Criticism of Microsoft
[4] On September 14, 2019, Microsoft's flagship store was shut down by protestors as part of a direct action organized by Close the Camps NYC.
"[8] In February 2019, some of Microsoft’s employees protested the company's war profiteering from a $480 million contract to develop augmented reality headsets for the United States Army.
Although the resulting ubiquity of Microsoft software allows a user to benefit from network effects, critics and even Microsoft itself decry what they consider to be an "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy of adding proprietary features to open standards or their software implementations, thereby using its market dominance to gain unofficial ownership of standards "extended" in this way.
In an internal memo for senior management Microsoft's head of C++ development, Aaron Contorer, stated:[15] The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most independent software vendors would be crazy not to use it.
It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO (total cost of ownership), our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move.
The Halloween documents acknowledged that parts of Linux are superior to the versions of Microsoft Windows available at the time, and outlined a strategy of "de-commoditize[ing] protocols & applications.
[39] Mono's implementation of those components of the .NET stack not submitted to the ECMA for standardization has been the source of patent violation concerns for much of the life of the project.
In June 2009 the Ubuntu Technical Board stated that it saw "no reason to exclude Mono or applications based upon it from the archive, or from the default installation set.
According to Microsoft's End-user license agreement for Windows 7 the ability to receive a refund for the operating system is determined by the hardware manufacturer:[61]By using the software, you accept these terms.
Based on the updated language, vendors refused to issue partial refunds for Windows licenses, requiring that the computer be returned altogether.
In a 2003 publication, Dan Geer argued the prevalence of Microsoft products has resulted in a monoculture which is dangerously easy for viruses to exploit.
[73] This characterization is derived from the perception that Microsoft provides nearly everything for its employees in a convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health.
[79] Also during the case the Independent Institute ran full-page advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Post defending Microsoft, which was later revealed to have funded the ad campaign.
[81] In June 2002, the AdTI published a report, quickly pulled under the argument that it was a draft version, which contained criticism of the copyleft model and the GNU General Public License.
[86][87] On January 22, 2007, Rick Jelliffe made a claim on his blog[88] that a Microsoft employee offered to pay him to make corrections in English Wikipedia articles concerning Office Open XML.
Microsoft spokesperson Catherine Brooker expressed the belief that the article had been "heavily written" by IBM employees who supported the rival OpenDocument format, though she provided no specific evidence.
[107][108] As reported by several news outlets,[109][110] an Irish subsidiary of Microsoft based in the Republic of Ireland declared £220 bn in profits but paid no corporation tax for the year 2020.
This is due to the company being tax resident in Bermuda as mentioned in the accounts for 'Microsoft Round Island One', a subsidiary that collects licence fees from the use of Microsoft software worldwide.
Dame Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP in the UK said, "It is unsurprising – yet still shocking – that massively wealthy global corporations openly, unashamedly and blatantly refuse to pay tax on the profits they make in the countries where they undertake business".
[113] Mary Jo Foley stated that she was denied interviews with Microsoft personnel for several years following the publication of a story based on a memo describing the number of bugs in Windows 2000 at release.
[114] Microsoft (along with Google, Yahoo, Cisco, AOL, Skype, and other companies) has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of Internet censorship.
"[117] Since 2009, Microsoft has run a local version of Bing in China that censors thousands of websites and phrases such as "human rights" and "Communist Party corruption".
"[118][119][120] According to a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation, the full explanation was that Microsoft accidentally applied its Chinese blacklist to the rest of the world.
David Greene, Civil Liberties Director at Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that content moderation was impossible to do perfectly and "egregious mistakes are made all the time", but he further elaborated that "At worst, this was purposeful suppression at the request of a powerful state.
In July 2013, The Guardian elaborated that leaked documents show that: In a statement, Microsoft said that they "provide customer data only in response to legal processes.
[137] In November 2018, the Dutch government issued a report stating that telemetry implementations in Office 365 violated the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
[138] In July 2019 the company tasked with investigating the privacy risks reported that Microsoft had adequately addressed these issues in Office 365 ProPlus, while the other concerns still remained.
[139] In May 2020, Microsoft announced that a number of its MSN contract journalists would be replaced by robot journalism leading to criticism about which stories would be displayed and their quality.
[143][144][145] After banning 'Teresa', a lesbian gamer who had been harassed by other users for being a homosexual, a senior Xbox Live team member, Stephen Toulouse, has clarified the policy, stating that "Expression of any sexual orientation [...] is not allowed in gamertags" but that they are "examining how we can provide it in a way that won't get misused".
[149] The move was met with widespread criticism from users and news media, with speculation that the change was meant to make the Xbox Game Pass subscription more enticing.
