“Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Thursday that one of its
programmers apparently masqueraded as an independent computer
consultant earlier this week in an effort to discredit America
Online’s tactics in the companies’ quarrel over instant
messaging.
Microsoft had reason to be red-faced about the incident —
first, because the company was unable to identify which employee
had forged an e-mail message on Tuesday accusing America Online of
irresponsible behavior and second, because whoever did it sent the
message to the one computer security expert who was most likely to
find a way to trace it back to Microsoft.”
The ruse has added a bit of Spy vs. Spy melodrama to a bitter
dispute over instant online messaging that American Online and
Microsoft — the world’s two largest Internet service providers —
have been waging for several weeks. … America Online executives
say Microsoft is making illegal use of proprietary directory
information that is essential to connect instant messenger users
with each other via the Internet.”
“Computer industry analysts said that the incident echoed a
1992 controversy in which Microsoft employees masqueraded as
independent computer users and posted messages to public computer
bulletin boards with opinions critical of IBM’s OS/2 operating
system, a product that competed with Microsoft’s Windows. ‘This is
par for the course for Microsoft marketing,’ said John C. Dvorak, a
columnist for PC Magazine. ‘In the past we called them Microsoft
munchkins. It was a scandal.’ “