Microsoft and Nokia revealed what their billion dollar partnership was all about by ganging up to give a reviewer a Chinese burn for saying nasty things about the Windows Phone 7.5-based Nokia Lumia 800.
To be fair, Microsoft and Nokia had a point. The review was posted on the Indian sight Moneylif.in and penned by Yogesh Sapkale who had never seen the Lumia 800 and could not identify one in a police lineup if his life depended on it.
Sapkale based his comments on specs and then did a comparison review to the Samsung Galaxy S Plus, which he had not seen either.
His sage view was that Lumia 800 can't compete with the iPhone, even though he doesn't mention the iPhone a single time in the review, or compare it to the Lumia 800 until the conclusion. We guess he was just another Apple fanboy desperate to provide his favourite fruity firm with some free advertising.
Samsung clearly could not be bothered, but it seems that an alarm went off in Redmond and then Espoo hit the fan. Staff from these two busy outfits allegedly took the time to write lots of things like:
"Buddy if you dont have device with you to write review atleast you can do through the videos available on youtube"
"NEVER REVIEW A NOKIA PRODUCT AGAIN YOU DOUCHE"
"This 'review' is a disgrace. It's time for a new career choice, my friend."
However, you can't keep Sapkale down and he did some digging on the names of those who posted on the sight and claims that several of the comments were posted by Microsoft and Nokia employees, without revealing their employers' names.
Sapkale finally had a real story it seemed. One post "What an crap review!! it's one of the best phone available, iphone is so dumb compared to this.... Guess some one is paying you lumpsum, congrats." was written from a machine with an IP address owned by Nokia.
Another commenter named Aditya Agrawal posted negative comments about the review from an IP address which allegedly belongs to Microsoft. Now he can put it all down to the terrible anti-Apple conspiracy out there which seeks to persecute the followers of Steve Jobs.
The only problem is that to publish the list of IP addresses he had to breach the privacy of readers, something reporters are supposed to want to gouge their own eyes out rather than doing. Oh dear.
We had a look at the list of abuse that he was sent. Strangely it seems that all the negative comments are word for word what we get from Apple fans when they get upset with us for not praising Jobs' Mob to the skies. All that has been done is swap the words Apple and Microsoft around. If we are right then this is just a black ops job for the Apple Black Shirts.
It is right, and in the spirit of good journalistic standards that the fact that the attacks came from Microsoft and Nokia was made public. Are you suggesting he should allow posters who are on Microsoft and Nokia's payroll to mislead his readers by masquerading as the views of independent members of the public? If they were honest the posters would have announced they were Microsoft and Nokia employees.
The use of paid shills, astroturfers, and paid "independent" reviewers and analysts plays a big part in Microsoft's PR activities as revealed in documents made public in the Comes vs Microsoft lawsuit. No doubt it has played a big part in the promotion of Windows Phone 7, and probably explains the huge disparity between the glowing reviews and fan posts and blogs of Windows Phone 7 and the total shunning of Windows Phones by real customers in the real world.