Reservoir linuksoidov facts not take

Microsoft shut down a website “Get The Facts”, which over the last three years agitating the public against Linuh. However, the company has not ceased to convince potential customers of the superiority of Windows - instead of “Get The Facts” now has another portal, Compare, representing a less aggressive version of the old site.

What prompted Microsoft to become a “softer”, yet not entirely clear. Perhaps the point is to developers of large distributions such as RedHat and Ubuntu, which could force the company to make such a move, otherwise promising deal with the propaganda mouthpiece for Microsoft in the courts. But this is only a popular assumption is by no means confirmed information.

Advertising campaign called “Get The Facts” began in 2004 and held for about six months, the zone of coverage were the leading European IT-edition. We do not know what was the budget of the event and how it was successful, but the fact that “Get The Facts” continues to this day, albeit in much reduced form, suggests that the company was still not the most useless . This is confirmed by the fact that the site is “Get The Facts” until yesterday continued its existence and activities.

“Get The Facts” at the time caused quite a calm reaction of Linux-community - in many ways, of course, because some of these very “facts” were completely false and did not make any impression. This unfounded even provoked criticism from the British regulatory organization Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). A few months after the end of the campaign, Microsoft ASA filed a complaint about the fact that the statement “open-source is actually more expensive to use Windows” was a sufficient reason under; Microsoft then said that the campaign in the first place, have ceased, and secondly, initially conducted with the permission of ASA, which had previously been granted without any problems. “Get The Facts” looked like a promotional brochure, and not as a complete work aimed at identifying shortcomings Linux. Plus, even the fact that Linux fans have always been more aggressive than users of Windows. And if the latter do not engage in any attempts to slander competing systems, it would not have benefited neither the one nor the other. In this case, would have had to stop altogether all disputes, and any agitation. But, be that as it may, the number of sites of “anti-Windows” is still many times greater than the number of sites of “anti-Linux”. While even the most linux.ru regularly appearing news from discharge “against Microsoft”, Windows users have never been very active campaigning, even in their blogs.

Content newly opened “Compare” is a development of ideas “Get The Facts”. The site is distinguished from its predecessor primarily unobtrusive as well as the fact that it aims at “opening the eyes” of users on the benefits of Microsoft Windows Server. The site is now dominated by Microsoft is not the position in relation to Linux, and the views of professionals who use Microsoft Server, and the results of studies of both operating systems. And covers all the same variety of issues: security, reliability, operating system support third-party developers, the functionality. On the “Compare” can be found, for example, statistical information about how many Microsoft partners (it turns out, about 750 thousand) and a number of professionals engaged in development of applications for Windows (about 6 million). I also like Linux developer base there.

Such a change in the PR-action Microsoft has occurred against the backdrop of the development of Linux-community. Free operating system has become in recent years the most popular, Linux is now installed, even in mobile phones. Moreover, Microsoft itself enters into agreements with developers of Linux distributions: the fall of last year the software giant has signed an agreement with Novell, and more recently, in June - with Linspire. All this is likely to benefit both competing formats, and possibly in the near future, Microsoft and Linux can peacefully share the market.

23 August 2007 | , company, customer, linuksoid, microsoft, website, windows

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