@JustaKOS - Re: Why no outrage over Microsoft spying?
Right, Microsoft has good-to-excellent PR with governments and corporates, most see it as a highly successful, profitable company (which it is). For most of the 30 years of Windows, Microsoft was an unchallenged monopoly and thus the majority of PC users were only familiar with its products (thus learning alternatives wasn't on the agenda–no one wanted to throw away his/her skills in MS products, so most were protective of MS when they heard criticism of it).
The result is that it's been almost impossible to explain to the general public Microsoft's sins in any comprehensible way (i.e.: there was no stomach for widespread reporting/news* on the subject). To make matters worse, ordinary users through to governments simply didn't and still don't understand the issues with sufficient depth which means that Microsoft's PR department had (and still has) little trouble brushing off criticism of serious issues such as security breaches, etc. onto perpetrators/hackers etc. MS comes out essentially lily-white, it's baddies that cause all the problems.
To top it off, the IT industry has never formed any cohesive policy on the issue (as many ITers also had a considerable 'investment' in/knowledge of Microsoft products–many rely on MS like sucker fish for their income–at times me included). Thus, the 'noise' always came from the 1% of PC users who used Linux, the small percentage of Apple users and the 'IT whingers' such as many of us here at El Reg–those of us bleeding from having been on MS's cutting edge. All up, this would have hardly amounted to 10% of the world's PC users, thus we could be (and were) ignored.
However, that MS nexus has been seriously broken in recent years by the phenomenal growth of Google/Android, the remarkable phoenix-like resurrection of Apple together with the major shift in software usage (smartphones etc.). Ten years ago, no one would have predicted what has happened. It's a phenomenal change.
Microsoft is now very vulnerable, so it's time to kick it screaming all the way into the professional world of real engineering (and it's going to be much easier than it would have been ten years ago).
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* The IT media were (and still are) compliant, over the years there's been precious little effective criticism of MS or any in-depth analysis of the problems with MS software (mostly, criticism was of the indirect kind about patches, workarounds, etc.). Big IT publishers, such as ZDNet were particularly compliant and there were few exceptions El Reg being one of them (it's probably the reason these posts are often so critical of MS, as those of us in the know have had to gravitate here. ;-)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
