Is Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write Anti-Apple Articles?

David Morgenstern, a writer for ZDNet has published a very interesting article about being contacted to write material touting Vista over Mac OS X.

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Vista is much better than Mac OS X, right? For the enterprise. And how much will it take to get you to write up that thesis?

Such was the pitch that arrived in my inbox today from marketing company Studio B., a Great Neck, N.Y., marketing company associated with Microsoft and the Microsoft Press. The firm wondered if I'd like to write some "corporate custom content" for a client.


According to the Studio B. site, the company "supported" the Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 rollout with marketing sales and marketing tools as well as providing trainers for early adopters.

One of our customers has asked us write up a technical marketing case for Windows Vista over Mac OSX in the enterprise. I'm contacting you to see if you know anyone who would be interested and capable of writing this based on background materials we have.

The candidate should have a good understanding of client systems in the enterprise and the technologies behind issues that are important in the enterprise (deployment, manageability, work group and policy management, security, suitability of developer platforms for line of business applications, tech support, licensing, TCO).

We have some background materials that include a 75 page technical document called "Apple in the Enterprise" and other summaries of technical points, but it all needs to be put together to make the case.


It's not too hard to figure out who the customer is here. The price to sell out the Mac in the enterprise is $15,000. But my guess is that this fee may be negotiable upwards depending on the brand of the author in question.
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