Wed, 16 Feb 2005
Howto shoot yourself in the foot:
To celebrate the opening of the new MSN search, Microsoft offered some companies and press agencies a personal search expert for one day to research what you are looking for.
The Freie-Software-Presseagentur accepted their offer. And they asked their "experts" the following questions:
- Which agencies work for Microsoft in the different countries of the European Union and in Bruxelles in the area of Public Affairs?
- Which former politicians from countries of the European Union are now hired by Microsoft in the Area's Public Affairs / Lobbying / Public Administration?
- Are there Numbers, how much money Microsoft spends each year in the area of public affairs?
- How many employees has Microsoft in the Area's Lobbying / Public Affairs in Bruxelles and in Germany, and what are their names?
After a couple of hours their search "experts" left the building without
success, stating:
Our search was not successful. It could be possible, that the
data on the MSN-sites are suppressed. But in general it seems to be
complicate to get those numbers. Yes, we know, that it wasn't in
Microsofts interest, that we were here.
If you speak German, you can read more on pro-linux, netzpolitik.org (including a nice picture) and pretecs weblog.
I'm sorry, I didn't found any English source for this, and I'm sure I made (as usual) some mistakes while translating this. Believe me: In German it is funny :)
Update:
The story has been translated: http://www.netzpolitik.org/index.php?p=419, thanks for the hint, Markus.
postet at 12:03 into [Debian] permanent link