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Microsoft Corporation


Self Description

July 2002: "Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software -- any time, any place and on any device.

Microsoft was founded as a partnership on April 4, 1975, by William H. Gates III and Paul G. Allen, and incorporated on June 25, 1981. Headquartered in Redmond, Wash., the company operates subsidiary offices in more than 60 foreign countries and employs nearly 49,000 people worldwide." http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/corpprofile.asp
"Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2001: Net revenue $25.30 billion, Net income $7.35 billion"
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/inside_ms.asp#financial

Third-Party Descriptions

October 2009: "But remarks made recently by Microsoft's top executive, as well as suspicions raised by customers and software consultants, suggest that Microsoft keeps its licensing complicated for a reason, and that it has no plans to make it any simpler in the foreseeable future."

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/does-microsoft-complicate-its-licensing-purpose-258

August 2009: "In a bit of awkward timing, it was recently discovered that, two years ago, Microsoft filed a patent for clustering phylogenetics methods, which have existed for years, and are currently in use by just about anyone who does evolutionary biology. The filing has been compared to attempting to patent multiplication tables, and has the phylogenetics community on edge."

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/microsoft-trying-to-patent-technique-for-studying-evolution.ars

August 2009: "Here's an odd couple: Microsoft and the Linux Foundation. These two organizations, normally on opposite sides of almost any issue, agree that a new set of guidelines [1] making software vendors liable for knowingly shipping buggy software is badly off base. They claim that the guidelines are likely to lead to a flood of expensive lawsuits against both large commercial vendors and small-scale open source developers. What's more, it could impose expensive obligations to scour support forums and the like for notice of problems, a procedure that would be overly burdensome for small developers, say critics."

http://www.infoworld.com/t/software-licensing/watch-out-developers-here-come-lawyers-436

August 2009: 'A new report by KnujOn, an antispam company, and LegitScript, which verifies the legitimacy of particular online pharmacies, titled "No Prescription Required: Bing.com Prescription Drug ads" (PDF) claims that 89.7 percent of the prescription drug and online pharmacy search ads reviewed on Microsoft's adCenter led to rogue Internet pharmacies. The analysis of Microsoft's paid search results started in June 2008, when Microsoft's search engine was still Live Search (it became Bing in June 2009). The report claims that the rogue Internet pharmacies sponsored by Microsoft fell into four categories:'

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/90-of-bings-online-drug-ads-lead-to-rogue-pharmacies.ars

July 2009: "Whether or not click fraud is on the rise, it's certainly on online giants' radars. Last month Microsoft filed a lawsuit against three individuals that accuses them of running a click fraud scheme on its online properties, and earlier this month Facebook found itself the target of a class action lawsuit claiming that it charged advertisers for invalid clicks."

http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/22/click-fraud-vietnam-technology-security-click-fraud.html

April 2009: 'Laws that vary by state would no doubt be a headache for companies that sell products online across the country. In the coming days, Minnesota's House of Representatives is due to consider a bill introduced by Representative Jim Davnie that would levy a sales tax on digital downloads of e-books, music, movies, and even ringtones. The tax would affect a wide range of tech companies, including Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL). "There's clear opposition from the IT industry," Davnie says. "Apple, Microsoft have been in my office." Microsoft declined to comment for this story. Apple couldn't immediately be contacted. Amazon.com Wants Tax Uniformity'

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc20090426_510375.htm

June 2009: "Silicon Valley technology firms have historically been slow to forge relationships with the federal government. Microsoft reluctantly built a lobbying engine here to take on an antitrust battle a decade ago, after 20 years of neglecting Washington. Google did not assemble a robust policy team until two years ago, largely to lobby the Federal Communications Commission in last year's $20 billion spectrum auction."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/18/AR2009061804043.html

June 2009: "AFTER an investigation that took more than a year, Microsoft has filed its first lawsuit over click fraud, where people manipulate clicks on a Web advertisement."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/business/media/16adco.html

December 2008: "BERLIN — Microsoft offered Monday to abide by a European privacy panel’s request that it reduce the length of time it kept records of Web searches if its rivals, Yahoo and Google, did the same."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/technology/internet/09privacy.html

November 2008: 'A federal judge in Seattle has ordered Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to testify in a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft that alleges the company misled consumers in a marketing campaign for its Windows Vista operating system in which computers sold with an older Microsoft OS were labeled "Vista Capable" when in fact they could only run a basic version of Vista.'

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/24/Judge_orders_Ballmer_to_testify_in_Vista_capable_case_1.html

September 2008: 'Microsoft has an idea for keeping children safe online: create "digital playgrounds," sites where visitors have to prove their age using digital identity credentials.'

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10031106-83.html

June 2008: "SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft, Google and PayPal, a unit of eBay, are among the founders of an industry organization that hopes to solve the problem of password overload among computer users."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/technology/24card.html

June 2008: "A variety of companies — from private health-care providers and insurance companies to big technology firms such as Microsoft and Google — are developing and launching sites, most of them free, that allow patients to keep personal health records. They can include everything from medical histories to test results, doctors' notes and prescriptions."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-06-11-online-medical-records_N.htm

June 2008: "BRUSSELS — The European Union’s competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, delivered an unusually blunt rebuke to Microsoft on Tuesday by recommending that businesses and governments use software based on open standards."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/technology/11soft.html

April 2008: "To head off the potential for government interference, Microsoft submitted a filing with the FTC detailing their approach to a privacy protecting mechanism, one that leaves the industry in a self-regulating state. Brad Smith, Microsoft's senior general counsel, commented in a statement:"

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/04/11/microsoft-proposes-privacy-framework-to-ftc

April 2008: 'As part of a push toward greater individual control of health information, Microsoft and Google have recently begun offering Web-based personal health records. The journal article’s authors describe a new “personalized, health information economy” in which consumers tell physicians, hospitals and other providers what information to send into their personal records, stored by Microsoft or Google. It is the individual who decides with whom to share that information and under what terms.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/business/17record.html

March 2008: "Web companies in the advertising business, which have spent the last few years busily courting advertising agencies to persuade them to shift their clients’ ad dollars to the Internet, are now lavishing their attention on Albany. In recent weeks, Microsoft and Yahoo have sent lobbyists to meet with Mr. Brodsky, and AOL, a unit of Time Warner, is planning a meeting. Unlike most Web companies, Microsoft favors legislation about online privacy and advertising practices and has lobbied federal lawmakers to establish regulations, said Michael Hintze, associate general counsel for Microsoft."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/business/media/20adco.html

March 2008: 'As far as I could find, the Microsoft AdCenter agreement does not contain such a provision. It bans “defamatory, libelous, slanderous content” of all sorts with no specific reference to Microsoft.'

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/googles-thin-skinned-lawyers/

February 2008: 'When Microsoft announced on Thursday that it was changing its business practices to be more open — specifically to release documentation on its APIs and protocols — many people reacted with disbelief. The European Commission, which has battled Microsoft for a decade over anticompetitiveness, said in very blunt terms that it didn’t believe Microsoft was sincere. After all, Microsoft has made the “open” promise before but never delivered.'

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/02/25/09NF-microsoft-new-leaf_1.html?

February 2008: "Apple has had a FileVault disk encryption feature as an option in its OS X operating system since 2003. Microsoft added file encryption last year with BitLocker features in its Windows Vista operating system. The programs both use the federal government’s certified Advanced Encryption System algorithm to scramble data as it is read from and written to a computer hard disk. But both programs leave the keys in computer memory in an unencrypted form."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/technology/22chip.html

February 2008: "In a direct slap in the face to consumers, tech industry giants including Microsoft, AT&T, and Verizon are frantically engaged in an effort to kill pro-consumer provisions in a data breach notification bill currently being considered by the Indiana State Senate."

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9865076-46.html

February 2008: "Microsoft's bid for Yahoo could provide more choice for big online advertisers living in a Google-centric universe but could hurt small- and mid-sized Internet publishers by taking away one of their options for selling ads on their Web sites."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020103155.html

January 2008: "Rather than depending on patents, large information technology companies can increasingly rely on their market power and cross-licensing relationships. As a result, they are trying to rein in huge patent settlements like the $612.5 million award that NTP Inc. won from Research In Motion, the maker of the popular BlackBerry wireless device, or the $1.52 billion award that Lucent briefly won against Gateway Inc. and Microsoft. (It was recently overturned.)"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13stream.html

October 2007: YouTube, which has been sued by many parties for hosting videos alleged to violate copyright, this week started using a filter to try to identify such content before copyright holders notice it. A group of other content holders, including NBC Universal and Microsoft, yesterday announced standards for how companies should deal with material that people post online.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101802453.html

October 2007: The latest iteration of the immensely popular space epic, Halo 3, was released nearly two weeks ago by Microsoft and has already passed $300 million in sales.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/us/07halo.html

September 2007: Europe’s second-highest court delivered a stinging rebuke to Microsoft Monday, but the impact of the decision upholding an earlier antitrust ruling may extend well beyond the world’s largest software maker to other high-technology companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18soft.html

September 2007: In recent days, Windows Update (WU) started altering files on users' systems without displaying any dialog box to request permission. The only files that have been reportedly altered to date are nine small executables on XP and nine on Vista that are used by WU itself. Microsoft is patching these files silently, even if auto-updates have been disabled on a particular PC.

http://windowssecrets.com/comp/070913#story1

July 2007: LOS ANGELES, July 5 — In what may be one of the costliest consumer warranty repairs in history, Microsoft announced on Thursday that it would spend up to $1.15 billion to repair failing Xbox 360 game machine consoles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/business/06soft.html

June 2007: Allegations by Google that Microsoft's new operating system unfairly disadvantages competitors has revived antitrust accusations against Microsoft and opened a front in a bitter war between the two technology giants.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061102177.html

June 2007: According to documents in the federal case, the plaintiffs claim that Microsoft had invested $200 million in Best Buy and agreed to promote the electronics retailer's online store through its Internet portal, MSN. In return, Best Buy allegedly agreed to promote Microsoft's service and other Microsoft products in its stores and advertising.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1180688739517

April 2007: For large tech companies, which are pushing several of the most substantial changes, a recent court case involving Microsoft exemplifies much of what's wrong with the current law. In February, a federal jury ordered Microsoft to pay $1.52 billion to Alcatel-Lucent for infringing two patents for the MP3 technology used to play digital music on computers, portable players and other mobile devices. Even if Microsoft was in the wrong, critics say, the damages, the largest ever in a patent case, were outrageous and reflected profound flaws in how judgments are calculated.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701687.html

May 2007: Of all the companies I tested, Microsoft's all-in-one security and maintenance package, Windows Live OneCare, has the most-hidden automatic subscription-renewal policy and is the most difficult to learn how to cancel.

http://windowssecrets.com/comp/070517/

May 2007: But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm

January 2007: A Microsoft representative confirmed that users may buy an OEM copy of Windows Vista at a substantial discount, provided they adhere to the terms of the license – which, incidentally, may mean providing support for family members.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2087792,00.asp

August 2006: Microsoft is working on a new reparations strategy, known internally as a customer incentive program, for those customers with volume licensing programs who will be negatively affected by the delay in the release of Windows Vista and Office 2007.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2000814,00.asp

February 2006: BRUSSELS, Feb. 23 -- Faced with the prospect of large daily fines for not complying with European antitrust orders, Microsoft Corp. plans to argue in a hearing next month that regulators keep changing their minds about what they want the software giant to do to comply.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/23/AR2006022301033.html

February 2006: Microsoft chose not to host e-mail services in China, but it has acknowledged being unprepared in December when it complied with a government request to delete the blog of a Chinese journalist. It drafted a policy on handling such requests afterward.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/18/AR2006021801397.html

November 2005: Microsoft I can understand. The company is a fan of invasive copy protection -- it's being built into the next version of Windows. Microsoft is trying to work with media companies like Sony, hoping Windows becomes the media-distribution channel of choice. And Microsoft is known for watching out for its business interests at the expense of those of its customers.

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,69601,00.html

November 2004: By withholding these fixes, Microsoft has aligned its interests with those of the worst "black-hat" hackers. The Redmond corporation is using people's legitimate fears of infection as a blunt instrument — a Billy club — to sell more copies of its Windows XP software. This is truly despicable and unethical business behavior.

http://windowssecrets.com/041118/

October 2004: And Microsoft could use the help since it continues to have the daylights beat out of it in court by little Burst.com. As you may recall from earlier columns, Burst, a two-person dot-com survivor from Santa Rosa, Calif., where I used to live, has been suing Microsoft for two years for anti-trust, breach of contract, restraint of trade, and patent infringement. In the great panoply of Microsoft civil anti-trust lawsuits, Burst's might be the last, and for Microsoft, it has to be the worst because Redmond looks so bad. This week, the news from recently unsealed court documents is that Microsoft may have deliberately lied not only to Burst, but also to the other anti-trust litigants right up to and including the U.S. Department of Justice.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041007.html

April 2005: Just as aside, I should mention here that such scrutiny is not a surprise, because Microsoft takes its COAs very seriously. So seriously, in fact, it prevailed upon Congress and President Bush last year to enact a law -- the Anti-Counterfeiting Amendments Act - that makes trafficking in standalone COAs a crime. Microsoft feels that too many sticky fingers in the distribution channel are ripping authentic Microsoft COAs off the boxes and selling them to software counterfeiters. So even having an authentic Certificate of Authenticity doesn't necessarily mean you're not a pirate, at least as far as Microsoft is concerned.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/foster/2005/04/26.html#a247

January 2005: In other words, we've heard this all before. And, at least in terms of protecting customers from counterfeit software, product activation obviously was a complete failure. Is there really any reason to believe that this new validation process will be anymore successful at guaranteeing that honest customers in the future don't unwittingly become one of the Windows' Genuinely Disadvantaged? I sure don't see it. And, given that neither activation nor validation is likely to deter the real software pirates, one has to wonder what anti-piracy process Microsoft will require next.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/foster/2005/01/28.html#a209

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Opponent (past or present) Burst Media Organization Dec 31, 2006
Owner of (partial or full, past or present) MSN Organization Jan 27, 2006
Owner of (partial or full, past or present) MSN (Microsoft Network) Source Jan 3, 2007
Owner of (partial or full, past or present) MSNBC Organization May 20, 2005
Opponent (past or present) Cooperation (past or present) Novell Organization May 14, 2007
Owner of (partial or full, past or present) Razorfish Organization Jun 23, 2009
Opponent (past or present) RealNetworks Organization Dec 31, 2006
Opponent (past or present) Rembrandt IP Management Organization May 2, 2007
Formerly Owned by (partial or full) Slate Source Feb 3, 2005
Opponent (past or present) Visto Corporation Organization May 2, 2007
Organization Executive (past or present) James "Jim" Allchin Person Nov 26, 2008
Founded/Co-Founded by Organization Executive (past or present) Paul G. Allen Person
Organization Executive (past or present) Steve Ballmer Person
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Rich Barton Person Dec 28, 2008
Opponent (past or present) Tony Bove Person Jan 18, 2006
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) James Fallows Person Jan 26, 2008
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Barbara Fox Person
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Lloyd Frink Person Nov 3, 2006
Organization Executive (past or present) Melinda French Gates Person Nov 2, 2005
Founded/Co-Founded by Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Mr. William "Bill" Gates III Person
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Prof. James Grimmelmann Esq. Person Oct 7, 2009
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Dean Hachamovitch Person Aug 29, 2007
Organization Executive (past or present) Robert Hohman Person Dec 28, 2008
Cooperation (past or present) Eric L. Howes Person Dec 16, 2005
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Ann McLaughlin Korologos Person Sep 27, 2004
Research/Analysis Subject Woody Leonhard Person Oct 13, 2006
Organization Executive (past or present) Doug Levin Person Jan 21, 2006
Research/Analysis Subject Brian Livingston Person Oct 13, 2006
Organization Executive (past or present) Gregory "Greg" Maffei Person Sep 12, 2006
Organization Executive (past or present) Matthew Moog Person Feb 6, 2006
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Craig Mundie Person
Organization Executive (past or present) Ray Ozzie Person Feb 27, 2008
Cooperation (past or present) Mark Russinovich Ph.D. Person Dec 16, 2005
Organization Executive (past or present) Howard Schmidt Person
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Robert Scoble Person May 20, 2008
Organization Executive (past or present) Charles Simonyi Person Nov 24, 2003
Organization Executive (past or present) Brad Smith Esq. Person Apr 24, 2008
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) David Solomon Person Dec 16, 2005

Articles and Resources

244 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Nov 14, 2009 Apple Wouldn’t Risk Its Cool Over a Gimmick, Would It? (Digital Domain)

QUOTE: ...Apple is seeking a patent for technology that displays advertising on almost anything that has a screen of some kind: computers, phones, televisions, media players, game devices and other consumer electronics.

 New York Times
Nov 08, 2009 Supreme Court to decide: What kind of innovations get a patent?: The Supreme Court on Monday takes up this fundamental question in patent law. The answer holds billion-dollar implications for the US economy.

QUOTE: The US Supreme Court on Monday takes up the most fundamental question in patent law: Which innovations deserve the protection of a patent?

 Christian Science Monitor
Oct 19, 2009 Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets (Danger Room)

QUOTE: In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available...

 Wired
Oct 09, 2009 Does Microsoft complicate its licensing on purpose?: Recent comments from the company's CEO suggest the company has little interest in simplifying its software licensing any time soon

QUOTE: remarks made recently by Microsoft's top executive, as well as suspicions raised by customers and software consultants, suggest that Microsoft keeps its licensing complicated for a reason, and that it has no plans to make it any simpler in the foreseeable future.

 InfoWorld
Oct 07, 2009 U.S. Begins Inquiry of I.B.M. in Mainframe Market

QUOTE: The Department of Justice has started a preliminary investigation into whether I.B.M. abused its monopoly position in the market for the mainframe computers...

 New York Times
Sep 19, 2009 Plugged-In Age Feeds a Hunger for Electricity (By Degrees)

QUOTE: efforts to cover consumer electronics [in electrical efficiency rules] like televisions and game consoles have been repeatedly derailed by manufacturers worried about the higher cost of meeting the standards.

 New York Times
Sep 04, 2009 Privacy Group Asks to Join Google Book Lawsuit As Deadline Approaches (Epicenter)

QUOTE: A key privacy group is seeking to intervene in the ongoing copyright lawsuit over Google’s plan to build the library and bookstore of the future, arguing that reader privacy is at risk no matter how much Google promises to have a good privacy policy.

 Wired
Aug 20, 2009 Microsoft tried to patent studying evolution

QUOTE: it was recently discovered that, two years ago, Microsoft filed a patent for clustering phylogenetics methods, which have existed for years, and are currently in use by just about anyone who does evolutionary biology.

 Ars Technica
Aug 18, 2009 A Scheme For Protecting Content

QUOTE: Intertrust holds a treasure trove of patents that help content owners manage digital rights; it has spent five years and tens of millions of dollars developing a standard called Marlin, which aims to keep content secure in a way that legitimate consumers won't find offensive.

 Forbes
Aug 10, 2009 As Dubai's Glitter Fades, Foreigners See Dark Side: More Jailings, Prosecutions Follow Downturn

QUOTE: Dubai is still far more free and more predictable than most of its neighbors, but a chill has taken hold as property values tumble, jobs vanish and businessmen are detained.

 Washington Post
Aug 06, 2009 Watch out, developers: Here come the lawyers (Tech's Bottom Line)

QUOTE: They [Microsoft and Linux Foundation] claim that the guidelines [to sue software makers for buggy software] are likely to lead to a flood of expensive lawsuits against both large commercial vendors and small-scale open source developers.

 InfoWorld
Aug 05, 2009 90% of Bing's online drug ads lead to rogue pharmacies

QUOTE: A new report by KnujOn, an antispam company, and LegitScript, which verifies the legitimacy of particular online pharmacies... claims that 89.7 percent of the prescription drug and online pharmacy search ads reviewed on Microsoft's adCenter led to rogue Internet pharmacies.

 Ars Technica
Jul 28, 2009 How To Hijack 'Every iPhone In The World (Security)

QUOTE: Using a flaw they've found in the iPhone's handling of text messages, the researchers [Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner] say they'll demonstrate how to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone's functions.

 Forbes
Jul 23, 2009 Click Fraud's New Asian Connection: Vietnam may be a new waypoint for pay-per-click scammers.

QUOTE: A report Anchor published Thursday shows that nearly half of all the advertising clicks coming from Vietnam are composed of fraudulent traffic aimed at inflating online publishers' advertising revenue...

 Forbes
Jul 12, 2009 The Paradox of Privacy (Media Cache)

QUOTE: While attitudes toward privacy can appear paradoxical, the seeming contradiction is really about something else: control

 New York Times
Jul 06, 2009 When a parent steals your identity

QUOTE: This crime is not as rare as you might think. And the betrayal (and damage) goes beyond the financial. Here's how it can happen -- and how to tell if it already has.

 MSN (Microsoft Network)
Jun 19, 2009 Facebook Taps Privacy Hawk as Lobbyist: Former ACLU Counsel Working to Build Technology Firm's Beltway Clout

QUOTE: Facebook's newly minted lobbyist used to be one of the company's most formidable adversaries. [Timothy Sparapani] argued that Internet companies have too much control over consumers' data....

 Washington Post
Jun 18, 2009 Internet Marketing: Is Regulation Coming?

QUOTE: Up to now the government has had a hands-off policy toward online marketing, giving companies relatively free rein in how they use tools that track what people do online and then use that data to deliver tailored marketing messages....Advocates of regulation say Internet companies need to be more up-front about their use of so-called behavioral targeting.

 BusinessWeek
Jun 15, 2009 Advertising: Microsoft Sues Three in Click-Fraud Scheme

QUOTE: Microsoft said it found a pattern of click fraud on its search pages...Advertisers bid on what they will pay to appear in the paid-search results for certain keywords. The more an advertiser pays, the higher they are in that list, and advertisers usually pay for each click on their ad.

 New York Times
Jun 15, 2009 Microsoft Sues Three in Click-Fraud Scheme

QUOTE: AFTER an investigation that took more than a year, Microsoft has filed its first lawsuit over click fraud, where people manipulate clicks on a Web advertisement.

 New York Times

244 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]