Microsoft's Fast charged with 'accounting fraud'

Norwegian economic crime police have raided the headquarters of Microsoft-owned Fast Search and Transfer and charged the firm with accounting fraud. Police attorney Baard Thorsen told Reuters that evidence was being sought following allegations that Fast inflated its revenues prior to Microsoft’s $1.2bn buyout of the company …

[James Green]

Laugh?

You have to laugh, MS buys this company because they've over-inflated their revenues, then has to pay a fine because of it. How to not have your cake and not eat it.....

Joke, well I guess it's one them

[Anonymous Coward]

Pulling A Fast One?

LOL

and no one thought of it already, im truly amazed.

[robbie]

FAST?

Should report it to the Federation Against Software Theft.

[Kevin Johnston]

Accounts?

Did they prepare them in Excel?

[Solomon Grundy]

@James Green

Actually, the original source for the complaint, according to trusted sources, came from MS itself. They were lied to and they're pissed; so they brought evidence and now FAST is under investigation.

[ben]

Pulled a FAST one...

Their software must really suck if they didn't see this coming. Microsoft has bought a dead duck which was previously just lame.

[Humph]

"They were lied to and they're pissed"

Now Microsoft know how the rest of us feel.

[Steen Hive]

FAST

Weren't they the original ftpsearch people?

[Solomon Grundy]

@Humph

What has Microsoft lied to you about? I'd be interested to know. You may not be completely satisfied with your purchase but I'd be really interested to know what lies they told you.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Humph

Nah M$ will never know how anyone who has had to deal with their products feels. The all encompassing ballmer brand bull shit brainwashing (tm, patent pending, copyright 2008, etc etc) system ensures this will never happen.

[Paul Lee]

FASTs rival

I used to work for a rival to FAST. We were told to, in sales presentations to customers, hype up the fact that (a) FAST were being investigated for all fraud and (b) over emphasize how poor their software was, rather than how good ours was. Our managers used to send round snotty emails gloating about our high-profile customers and FAST's unknown ones. Theres a write -up here:

http://www.paullee.com/computers/autonomy.php

[ben]

Microsoft enterprise search powered by FAST

We'll index you corporate data, we'll check your accounts and flag any fraudulent dealing we'll ...hang on a minute.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FASTs rival

Quite a catalogue of FAIL on the part of Autonomy, there, and I don't think you're the only one to have seen this kind of shit going down in the software business or, in fact, in any job where the skilled people are "managed" by people with the intellectual skills and instincts of a primary school bully and the social skills of a chimpanzee on heat: "wanker management" as it was once called in a former workplace of mine.