Report: Microsoft Holds 'Screw Google' Meetings

Liars. Executing strategies to undermine search giant Google is what M$ have tried multiple times in the last 6 months. They've tried with cash incentive, changed name of their search brand, heavily invested in "movie" and image search and declared their own brand of online Office service for free. Combined with their new efforts in Windows Mobile, they are actively engaging market wars against Google on almost every front except YouTube. They just made a strategic alliance with Amazon and Yahoo. If they said no such meeting has ever been held, that's a lie, and they are lying.

BTW, when will they restart selling M$ Word?

Yeah, because poor little Microsoft is such an underdog against the dominant Google. Oh wait...............

I thought there were anti-competitive laws in place to prevent companies from purposefully interfering with other companies.
yeah yeah, i know, there Microsoft and they can get away with anything, but this is a little too out in the open.

I cant comprehend why a D.C. lobbyist would be heading these meetings. He has nothing to do with corporate strategy of that sort. Thats the big hole I see in this story.
Other than that of course it will come up durring strategy sessions of how to deal with competitors. Google probably does the same, as does every other company. That doesn't mean its a weekly meeting aimed at 1 entity. Thats stupid and an absurd waist of corporate resources. Guess Daily Finance aint got shit else to do.

"Fred Humphries, Microsoft's chief lobbyist in D.C. .... Fred is focused on advancing policies that benefit our partners and consumers"

Corporate lobbyists should be illegal. Government should be
"by the people, for the people", but coporate interests are running rampant in this country. It doesn't matter what Fred is doing, by the very nature of his job, he is anti-democratic. Every day he shows up to work is "screw the tax-paying, law abiding citizen day"

and this is what benifits the consumer ;P

I agree with hellwig, corporate lobbyists should be illegal. Along with career politicians. There are absolutely zero altruistic politicians. zero.

Lobbyist? They are OK IMHO. I know I'll get maligned for saying this, but if you are open minded enough to read the following, I'd be gracious.

Lobbyist existed to be publicists hired by special interest groups. Not all special interest groups are bad. There are telecommunications, electric, railway, aviation and agricultural business that can't function without dealing with government on the daily basis. They represent interest to a large chunk of population, not just business owners, shareholders and CEOs, but also people who work in industries.

Labors Unions also hire lobbyists, although they might not use the name. There are also other kinds of special interest groups who rather label themselves as "activists" such as those for global warming prevention or wild life preservation. They, too, hire publicists to advance their agenda in Washington DC.

Lobbyist are highly regulated by US law. You have to register, and made public of who you are representing and how much is spent on what. Contrary to some other "activist" groups under US tax code 527, lobbying is actually less corrupt and more open.

In a democracy, you are allowed to stand up and defend your own interests. Politicians chose their career to grab power by the means through government positions. They are not naturally bound to serve you, and, in most case, will glad to screw you through tax and social-justice agenda. Lobbyists are not the problem. The problem is power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

That's Capitalism at work......and if you don't like it...you're a commusocialretardist!!!! LOL and this surprises anyone?

-PM

I don't doubt this is true, but ...

"Microsoft is trying to harm Google in the regulatory, legal, and litigation arenas because they're having problems with Google in the competitive marketplace"

Where is MS having trouble with Google other than search? The Chrome browser is no threat to IE. The Chrome OS isn't out yet, so it's certainly no threat to Microsoft's OS dominance. Google's Android is off to a miserable start. Google docs are only a threat to MS Office on the very low end of the market.

The screw Google meetings are 100% true which I can confirm as I attended one. We chanted anti-Google slogans and then hired a voodoo priest to preform rituals to curse Google. We then stabbed the voodoo dolls with the appearance of the Google founders with needles and set them on fire.

For a lunch break we ordered Chinese and to find the nearest one that delivers we Googled it.

When a company like Microsoft completely abandons making better products in the face of competition and instead has a lobbyist trying to squash the competition when does this not become illegal tampering in a companies ability to succeed in the market.

Essentially the free market is only free to those who can pay. Its a true flaw in economics of large businesses it takes a really large mistake for a large company to go under since they got friends and mergers to make them only larger and they throw money at everything while making nothing better.

Everyone should just start using Ubuntu and open office. I would not even say that if it wasnt for how much better these two have gotten over the past year. They are finally easy to recommend replacements and well worth it to just about anyone.

MS needs to produce more, and try to control the market way less.
Google has the casual friday when people work whatever they want to, and they get to lead the new projects coming from there, and this is soooo good in so many levels, intellectual gratification, career advancement, reward for creativity, reward for your special skills, gold reward (50% of google's income was said to be from 20% of their man-hours during casual friday).

They should screw Google by buying On2

"For a lunch break we ordered Chinese and to find the nearest one that delivers we Googled it."

Funny post. But Bing is much better for local business searches.

It's not like this sort of behavior is new or unique. Sun and Oracle have been holding "screw Microsoft" meetings for well over a decade. Opera, Mozilla, Google and others spend large sums of money to convince the EU commission to fine Microsoft.

I still don't get why Microsoft has to be so adimate about having a search engine. I mean, we don't see Apple search unless I am mistaken. Microsoft already makes enough money. I refuse to use bing because Google caught my attention first. Plus before google, I was using altavista primarily as I recall.

But yeah I can see where Microsoft might feel threatened by google apps but they don't really seem to make much noise over Sun's applications. Maybe all these news articles about bing vs google are just a bunch of media fluff and a waste of time.

LOL Why doesn't Microsoft just stop trying to re-invent the search engine over and over?

And realistically, even if the internal verbiage for the meeting is called "screw Google" who gives a crap? It's one business trying to compete with another. It's one team against another team.

I'll laugh not l.o.l if Google soon becomes a bigger, better company than Apple like making Google laptops with its Chrome OS.

If you read the linked article it says Google does the same to Microsoft.

"...the effort is designed make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here"

Wow, this article does make Microsoft look like the big high-tech bad guy now eh?

google creating os fear much ?

It's all about interpretation by the meeting attendees. They are all right.

Well said.
About the response about the business that couldn't survive without the government being lobbyed.
It's the government, the government should reach out to such institutions. Especially activists without requiring BEING lobbyed in order to LISTEN to the people who CHOOSE them!
The government should have a central point that any body can address stuff to the government without lobbying, but not as individuals with a problem, there should be something separate for that.

Screw Google. Never been a fan, never will be. Every company out there tried to 'undermine' other companies. It's called competition.

And, contrary to some posters, Microsoft is developing new tech. What about Bing? Windows 7? Natal?

Why would this be news to anyone? Remember "cutting off Netscape’s air supply” even if it meant spending tens of millions that couldn't be recouped to do it?

I would prefer they make Bing worth using and compete that way rather than attacking Google as a company. That wouldn't be their normal approach however, and so far, Bing has a ways to go. They should just hire Google's senior developers away to work on Bing. That would be their common approach.

Why shouldn't they be able to call their meetings whatever the hell they want? It's not like they are succeeding or will succeed against Google. Google has nothing to worry about at this time and this amounts to nothing more than a jealous older brother that his younger brother is doing something better than him.

I'm imagining Microsoft as this tyrannical two-year-old that doesn't like to share it's toys with anyone. "Let's try to throw sand in their eyes, etc.", grow a pair Microsoft.

Sure, I understand that the business world is a no holds barred arena, but stop being an undermining b@stard Ballmer & Co. THIS is why no one likes you- put the screws to your partners and your enemies. Great way to do business...

Why not let your products compete on their own merits. Then you can see if people really want them or not, and you can decide what to change, etc. Instead of trying to lower the standard of quality on your products AND the marketplace.

Just when you thought you could at least think they are a bearable company, they come back to piss you off even more.... Surprising? Not really, look at the overgrown two year old running the company. Here's a chair for you Ballmer, for when Google gets the best of you..

Microsoft never did well with it's search engines, not even way back in the beginning. They did not do well in the search engine wars that followed. I doubt they will succeed.