September 17, 2007
General
Bloomberg reports: The European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg backed the European Commission’s decision in 2004 to fine Microsoft a record 497 million euros ($689 million) and force it to disclose proprietary data and strip music and video software from a version of its Windows operating system. It upheld part of the company’s appeal on whether it must pay for monitoring its compliance.“The commission did not err in assessing the gravity and duration of the infringement and did not err in setting the amount of the fine,” the tribunal said in its 248-page judgment today.This was not unexpected albeit the Court has had had a tortuous journey in arriving at its decision…. Mary Jo Foley doesn’t think the impact is likely to be that great:Despite Microsoft flying lots of its legal and marketing teams to Europe to prep for potential PR damage, I think Monday’s ruling won’t have much, if any, new impact. And I also disagree with Microsoft competitors like Salesforce.com’s CEO Mark Benioff who claim little, if anything, has changed and that Microsoft would like to halt innovation, if it could.I agree. The Microsoft execs I’ve met in the business division are not posturing they’re out to rule the world in the way they might have been 5 years ago. If anything, they seem positively angelic when compared with Marc Benioff, the bombastic and at times outrageous CEO of Salesforce.com. Apart from a change in style, Microsoft has found out the hard way that in the end, the market dictates what happens. It still holds a significant monopoly in regard to the desktop market but its grasp on Internet technologies has slipped…. Even so, Microsoft can well afford it in taxes saved through its Irish operations and will have already reserved for it as a contingency.
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September 17, 2007
Marketing
(subscription required for the full article):Microsoft launches a tipple for techiesTonight, a select group will gather in a bar in London’s Soho to quaff a crisp, South African white wine bottled in their honour.The hand-picked guests toasting the new vintage are not, however, wine connoisseurs but techies. The gathering marks the launch of the Blue Monster Reserve label, created by winery Stormhoek for Microsoft and its employees.In classic marketing fashion, Hugh MacLeod, who created the Blue Monster cartoon spent Sunday teasing 935 Twitterers about ‘Hugh’s Next Big Project,’ running a countdown to the ‘announcement.’… Quoting from the FT article, he says:The cartoon of a sharp-toothed blue creature and its tagline, “Microsoft – change the world or go homeâ€, has now been adopted by some Microsoft employees and fans as a symbol of the company’s innovation.“People see Microsoft as a big, bad corporate monster,†Mr MacLeod said…. It was obvious that Microsoft had to get better at telling their story.â€â€œWine is a social object, and so is the Blue Monster: they both inspire conversation,†he said. “And we thought the cartoon would look really cool on a bottle.â€Steve Clayton, chief technology officer at one of Microsoft’s UK affiliates and a nine-year veteran of the company, said Blue Monster reminded people that Microsoft “has a sense of fun and humourâ€.Mr Clayton has been at the forefront of the Blue Monster movement: he uses the image on his business card and is the administrator of a “Friends of Blue Monster†Facebook group.“[Microsoft’s HQ] has been very supportive of us using the Microsoft name alongside the Blue Monster image,†Mr MacLeod said. It makes sense; they’ve been around for about 30 years and are trying to reinvent themselves to embrace a new generation.â€Blue Monster-branded bottles will be available only to Microsoft and its affiliates…. “The wine itself only went live last week, and already we’ve had massive interest from different parts of the company.â€While a bottle of plonk will rarely if ever make a difference to a buying decision, it will be interesting to see how the idea inspires conversation about Microsoft within and around the channel…. Go figure what this might do for boosting that club’s membership and the subsequent conversations around Microsoft.Coming as it does on the day the EU will hand down its judgment on Microsoft’s monopoly, the announcement will deflect attention away from the result, if only temporarily.The brand association between Stormhoek and Microsoft will likely lift general sales of Stormhoek wine in both its UK and US outlets.
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