Darren Strange is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore; Microsoft needs to stand up to its critics, he thinks.
The UK Manager for Microsoft Office 2007 has had it with his company being the target for criticism. Strange wrote on his Office Rocker blog how the company’s employees “who have to take this kind of abuse” don’t think of themselves as evil.
“Even Google who despite not having much care for people’s intellectual property rights, market themselves under the “don’t do evil” slogan,” he said. That’s in contrast to the favored description used for Microsoft for years: the Evil Empire.
“It’s time we stopped letting our competitors tar us with whatever brush they feel like,” Strange said, referring to his and other Microsofties blogging and putting a better face on the company.
Microsoft doesn’t face a perception problem so much as it does a history problem. Strange may or may not be as aware of Microsoft’s ‘interactions’, a term I use in a very broad sense, with its customers and competitors.
They may have a nicer face today, and be more responsive to customers and media, but this is after 30 years of Microsoft’s existence. Antitrust actions in the United States and Europe against Microsoft didn’t just magically arrive carried by elves riding winged pegasi. They were earned by the company’s business practices.
The older techies among Microsoft’s audience will recall how the company faced a court-ordered breakup, and only the outrageous conduct of the presiding judge in the case derailed this.
Microsoft’s business practices revealed during the lengthy trial revealed a highly competitive company that sought to browbeat OEMs and smother rivals. Those memories haven’t left a lot of the tech industry.
If Strange and other Microsoft bloggers want to present a pleasanter face for their company’s observers to see, that’s great. People are going to judge Microsoft by its actions anyway. Who knows, if they play their cards right, maybe they can drape the Evil Empire mantle around Google’s shoulders some day.
