Microsoft Caught Vote Rigging
from the this-is-a-surprise dept
ZDNet UK had a poll about whether people were more likely to use java or .Net to create webservices. For a while java was leading by quite a bit. But, suddenly the votes for .Net started pouring in. Turns out that Microsoft tried to rig the vote. The surprising part is they didn’t even try to hide this. A very large percentage of the votes came from within Microsoft – with many people trying to vote multiple times (though the poll script tried to block these). There were also a number of people who came from an email with the subject “PLEASE STOP AND VOTE FOR .NET!”, which the ZDNet UK people could see in their log files as the referrer page. Everyone knows that online polls can’t be trusted, but it’s a bit amusing to see Microsoft scurrying around trying to fake people into believing that .Net has so much support.
