ABM is Starting to Bore Me
Recently, Valleywag launched a salvos at other major bloggers calling them on echoing slogans from major advertisers - most notably Microsoft. This is part of a consistent and boring trend of Anybody But Microsoft (ABM) that, in the end, is nothing short of boring.
I am tired of pulling up Techmeme and reading anti-Microsoft rants. In the end, Microsoft is just a company and their own worst enemy anyway. Your rants don't hurt them, things like Vista bloat does. I'd much rather read comparisons of Microsoft stuff vs. other stuff. Or about interesting new products by ... anyone.
This whole thing is just ABM thinly cloaked in a weak payola scandal. As Arrington says:
So here’s my position on all of this: Go pound sand. People understand that if there’s text in an ad box, someone is paying for it to be there.
The main thing I’m pissed off about right now is that they pulled all the ads, which mean we’re taking a revenue hit. We’re running a business here, and have payroll to make. We run ads to make that payroll. Those ads have now been pulled.
I'm so disinterested in spreading the meme, that if you'd like to read about the actual advertising payola theme go to the Arrington article.
In the end, sometimes an ad is just an ad. If these were ads for other products, and not Microsoft, I doubt we'd be having this conversation. I'd like to apply the bitch-brush a little more judiciously, please.
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