Criticism of Microsoft
Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices. Issues with ease of use, robustness, and security of the company's software are common targets for critics. In the 2000s, a number of malware mishaps targeted security flaws in Windows and other products. Microsoft was also accused of locking vendors and consumers in to their products, and of not following or complying with existing standards in its software.[1][2] Total cost of ownership comparisons between Linux and Microsoft Windows are a continuous point of debate.[3]
The company has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, brought by several governments and by other companies, for unlawful monopolistic practices. In 2004, the European Union found Microsoft guilty in the Microsoft Corp. v. Commission case, and it received an 899 million euro fine.[4]
Ties to US Government departments[edit]
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. The action was in response to Microsoft's $19.4 million contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).[5][6][7][8] Microsoft's relationship with the immigration enforcement agency was revealed by executive Tom Keane, through a company blog post that describes ICE's use of the company's high-security cloud storage product Azure Government.[9] He went on to say the company is "proud to support" the work of ICE.[9] Microsoft has stated it "is not working with the U.S. government on any projects related to separating children from their families at the border."[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.[10]
Copyright enforcement[edit]
When Microsoft discovered that its first product, Altair BASIC, was subject to widespread unauthorized copying, Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists that openly accused many hobbyists of stealing software. Gates' letter provoked many responses, with some hobbyists objecting to the broad accusation, and others supporting the principle of compensation.[25]
This disagreement over whether software should be proprietary continues into the present day under the banner of the free software movement, with Microsoft characterizing free software released under the terms of the GPL as being "potentially viral"[26] and the GNU General Public License itself as a "viral license" which "infects" proprietary software and forces its developer to have to release proprietary source to the public.[27]
The Halloween documents, internal Microsoft memos which were leaked to the open source community beginning in 1998, indicate that some Microsoft employees perceive "open source" software — in particular, Linux — as a growing long-term threat to Microsoft's position in the software industry. 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."[11][12][13][14][28]
Microsoft stated in its 2006 Annual Report that it was a defendant in at least 35 patent infringement lawsuits.[29] The company's litigation expenses for April 2004 through March 2007 exceed $4.3 billion: over $4 billion in payouts, plus $300 million in legal fees.[30]
Another concern of critics is that Microsoft may be using the distribution of shared source software to harvest names of developers who have been exposed to Microsoft code, as some believe that these developers could someday be the target of lawsuits if they were ever to participate in the development of competing products. This issue is addressed in published papers from several organizations including the American Bar Association and the Open Source Initiative.[31][32]
Starting in the 1990s, Microsoft was accused of maintaining "hidden" or "secret" APIs: interfaces to its operating system software that it deliberately keeps undocumented to gain a competitive advantage in its application software products.[33]
Microsoft employees have consistently denied this;[34][35]
they claim that application developers inside and outside Microsoft routinely reverse-engineered DOS and 16-bit versions of Windows without any inside help, creating legacy support problems that far exceeded any alleged benefit to Microsoft.[36][37]
In response to court orders, Microsoft has published interfaces between components of its operating system software, including components like Internet Explorer, Active Directory, and Windows Media that sell as part of Windows but compete with application software.
On October 10, 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network community despite holding more than 60,000 patents.[38]
Ignoring unauthorized copying[edit]
Microsoft ignored unauthorized copying of its own software for their benefit on the long term. While talking about users in China who do not pay for the software they use in 2006, to an audience at the University of Washington, Bill Gates said "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."[47]
The practice allowed Microsoft to gain some dominance over the Chinese market and only then taking measures against unauthorized copies. In 2008, by means of the Windows update mechanism, a verification program called "Windows Genuine Advantage" (WGA) was downloaded and installed.[48] When WGA detects that the copy of Windows is not genuine, it periodically turns the user's screen black. This behavior angered users and generated complaints in China with a lawyer stating that "Microsoft uses its monopoly to bundle its updates with the validation programs and forces its users to verify the genuineness of their software".[49]
Advertising and public relations[edit]
Critics have alleged that Microsoft has used funding to drum up support from think tanks and trade organizations such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI), the Independent Institute, and Americans for Technology Leadership (ATL). During the antitrust case United States v. Microsoft, ATL sent a poll to 19 state attorneys general purporting to show that "the public believes state AGs should devote their energy to causes other than Microsoft".[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.[80] The institute published Winners, Losers, and Microsoft: Competition and Antitrust in High Technology shortly thereafter.[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. A May 2002 press release for the report stated that it would contain arguments suggesting that governments could be threatened by hackers and terrorists (who could study potential vulnerabilities due to source availability) if it used open source software. However, the draft contained no references to these topics. Open Source Initiative (OSI) founder Bruce Perens felt that the report had "Microsoft's paws all over [it]".[82][83] Microsoft argued that its funding was for AdTI's operations as a whole, and not relevant to any specific research by the organization.[82]
"Champagne", a 2002 British television advert for the Xbox, received 136 complaints from viewers to the Independent Television Commission (ITC) over its content. The advert featured a newborn baby being launched out of its mother—aging as it flies through the air, and crashing into a gravestone. It contained the tagline "Life is short, play more." The advert was banned from television by the ITC, who considered it to be "offensive, shocking and in bad taste", noting complaints citing the advert's themes of death and the "traumatic experience" the person was facing in the ad.[84][85]
In August 2004, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ordered Microsoft to pull ads in Britain that claimed that the total cost of ownership of Linux servers was ten times that of Windows Server 2003. The comparison included the cost of hardware, and put Linux at a disadvantage by installing it on more expensive but poorer-performing hardware compared to that used for Windows.[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. Internet entrepreneur and Wikimedia Foundation founder Jimmy Wales described Microsoft's offer as unethical.[89]
In 2009, it was found that a photo on the Polish version of Microsoft's business productivity website—which depicted three people of various races during an office meeting—had been edited to replace the head of an African-American man with that of a Caucasian, whilst also failing to edit the person's hand to match the different skin color. Microsoft apologized and quickly removed the image.[90][91]
In 2011, Moneylife.in alleged that two "anonymous comments boosting their product"—one by a Nokia employee and another by a Microsoft employee—were posted on their review of Nokia Lumia 800, which was based only on the "technical specifications" and the reviewer "hadn't laid a finger on the phone".[92] In conclusion, Charles Arthur argued "Nobody has come out of the episode looking good. Sapkale was accused of breaking his own site's privacy policy by posting the IP and email addresses of the commenters, while the commenting duo's failure to declare any interest looked, at best, like astroturfing."[92]
In 2014 details on a partnership between Machinima.com and Microsoft came to light regarding a marketing campaign for Xbox One. Machinima would offer some of its users $3 per thousand views if the user showed 30 seconds of an Xbox One game and mentioned the system by name.[93] Controversy arose when it was reported that, under the terms of the promotion, participants were not allowed to disclose that they were being paid for said endorsements, which Ars Technica said conflicted with FTC regulations requiring recipients to fully disclose when such actions occur.[93] Machinima stated that the confidentiality clause only applied to the terms of the agreement, and not to the existence of the agreement, and Microsoft ended the promotion and directed Machinima to add disclosures to the videos involved.[93] In September 2015, Machinima settled with the FTC over charges that the ad campaign failed to comply with FTC endorsement guidelines; the FTC decided not to take action against Microsoft since it already has "policies and procedures designed to prevent such lapses".[94]
Since the 2010s, Microsoft has faced criticism for using adware-like tactics to market recent software and services.[95] Microsoft faced criticism over its marketing and distribution of no-cost Windows 10 upgrades for Windows 7 and 8 users, which included a "Get Windows 10" application automatically downloaded via Windows Update that displayed popups advertising the offer,[96][97][98] use of dark patterns to coax users into installing the operating system,[97][99][100][98] downloading installation files without user consent,[101][96] and making it difficult for users to suppress the advertising and notifications if they did not wish to upgrade to Windows 10.[101][96][102] Microsoft has used advertising embedded in the Microsoft Bing search engine and Microsoft Edge web browser to discourage the use of competing web browser Google Chrome (which shares the same engine as Bing), including displaying prominent ads on specific search terms, and programming Edge to inject on-screen notifications and banner advertising when browsing Chrome's web site.[103][104][105][106] In 2023 and 2024, Microsoft began using notifications to encourage Chrome users to switch to Microsoft Bing and Microsoft Copilot.[107][108]
Tax avoidance[edit]
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".[110]
In 2020, ProPublica reported that the company had diverted more than $39 billion in U.S. profits to Puerto Rico using a mechanism structured to make it seem as if the company was unprofitable on paper. As a result, the company paid a tax rate on those profits of "nearly 0%." When the Internal Revenue Service audited these transactions, ProPublica reported that Microsoft aggressively fought back, including successfully lobbying Congress to change the law to make it harder for the agency to conduct audits of large corporations.[111][112]
Blacklisting of journalists[edit]
John C. Dvorak said that in the 1980s, Microsoft classified journalists as "Okay", "Sketchy", or "Needs work" and targeted "Needs work" journalists in an attempt to have them terminated. Dvorak said that he was denied information about Windows because he was on a blacklist.[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]
Xbox Live prohibition on use of the word "gay"[edit]
Microsoft has come under some criticism for its attitude to homosexuality and Xbox Live. Users may not use the string "gay" in a gamertag (even in a non-homosexual context, for example as part of a surname), or refer to homosexuality in their profile (including self-identifying as such), as the company considers this "content of a sexual nature" or "offensive" to other users and therefore unsuitable for the service.[142][143][144] 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".[145][146] GLAAD weighed in on the controversy as well, supporting the steps that Microsoft has taken over the years to engage the LGBT community.[147]
Xbox Live subscription price increase[edit]
On January 22, 2021, Microsoft announced that the pricing model for Xbox Live subscriptions would be increasing across each price tier, with a year of the service doubling from US$60 to US$120 for users.[148] 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.[149][150] In response to the backlash, on the same day that the price increase was announced, Microsoft reversed the decision to increase the price of Xbox Live.[151]
ANS patent controversy[edit]
Asymmetric numeral systems is widely used family of method in data compression, whose author gave it to public domain - wanting to be unrestricted by the patent system, also successfully defending from patent by Google.[152] In June 2019 Microsoft lodged a patent application called 'Features of range asymmetric number system encoding and decoding'.[153] The USPTO issued a final rejection of the application on October 27, 2020. Yet on March 2, 2021, Microsoft gave a USPTO explanatory filing stating "The Applicant respectfully disagrees with the rejections,[154] seeking to overturn the final rejection under the "After Final Consideration Pilot 2.0" program.[155] The application is currently still pending,[153] as USPTO has not confirmed if it will allow the rejection appeal to proceed.
Criticism of other software companies:
General mechanisms at work: