Citizen Microsoft by Jeff Reifman

I have a new article in the Seattle Weekly called  Citizen Microsoft.

This story was inspired in part by The Corporation, a documentary by Joel Bakan, that I highly recommend to everyone.

A few days ago (after our interview), Brad Smith made this speech, covered here by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which he said Microsoft will step up its political influence in Washington.

Last week, the Seattle Weekly ran a story about Microsoft's federal lobbying contributions by Rick Anderson.

You can read my previous article about Microsoft's slow pace of technological innovation and the challenges posed by Google and Open Source software. See Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow. I also posted a follow up to this story here:
Follow up to Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow.

Please post comments below or send email to readermail at gmail dot com.

Comments

[dustin]

so overall it's a great article. but i want to take exception with a few things. firstly i think we need to be carefull in lauding business and their 'greenwashing' tactics; covering up the whole of their impact by saying they are doing some modicum of improvement. it's kinda like waving your left hand and saying, "over here", whilst your right is pouring out the toxic evidence. do you know what i mean? dupont may come up with some fancy metric to say they are reducing their environmental footprint, but plain and simple they are creating so many toxins and killing off such a large part of the earth that nothing short of stopping will truly rectify the situation.

we need to stop having "sympathy" for corporations as we would with actual citizens - we need to stop anthropomorphizing them and they need to be held accountable - they have the same (or nearly the same) rights under the law, but their protections are far higher. part of the problem also lies in their fiduciary responsibility - they are bound legally to their shareholders to make money, even if that means breaking the law. morality can be measured by share price. and i understand that if a corporation has trouble that it surely will have a ripple effect into the surrounding community and the workforce. regardless change is needed. i'm not offering the answers, but i'm definitely asking questions.

and the second thing is that it's craigslist.org not .com (although .com redirects) - just noting it as a snobby san franciscan (ex-seattlelite - oh how i do miss seattle at times).

and while we're on the topic of social change (it's all related) i really recommend that you check out this movie end of suburbia - it's not necessarily brilliant filmmaking, but the content is excellent and it seems, as the film mentions, that it needs more attention in our media.

[dustin]

damn i hate that it strips out html...jeff, speaking of open source - you should really check out drupal - it's a great open source CMS....

[Nick]

Ok... so you have alot of trafic. Is that really Microsoft's fault? Maybe you should try to fix the real problems instead of blaiming them on a company or goverment.

[Chuck]

I have a Mac. 2 to be exact. And yes, everything bad is Microsofts fault.

[Mini-Microsoft]

It certainly all seems slimy and such, but I’d be interested in anyone (a) watching The Corporation and then (b) examining a Fortune 500 company that’s been around a decade or so. I’m sure they’d find all sorts of practices that no employees would wave flags over.

More interesting to me is to track the young naïve Microsoft over time to the state it's in now. Once upon a time it was a go-it-alone company that fought by its sheer intellect. Lobbying? What's this "lobbying?" Now Microsoft is all grown up. I'd love to see a timeline with these certain deltas and then try to see if this has leveled off or is rapidly accelerating.

Most importantly: Microsoft has to have layoffs and turn itself into a smaller company. That would be the highest level of shareholder value it could deliver at this point. http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ for more info!