Microsoft kills its 'Get the Facts' anti-Linux site

A little late on this one, but Microsoft has replaced its Get the Facts site with one that is ostensibly less biased.

“The goal of the site is to offer more in-depth information and customer-to-customer opinions about many of the issues IT administrators face,” a company spokeswoman said. “It turns out people wanted 3rd party validation in addition to people’s experiences making OS purchasing decisions so in addition to customer case studies, research reports that compare platforms the site will also offer guidance around best practices, web casts, etc.”

Who would have thought people wouldn’t fully trust what a company said about their own products without “3rd party validation”. I don’t find it too interesting that the site was pulled down. After all, the Get the Facts campaign had been debunked and derided to the point that is was certainly doing more harm than good. I do find it interesting, however, that the new Windows Server “Compare” site doesn’t really compare “Linux” with Windows. What is does is compare “Red Hat Enterprise Linux” with Windows. This could be taken two ways. 1) Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the only real competition in the eyes of Microsoft. 2) Microsoft is specifically targeting Red Hat as a result of it not signing a deal similar to the one Novell signed. I’ll let you be the judge.

While on the topic of the Novell deal, it looks like the Microsoft and Novell Open Interoperability Lab is now open. The Microsoft marketing team really does like to stick the word Open anywhere is can. At 2,500 square feet (or 50 x 50) there doesn’t seem to be much room for engineers, especially when you consider the room also has 80+ servers and a SAN.

–jeremy