Microsoft PR Guy To Spin For Spyware Company

from the not-a-good-thing dept

While Microsoft has been working hard to fight off spyware (though, many believe, not hard enough), it appears that not everyone at the company is so upset by the stuff. A former top PR person at Microsoft has apparently jumped ship to do PR for 180solutions, a company considered one of the worst offenders of surreptitious installs. 180solutions has been trying to clean up its spyware reputation ever since it convinced some clueless VCs to invest $40 million in the company without even realizing why the company was so hated. However, so far, its reputation is still pretty dirty, as the company was also caught stealing affiliate program commissions by slipping in its own affiliate codes to URLs, and, more recently, buying its largest distributor, who was often accused of causing the sneaky installs. This last move, in particular, is quite questionable. Why did the company reward a distributor it felt was doing questionable things by buying them out? Wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to simply cut the company off as a distributor, if they were really serious about avoiding sneaky installs? It seems like this particular PR person has plenty of questions to answer.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Jun 2005 @ 11:57am

    No Subject Given

    You're sure the VCs were clueless? Perhaps they know that the returns from the "clean actors" in the space are as compelling as from other investments. You may not like the VCs, but calling them clueless seems a stretch.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Mike (profile), 2 Jun 2005 @ 12:12pm

    Re: No Subject Given

    No, in this case, they were clueless. In the original article, the VC made statements about the company that showed he hadn't done much due diligence. That's what I consider clueless.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Jun 2005 @ 7:29pm

    Re: No Subject Given

    I read the original article. You must have read a different article.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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