Google, on behalf of its archrival Microsoft.
This a scaling up of the anti-Google campaigns he has been mounting up since 1990 as CEO of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, on behalf of his old Harvard friends Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
Presenting this as a defensive posture for past wounds inflicted on Microsoft, the new strategy is described as moving from working in the shadows to one of perpetrating attacks in plain view.
Reading this makes one feel like distant the idea that capitalism works from competing to bring a better product to the consumer.
I propose creating a new category on Slashdot to track down this behaviour, where we would detect and expose distasteful PR strategies in action, for the benefit of journalists, bloggers and reviewers who could otherwise fall in for the lies.