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.'"

About Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Microsoftie

[orbitalia]

We all find it easy to bash Microsoft, their products, and their practices, and quite rightly so, but you can't really argue with Gates's way of using his riches. Even the most cynical would have to admit his heart is in the right place.

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.

Re:Microsoftie

[Thansal]

Because Gates IS MS in most people's minds. Also most people are not familiar with why MS is 'evil' they just know that it is 'cool' to say so. However people are familiar with Warren Buffett's donation to the B&MG foundation, what that they have been doing in the past few years.

How J&J has been at the top for the past 7 years confounds me in all honesty, unless the scorrign is bassed on something that looks like: (PeopleThatKnowTheName + 2*GoodDeedsDone) - 2*BadDeedsDone = Rating.

J&J is a non-entitie on my radar (aside from a friend who works for a company that does contract work for them).

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!

Re:

[Thansal]

100% correct, however it looks ugly nomatter how you put it up. I was considering ussing other variables and making a key or something, but descided enough peopel would get it this way and jsut left it (And I am lazy)

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.

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...but you can't really argue with Gates's way of using his riches. Even the most cynical would have to admit his heart is in the right place.

The most cynical certainly can argue against it, and I've seen many do just that. I've heard comments ranging from claims that it is part of a deal to bolster intellectual property law by keeping those issues from boiling over in the third world where patents make medicine too expensive for people; to simple comments that Melinda Gates is the driving force behind t

Wrong.

[twitter]

you can't really argue with Gates's way of using his riches. Even the most cynical would have to admit his heart is in the right place.

I can argue with the way he uses his riches. If you do more to know about it than listen to advertisements, you find Mr. Gate's heart is the same as it ever was. He has used foundation money to purchase newspapers critical of his company, the San Jose Mercury News and The Contra Costa Times, arguably to silence them. His spending on schools, as most of his deals are,

Funny thing

[WindBourne]

This foundation is about his wife's work; She is a PR person. Basically, they are looking to buy ppl and it is working quite nicely. But even in the early days of the foundation, you could see how intertwined it was with MS. In Colorado, a few of the small town libraries obtained computers from MS. I went into one and asked them about it. At that time, it was the lowest end computer that would run MS. More importantly, when I suggested that they run Linux on it, they said that they were prohibited from doing so. In fact, they were prohibited from running anything except what they bought from a MS site. It was deeply discounted software, IIRC, the OS was something like 50 and top office package was 150. Now, I do not know if that is still the case, but, it was obvious back then that the foundation was tied directly to MS.

Re:

[twitter]

[a public library] were prohibited from running anything except what they bought from a MS site. It was deeply discounted software, IIRC, the OS was something like 50 and top office package was 150.

Wow, what a great gift, having to forever purchase their product and run it in a prominent public place. Given TCO, they probably lost money in the bargain.

Re:

[rssrss]

OK count me as the most cynical. He is using his money in an apparently successful PR campaign. If it were all about virtue, the only information you could find about it would be the IRS forms.

Re:

[x2A]

dunno... if I wanted to change the world, do the most good for the people at the bottom, i'd probably try and accumulate huge amounts of wealth first, then use it and the power it brings to change things. If I spent the money as I made it, I wouldn't be making such big changes, the total amount of 'change' I could make would be less. You can't make the difference in the world that the richest man in the world can make, without first becoming the richest man in the world.

Not saying this was his reasons or re

Re:

[aadvancedGIR]

"Even the most cynical would have to admit his heart is in the right place."

Or, he wants to become the first world dictator and is clever enough to have a good PR.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

We all find it easy to bash Microsoft, their products, and their practices, and quite rightly so, but you can't really argue with Gates's way of using his riches. Even the most cynical would have to admit his heart is in the right place.

I'm nowhere near the most cynical, or the most paranoid, even on slashdot. And I believe that the Gates foundation is not about philanthropy, but about power.

How can anyone actually doubt this in the face of the evidence? It was revealed that Microsoft is investing in com [slashdot.org]

Re:Microsoftie

[LuYu]

I suppose you do not remember India and those Gates Foundation brib... *cough* ... donations that were given to ensure MS software was used instead of FOSS. They also paid the NYTimes to play the whole thing up in a series of sycophantic articles, if I recall correctly.

I really do not understand how MS can be viewed in a good light. They have bribed public officials (how else could their monopoly trial have evaporated), bribed governments (India cannot be an isolated case), misrepresented advertising expenditures as donations (this is technically stealing tax money), supported bad laws (software patents anybody?), robbed schools (audits in Washington state and Licensing 6), and many other objectionable things which are much better documented elsewhere.

That is more or less the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The fact that these people voted MS as the corporation having the best reputation demonstrates one of two things: a) The corporations are right. People are a bunch or stupid sheep and the corporations can lie, cheat, and steal, and then use advertising to repair their image in the mind of the public. b) The survey is carried out on people who have no idea what is going on.

Re:

[MightyMartian]

Rich men who have gained their wealth by trodding on others often appease their consciences by acts of generousity. I see no reason to forgive Gates or Microsoft for their anti-competitive activities just because Gates has caught some sort of a donation bug.

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 [slashdot.org] - 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.

Re:

[CDarklock]

How exactly does this saying apply to Microsoft?

And WRT Vista being bad for the environment, aren't the people saying it just a little bit... crazy?

Re:

[hany]

How exactly does this saying apply to Microsoft?

In the same way as your description of your perception of people in Microsoft apply to Microsoft - you wrote it confuses you that some people claim Microsoft is evil claiming there arre good (not evil) people there. In response I speculated based on your post, advancing it along this path:

• people at MS are good
• so they they have good intentions
• based on those intentions they are doing things
• their actions have some effects
• one of those effects is them (MS p

Re:Microsoftie

[ktappe]

Go watch the movie "The Corporation" and your question will be answered. And no, it's not a propaganda film--it's a very even-handed documentary that analyzes the concept of a corporation. It examines just what you said--that the people in a company are often kind folks outside of work, but how the attitude of the group can change when they gather towards a common goal of making money. On the flip side, it also examines how the public often mis-perceives corporations as evil when the corporation is really simply just doing what it was designed to do--make a profit. Highly recommended viewing. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/ [imdb.com]

Re:

[miskatonic alumnus]

On the flip side, it also examines how the public often mis-perceives corporations as evil

It also demonstrated that corporations behave like and have all the characteristics of psychopaths. Are psychopaths evil?

Re:

[Skrynesaver]

Not evil, just not very nice to know ;)
The corporation is indeed an interesting film, the basic thesis is that we have gone from ocasionally allowing corporations to come together to raise large sums of capital for the public good but now any greedy fecker can form a corporation with the sole aim of making money.

While money is all well and good it isn't actually the sole motivator of sane people (note to Ayn Rand) and when it becomes so the behaviour of the individual in question becomes psychopathic.

Mic

Re:Microsoftie

[CDarklock]

> desire to dominate the industry

Isn't this normal?

> complete intolerance of competition

I don't believe this is true. Consider RealNetworks. When they led the pack in streaming audio with the RealAudio format, they made a deal to put that technology in Windows Media Player. They were going to make a lot of money from that deal. Microsoft, in turn, were going to get a great popular format supported in Media Player.

Hearsay follows. I have no proof or inside information on this; I was just living in the Seattle area when it happened, and everyone was talking about it. Some or all of it may be apocryphal.

When the time came to integrate the RA support into MP, Real supposedly delivered a crippled version of the technology that only worked at low bit rates and advertised Real's own Media Player replacement when higher bit rates were encountered. Microsoft rejected the submission, demanding that they provide a version that played all bit rates and didn't advertise the Media Player replacement. Real complied, sort of - they linked their logo to the web site for their Media Player replacement instead of their home page, and fixed the player to downsample high bit rates instead of refusing to play them. You still couldn't get the higher bit rates without paying Real and replacing Windows Media Player.

When Microsoft went back and complained, Real smugly observed that they were the 800-pound gorilla in the streaming audio space, and Microsoft should already know how that works. So Microsoft told them where to shove their technology, and built their own WMA format. Now Real is an also-ran, doing most of their business in the mobile market.

Is this because Microsoft is intolerant of competition, or because they are intolerant of being cheated? More to the point, wasn't Real trying to cheat *us*, too? Didn't Microsoft also make the choice that was best for us, siding with the consumer instead of with their business partner?

I've not always been on Microsoft's side in this argument, but I've seen a pattern: Microsoft, since the DOJ debacle, *appear* to be making an honest effort to do the Right Thing. They also appear to be getting pretty good at figuring out what the Right Thing is. I'm wondering why the rest of the world doesn't see this.

Re:Microsoftie

[ErroneousBee]

So a corporation (Real) acted evil. Kind of proves the point.

Although I've no doubt the if Real had played it straight on this, they would soon have been embraced, extended, and extinguished. After all, why would a user install realplayer if the Windows bundled Media Player played real just fine.

Looks like Real got out alive on this one. Ironic that it was their dodgy underhanded tactics that saved them.

Re:

[CDarklock]

> Kind of proves the point.

It's *insightful* to say that when someone else is evil, that proves Microsoft's evil nature, because surely Microsoft was going to be evil anyway?

You people are on crack.

Re:

[CDarklock]

I actually understand that Real is doing okay with the mobile thing. They certainly have a strong presence there, and they don't seem to be on the way to bankruptcy anytime soon.

I liked RealAudio. I was sort of sad when I had to go over my website converting all the large sound files to MP3. I've often been the last holdout of an obsolete technology when everyone else has switched.

Re:

[BillyBlaze]

I enjoyed The Corporation, and it does make some good points. But if you can call it "even-handed" with a straight face, you need to work on your critical thinking skills.

Re:Microsoftie

[jimstapleton]

Legal, Sales and Marketing... That's the source of evil in any company.

Re:Microsoftie

[jimstapleton]

Oh, and accounting.

Why? Each of these groups is about getting money and minimising financial cost at all cost, so to speak. Typically everyone else is usually interested simply in making a good product, and trying not to be hindered by these 3 or 4.

Re:

[CDarklock]

So why don't people simply accept that legal will make stupid patent applications, and sales will lie about the product, and marketing will lie about the competition, and accounting will "spin" the financials? Why don't we simply accept these evils as necessary for doing business on a large scale, and not blame the company for them? If these are reliably the sources of evil in a company, why does it reflect badly on a company when those departments do evil things?

Doesn't it seem like when Apple produces a b

Re:Microsoftie

[jimstapleton]

actually, I use "evil" in respect to apple all the time. The problem is, they had been so evil for so long, it /did/ hurt them, so nobody cares about them anymore. They are finally breaking out of irrelevance. You should see more "apple is evil" soon.

The other thing is, some companies can keep better control of these sources of evil, so the companies themselves are considered less evil, though the larger a company is, typically the harder this task is.

Re:Microsoftie

[xtracto]

I'm always confused by the way people claim Microsoft is an evil company. The leadership of Microsoft has never been evil. To the contrary, they do tremendous good for all sorts of charitable causes.

Well, I always thought the same about MS... I do not dislike its products although I dislike its MONOPOLY PRACTICES. Aside of that, as everyone else said we could argue that Microsoft and Bill Gate's foundation are completely separate thing... ... at least I thought so, unfortunately it happens that Mr. Gates wisely used his "unevil" foundation to /push/ my country into using Microsoft's solutions instead of Open Source ones... now *THAT* is bad...

You can read about it on this article [infoworld.com]. You might recognize the name of Miguel de Icaza who was one of the principals on the e-Mexico initative.

an interesting snippet:
"I thought I was going to be the only person for Linux," de Icaza said. "But HP surprised me, IBM surprised me and Sun surprised me."

Despite general agreement that open-source technologies would be more flexible and cost efficient, Mexico's Linux revolution was quashed after Fox met with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, according to de Icaza.

"Bill Gates flew down to Mexico, and they announced a donation of $30 million dollars ... and Linux was dropped," de Icaza said.

And here is where he used his nice foundation:
The software maker has also allotted $10 million to train workers in small and mid-size businesses, along with an additional grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the country's Vamos México program to be used to move the country's libraries online. .

Note that this "Vamos Mexico" foundation is being investigaed for fraud and corruption in Mexico.

So yeah, I used to defend Bill Gate's foundation with the premise that, even though the Corporation "Microsoft" was bad, that did not mean the foundation was bad... but the e-Mexico issue made me change my views.

As for your question:
Where exactly does the evil come from? How do a group of people who are not evil get together and do something evil?

My thought has always been that a Corporation is evil by definition, because the objective of any corporation is to profit, no matter what they do. You should see The Corporation [thecorporation.com] film. They explain it very well. Basically, a corporation has all the properties and rights a human been has... except that it does NOT have a "soul" or "conscience" or whatever you want to call it. That is why it has no "minimal ethics" and you see corporations going to the end of the third world where slaving is allowed in order to maximize their profits which is what they do (Nike, Starbucks, Apple, etc, etc etc...).

Re:

[Qwavel]

I studied MS extensively for a political science thesis. My conclusion is that MS is evil. Obviously I don't really mean evil, but I think the people on this site will know what I mean.

I also think that you are a little evil because, when you went looking for a job, you didn't care that MS was considered evil. Not as bad as working for a cigarette company, but it does suggest you'll get your money any way you can.

I also think that I'm a bit evil, because Windows is my primary OS. But I do my best to rat

My conclusion: Microsoft is adversarial.

[Futurepower(R)]

Quote from the parent comment: "I studied MS extensively for a political science thesis. My conclusion is that MS is evil."

In 2003 I wrote an article about Windows XP: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going [futurepower.org].

I came to the conclusion that Microsoft is very adversarial toward its customers, manipulating them whenever it is able to find a weakness.

Re:

[Daishiman]

The devil always lies in two things: the details, and apathy. See, what most of us as IT staff see as evil, they see as "business as usual", and what they might see as philantropy, we see as "a rationalization for shoddy business".

Everyone will be taking actions throughout their lives which will be morally problematic for someone else. Eating meat, consuming resources, not being polite, having vices, tolerating certain things about other people, not taking a stand on issues, etc. It is inevitable and a par

Re:

[MysteriousPreacher]

I'm sure that most people there are normal, some are very good and some are total shits - just like any group of people.

Comparing anti-MS feeling to racial hatred is a bit of stretch but I see where you're coming from. The irrational reason to hate Microsoft is "coz m$ r evil big company taking money from ppl". This is pretty silly, just like the rednecks who'd dress up as ghosts and go hurt people for no good reason.

The rational reason to dislike Microsoft would have to be their business practices. On one

Re:

[Yvanhoe]

Computer scientists are that : scientists. They like openess, the ability to know exactly how the tools they are using work. They like software that can be used by the computer-scientific community to build better softwares. That is why Microsoft has such a bad reputation, and their business practices are loathed mainly for this reason : computer-science wise, they are a braking force. They have been like that in the past and they still are like this today.

I am not sure that Mr. Gates commitment to humani

Re:

[Pojut]

Being FORCED? Then what the fuck is OSX? All the various distros of Linux? Homebrewed OS's? BSD? OS/2? Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.....

There are MANY MANY MANY options out there other than windows. People are just too fucking stupid to realize that. NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE forces ANYONE to use windows. There are hundreds of thousands of millions of people in the world (and companies, for that matter) that get by without using a single solitary piece of microsoft software.

If they can do it, w

Re:

[Narcissus]

He said forced to buy, not forced to use.

Remember that whole thing with MS making computer sellers pay them per computer sold, not per copy of the OS installed? Therefore the sellers were required to pay MS whether or not their OS was installed, therefore the customers were required to pay whether or not they bought it with their OS installed...

Re:Microsoftie

[Pojut]

Again, being fucking stupid.

Go out and buy a white-box PC or laptop. Or even better, go out and buy the individual components and put it together. Or get it done for you if you don't have the know-how from a place like MEI or Intellect (local shops where I live)

No force of windows involved. Many online shops also cost you NOTHING to have no OS come preinstalled with your system, yet you do have to pay if it is installed.

Nownownow, you are going to start the whole "wlel people don't have the knowledge to do that!"

So buy a mac if you don't like it. Or again, go somehwere and have them build a PC for you and install linux, or what have you.

No one FORCES a consumer to buy a computer with windows or from a big-name manufacturer. Should a company (in this case microsoft) be penalized because consumers didn't take the time to educate themselves before making a purchase?

This goes back to the whole cars debate. Should car manufacturers be held liable because they are used for a bad purpose? Should a car manufacturer be sued because I drove on the sidewalk and therefore used their product to kill someone? Should they be sued because I can use their vehicle to commit a robbery? Should they be sued if your brakes fail because you never had them inspected for 60,000 miles (unless they claim that their brakes last that long)? No. Of course not.

If you are computer-illiterate enough to buy a big-name computer, you aren't going to get it without Windows unless it's a Mac; if you ARE computer literate enough to build your own, you will put whatever OS you want to put on it. Again, people are not FORCED. They do have a choice. And again, the chances that someone who buys a big-name computer has enough skills to install their own OS is HIGHLY unlikely. Those that do have enough skill to do so and don't want windows will buy a mac (or one of the others that offer Linux, such as dell)

Your point is completely moot. Big-name computers with windows are NOT the only option a consumer has.

Re:Microsoftie

[Narcissus]

OK, but that's now. In the past it wasn't like that! In the past, if you bought a PC (from Dell, HP, or the guy on the corner that puts the boxes together) you paid for Windows because if you wanted to resell Windows at all, no matter who you were, there was only one way to do it, and that was by paying a fee per computer distributed.

Re:Microsoftie

[init100]

If you want to delve into me being over analytical, one could argue that it is the CONSUMERS fault that microsoft has reached the point that it has. If there wasn't such a high demand for it, companies could get by selling something other than windows while having good income levels.

If everyone demanded Windows anyway, I cannot see the reason to put those extremely anti-competitive clauses in the contracts with the OEM's. They did though, and it is now a part of the image of Microsoft in the eyes of those in the trade.

Re:Microsoftie

[MightyMartian]

Let's consider that every group that designs a word processor is forced to reverse engineer Microsoft's document standard, and that Microsoft is going out of its way to sabotage an open document standard in favor of one which can only be 100% reliably opened under its software.

In a very real sense, the monopolistic practices of Microsoft over the last two decades has lead to a stranglehold on the marketplace. Each time it releases a free-bee, like a browser or a media player, where a competitor exists, it is attempting to wipe out the competition.

And yet, apparently, because Gates gives to poor Africans, the fact that a large portion of his fortune, and the vast fortunes of his company have been made in precisely the fashion outlined becomes okay. Good for Gates saving Africans. Maybe he can use some of his money to save the competition he and the company which is a convicted monopolist so gleefully destroyed.

Re:

[Pojut]

And why don't those companies just give a big fuck you to microsoft's format? The lock in with ANYTHING from Microsoft is SUPPORTED by the very consumers that BUY from microsoft.

If you don't buy from them, you don't have to use their standards. If you do buy from them, then you obviously don't care that you have to use their standards and it ends up not mattering anyway. Last time I checked, there aren't goons from microsoft going around putting guns to people's heads telling them that they HAVE to buy a

Re:Microsoftie

[nasch]

And why don't those companies just give a big fuck you to microsoft's format? The lock in with ANYTHING from Microsoft is SUPPORTED by the very consumers that BUY from microsoft.

You just answered your question. Saying FU to MS compatibility means saying FU to their customers. Companies that do that tend to go out of business.

Re:

[Pojut]

Stop backing up an empty argument, read MY post, and see that you are wrong. PC's with windows are NOT the only computers you can buy, just like microsoft is NOT the only software company out there.

Re:Microsoftie

[CommandNotFound]

But I'm honestly curious. What was the Right Thing in *your* opinion? How should Microsoft have responded to the court decisions? What should we have done?

All the points you made were technical improvements. Yes, Microsoft software tends to be marginal, but it's the fact that it is *forced* on many of us is the real problem. Even if the software is perfect, many companies have now given their whole computing future to a single company. The OS? Microsoft. The office suite? Microsoft. The development tools? Microsoft. The database server? Microsoft. Various methods were used to get to this position, and improved engineering had little to do with it in the mid-1990s when this monopoly was carefully being built.

What should you have done? Lots of things, but for starters, someone should have been jailed for the so-called School Agreement [microsoft.com] that says (quoted from your website):

Count the number of eligible PCs you have. (See below for a definition of an eligible PC.) Then choose the application, system, and Client Access License (CAL) products you want to be licensed to use.
[...]
Eligible computers include: 100 percent of academic institution owned or leased Pentium II, iMac G3, or equivalent or better computers.


To paraphrase, if I donated 100 Linux / OpenOffice PCs to my local school, Microsoft would still get an annual fee for each of those PCs, even though Microsoft did nothing to earn that money. That, my friend, is taxation. And Microsoft's lobby would prevent any public officials from having this lock-in overturned.

Oh, well, I'm not worried... the farther Microsoft goes, the farther it will fall. It happened to IBM. If the timing is right, Gates' historical reputation will be as tarnished as Rockefeller's still is, regardless of how much money his heirs gave away.

Re:

[tomstdenis]

No. Visual Studio is tied to windows to prop window sales, just like Office and the rest of the apps. If Windows followed ANY open standards w.r.t. operating system calls, gui libraries, etc, porting from Windows to Linux or BSD wouldn't be an impossible task.

As for doing things at the EXPENSE of the customers. How about things like ... using proprietary undocumented file formats, exploiting internal API functions, purposefully messing existing apps (back in the day w.r.t lotus), not supporting industry

It's sad that people can be such sheep

[meosborne]

I guess this just proves that if you have enough money you can always buy yourself some respectability. People won't concern themselves with how you got your money.

QFT.

[FatSean]

It's easy for the average clod to understand that the CEO gives millions to poor and hungry people. It's hard for that clod to understand the sneaky business practices, and upgrade cycle that brings little but costs lots.

Re:

[keithmoore]

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 t

Re:

[aadvancedGIR]

Unfortunately, it's not just an american problem. And I believe it is just an example of the human need for a divine figure (one way or another, we are looking for a higher being that would rule our life and give it a meaning).

Re:

[Afecks]

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.

Ahh, So THAT is why Apple is getting so much more popular lately!

Winning at losing.

[twitter]

No, most people still think M$ is sleaze. As the article put it.

The corporate world's overall reputation remains dismal, with new scandals emerging, such as the improper dating of stock-option grants to business executives. About 69% of respondents graded corporate America's reputation as either "not good" or "terrible," just slightly lower than the 71% in 2005.

It's disturbing that M$ could lead the pack, but overall people don't trust them. The lesson learned is that the bad behavior of some companies

Precisely

[toby]

I call it reputation laundering.

Microsoft is just a manifestation of profound human weakness and limitation. Presumably as long as we are defective, imperfect creatures, we will not be free of such destructive and criminal institutions. But we can continue to resist!

Re:

[Dr. Manhattan]

"It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it." - Edmund Way Teale

I wouldn't accuse Gates of that...

[Shivetya]

though from moderation its obvious the mentality at /. would believe it. If Jobs did the same would be ok? Does the fact he doesn't cause Apple any issues?

Gates is associated with Microsoft and the halo effect of his charity will rub off. The big thing people here forget is most people don't care about what OS they use. They don't give a flip about the business issues. To them PCs are just another appliance, an aggravating one at times, but nothing more. Also, the majority will never have a problem wi

Re:

[Reality Master 101]

I guess this just proves that if you have enough money you can always buy yourself some respectability. People won't concern themselves with how you got your money.

Or, another way to look at it, the Gates Foundation makes whatever minor annoyances* we've suffered from Microsoft worth it. The Gates Foundation is going to do a hell of a lot of good in the world. There are certain things that can only be done if you have an enormous pile of money in one place not beholden to elected leadership.

*And they

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I see a lot of people bashing Gates in spite of his donations to charity. That's fine by me. If he's really giving the money away for the right reasons, he won't care what anyone thinks of him. But all the same, I applaud him for it.

Interestingly enough, some of the largest charitable contributions in history have been anonymous. A person more interested in doing good than getting credit should probably follow suit. I'm not wealthy, but I do donate to charity and I always do so anonymously. I think this

Microsoft came out on top of this survey.....

[8127972]

.... by using the same methods it "corrects" [slashdot.org] Wikipedia entries.

WTF?

[M-G]

I'm sorry, but WTF does Gates spending his personal fortune on charitable causes have to do with the company? I would think that the typical WSJ reader wouldn't use that as part of their opinion of MS overall. I'd be more inclined to believe that the typical WSJ reader would have voted for them because of their ruthless nature and ability to make money hand over fist.

Re:WTF?

[mikelieman]

Typical WSJ reader is a MSFT fanboy, because they don't have a clue what REAL TECHNOLOGY is capable of.

He is the largest stockholder

[wiredog]

One of the founders. The public face of the company.

fuzzy logic

[hany]

I'm sorry, but WTF does Gates spending his personal fortune on charitable causes have to do with the company?

One of the founders. The public face of the company.

I.e. something like "fuzzy loging" or "intuitive decisions" or "estimate" or whatever: great feature of our mental powers but also source of fataly wrong decisions in some cases.

Links to follow: The Cerebral Symphony [williamcalvin.com], We're Only Human... [psychologicalscience.org], ...

Those links may not be the best for this topic but I'm unable to quickly find the one I was wanting

Re:

[LotsOfPhil]

I don't think the respondents were WSJ readers necessarily. They describe 5 people as: retired professor, homemaker, college student, person who gets free medicine from Merck (no bias there), and a sales rep for a medical photography company. It was just a phone survey, I think.

Re:

[Da Fokka]

That's because it's easier to identify with people than with the companies they (are perceived to) represent. People dislike America because of Bush, people like Virgin because of Richard Branson and when the public perception of Bill Gates changes, so will the public perception of Microsoft.

If there is nothing good to say about Vista...

[skyryder12]

then paint the company "less evil" because Bill G donates money. So, it is OK to bully your competitors, and engage in illegal activity, and be convicted of crimes as a company as long as your CEO gives the money to 'worthy causes". Welcome to U$A...culture of the buck....

Don't be so hard on ol Bill....

[Churla]

He's just taking a page from the Andrew Carnagie [wikipedia.org] playbook...

how does that work?

[Lxy]

How does Bill Gates giving away his fortune turn Microsoft into a "good" company?

Let's say I own company X. I have a personal wealth of $300 million. I decide that I should give away $150 million to various charities. I'm still bloody rich, but now look like a "good guy". How does comany X get any credit? No one else at the company is giving away money. The money I gave away was out of my personal bank account, not company X's. Company X is not any better perceptually becuase I gave away money. Why would Company X get put on the "good" list?

Last I checked, there's still plenty of money grubbing rich folk at the top of the pyramid which is Microsoft. What Bill Gates does with his own money shouldn't have any bearing on the comany's status.

And finally, please mod me up because this is my 1,000th post to Slashdot.

Re:

[dcskier]

bill gates and microsoft to the common person are one in the same. anything he does will reflect on the company and likewise, no matter if it's the case or not. even the slashdot microsoft icon is a picture of bill, err i mean borg bill. so yes him giving away his money will reflect on microsoft.

Re:

[kahei]

How does Bill Gates giving away his fortune turn Microsoft into a "good" company?

Let me remagnetize your moral compass there, buddy.

Generic megacorp: Profits -> Higher stock price / dividends -> mainly sprawling McMansions
Microsoft: Profits -> Higher stock price / dividends -> partly medical research

See? The second one is nicer. More "good" if you will.

Of course, winning the niceness prize among multinational corporations is a bit like winning the deliciousness prize among steaming lumps of f

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Generic megacorp: Profits -> Higher stock price / dividends -> mainly sprawling McMansions Microsoft: Profits -> Higher stock price / dividends -> partly medical research See? The second one is nicer. More "good" if you will.

Is it just me, or is the thought of Microsoft holding the patents to years of medical research particularly frightening? I went in for an operation and ended up with the blue spleen of death!

I'm quite serious, though; Microsoft has invested very heavily in Biotech. Micro

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

"And finally, please mod me up because this is my 1,000th post to Slashdot."

Will do... oh crap!

hahahah

[iXiXi]

Give me a few billion dollars and I would be happy to give my monthly interest to the poor unfortunates. If I push the crumbs from my table and the dog eats, does that make me a hero?

Re:

[derrickh]

I'm sure the dog is less concerned about your business practices and more interested in the food in its belly. So yes, it does make you a hero.

D

Education

[pubjames]

The one thing that I'm afraid I really can't forgive Gates for is the way they have targeted schools IT budgets in the UK (and I'm sure in the rest of the world). They basically have used every trick in the book to make sure they always get the lions share of schools IT budgets, and the schools haven't actually got very much in return. And Microsoft has never actually shown much concern about actually helping educate the children - it's all just about turning the kids into Microsoft zombies.

So Gates' generosity with his money doesn't impress me, take money that should be going to children's education and you're forever a scumbag in my view.

Re:

[MyNameIsEarl]

So Microsoft is like the tobacco companies, going after children in order to gain a customer for life. An interesting strategy to be sure, but certainly not one of a "good" company in the terms of morally good and not in the good for making money sense.

Re:

[stubear]

So the OLPC project is the Devil incarnate then? Not only are they targeting children, they are targeting children in third wold countries who likely need running water more than they need a laptop computer with a poorly designed Microsoft Bob rip-off UI.

Check out these links! ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, the Wall Street Journal (and apparently many other readers) haven't seen this:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la- na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story [latimes.com]

or this, for another example (and many others):

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la- na-gates8jan08,0,7911824.story [latimes.com]

Not good enough

[GauteL]

Bill Gates have become insanely rich from illegal and immoral business practises. Even if he gives away some of his money, he has still benefitted personally from these practises. He is quoted as saying he wants to give away almost all of his fortunes before he dies, but the money is useless for him when dead anyway.

If I was to steal $1 million, I would not suddenly be a moral person if I gave away half to charity, and I would not be in the clear just because I decided to give away all of the remainder to c

at least he's trying

[romit_icarus]

I know this is /. and MS bashing is de rigeur, but let that not detract from the fact that what Bill Gates is doing is admirable to say the least.

Why is it admirable? It's not that he is rich and has a lot of money etc. It's the fact that he's getting into global developmental issues and spending a majority time working on that than on IT. I live in India and I've seen the positive work that his foundation is doing in HIV prevention. Also on a personal front, he's moving away from IT where he has leadership position to an area where he is new. Yes we know that money can buy you leverage but then you could argue that way with anything he does..

He could have just retired to the carribean, bought out an island and enjoyed his wealth. But he didn't and so let's give him a cheer just for that.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Bill and Melinda are probably very nice people, and they do very nice things with their money

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.

Same old greedy man.

[miffo.swe]

Bill Gates is the same greedy powerhungry man he was when he started Microsoft. This just shows you can buy reputation without really doing anything good. Microsoft is the exact same evil company as before, theyve just bought enough magazines now.

No suprise

[Henry V .009]

Their software has gotten a lot better since the Windows 95 days. Since 2000, Windows has been stable. It has also been secure if you take simple precautions (run automatic updates, don't click "Yes!" to everything you see on the internet). No wonder people are happier with Microsoft these days.

Thanks AJAX!

[ear1grey]

Thankfully the tagging dropdown helped me to spell "antitrust", though I had to manage "coercive monopoly" all by myself.

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:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I mostly don't care, and consider that PC OS technology has become a very boring field anyway.

I think you're a bit confused as to cause and effect. Remember the term "stifling innovation?" What did you think it meant? The current stagnation and glacial pace of change in the desktop OS market is not indicative that MS's monopoly does not matter, it is indicative that MS's monopoly has slowed innovation in the market.

Windows XP is a fairly stable operating system, with no serious architectural flaw for o

They didn't poll slashdot

[sulfur_lad]

Oh, the sweet teenage angst on here whenever someone says something nice about Microsoft.

Welcome to running a business, you want to make sure you stay on top. Addressing an earlier post, MS does not try to create MS Zombies in schools, good teachers (whom I observe weekly) leverage whatever technology they have to enable content that helps them to instruct. Then there are other teachers who tell their students that the phases of the moon are caused by the shadow of the earth on the moon. I saw this being taught on a Mac, so obviously that's Apple's fault.

Honestly about 5 years ago I would have jumped on the "obviously this is false" slashdot bandwagon, but the honest to goodness truth is that things have gotten better. I have friends who are currently dedicating two years of their lives to travel around the world to various Global Giving [globalgiving.com] projects. I've been trying to look at my life and figure out how I could do something like that and make it work. That Bill Gates has the resources to do it is one thing, the fact that he does do it - no matter what people here describe as a small percentage of what he's worth - is excellent. The halo effect means that whatever the boss does reflects on the company. To most people on the planet MS is Bill Gates, and so the impression is now good. You can add that XP has been an awesome product with an excellent run (that's not over) that has elevated the company (compared to previous offerings), and you get a much better impression.

And anyways, for the haters and the teen angst-kids here, if you don't use Windows then who cares, don't whine. They're not forcing you to just like they're not forcing me to run Windows Server instead of Linux (which is running) on my server.

lying with numbers

[oohshiny]

respondents gave Microsoft very high marks for leadership and financial results. But Mr. Gates's personal philanthropy also boosted the public's opinion of Microsoft.

So do the mafia and the Cali drug cartel. The reputation of a company shouldn't be measured by how ruthless or financially successful it is, or how much money their founders give away, it should be measured by whether they comply with the law, innovate, are socially responsible in their business activities, and produce high-quality products.

What about . . .

[walterbyrd]

- Lying to the US-DoJ in Video taped testomony?
- Letters from dead people campaign?
- Caught dead-to-rights in outright theft of IP from competitors?
- Abusing the US legal system by funding scam lawsuits to FUD the competitions?
- Filing about 40 bogus patents every week for week for years?
- Secretly rigging supposedly independant benchmarks, and TOC studies?
- Payola to bloggers, and wikipedia contributors?
- Payola to "journalists" like Enderle?
- Payola to fake think-tanks like AdTI?
- Threatening to sue all L

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Unlike the mafia, who outright extort and launder people's money and threaten them with physical harm if they don't pay for protection services.

The key to MS's acceptability is their crimes are complicated and most people are idiots. People understand passing bad checks as theft or fraud. They don't understand abusing a monopoly position in the market because most people don't even truly understand what a monopoly is, or what a market is, or what would constitute abuse and why. So long as your crime is c

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

People can complain all they want, but it doesn't make it so. It just happens to be an easy target for anti competition, anti capitalist folks.

Please educate yourself on monopolies before trying to argue this subject. Monopolies are anti-capitalist. They allow a company to break the capitalist system by undermining the benefits it normally provides, which is why almost every country in the world restricts their action. The basic idea of the capitalist method is that you can get more innovation by appeali

Re:

[drinkypoo]

As much as I can't stand certain aspects of using Windows, there is no doubt what MS has done for the tech industry, and the charity world.

What exactly HAS Microsoft done for the tech industry? They've never invented anything of interest; every useful product or technology coming out of Microsoft is either bought from someone else, a mediocre copy of someone else's product, and/or their usual "embrace and extend" bullshit.

Compare what Microsoft has done to the tech industry. Recently they funded the SCO

You must be new here...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

You must be new here. Slashdot is about 55% corporate astroturf, 20% press releases from various game companies and various game magazines, 15% stories about morons drilling holes in their mom's swimming pool to cool their XBox, and 10% science-related topics.

I keep coming back mainly to witness the laughable cluelessness of the average IT drone; there are people out there who actually rely on this site for "news" (shudder).

Re:

[Temkin]

Nahhh... My uid is 1/5th yours. I'm just in denial man!

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Reminds me of the scene in star wars 3 where Amidala says "so this is how democracy dies, to thunderous applause". Things like this just make me lose total faith in the world.

Dude, you are never going to get laid.

I think i might start up a business dedicated to destroying organizations like the world wildlife fund, greenpeace, the salvation army etc. Then i'll build it into a massive empire so i can keep half of everything i take from them and later give it away to the people who needed it in the first p

You're an idiot

[donutello]

I strongly recommend learning elementary math and the basics of the tax code before spouting off on stuff that you don't know anything about.

Jerry: So were going to make the Post Office pay for my new stereo?
Kramer: It's a write off for them.
Jerry: How is it a write off?
Kramer: They just write it off.
Jerry: Write it off what?
Kramer: Jerry, all these big companies they write off everything!
Jerry: You don't even know what a write off is.
Kramer: Do you?
Jerry: No. I don't.
Kramer: But they do, and they're the on

Re:

[goldspider]

I imagine Gates doesn't give a shit whether or not you appreciate his philanthropy. I'm sure there are plenty of people around the world who do, and they are far more important to Gates than you.

Feel free to sit tight with your smug superiority while the Gates Foundation does some real good for the world.