The shame of Intel and Microsoft
Amidst all the news about the recent popularity of netbooks, we shouldn’t forget that it was Nicholas Negroponte at MIT who got the idea of a small inexpensive PC off the ground with his “One Laptop per Child” project. Nor should we forget the shameful behavior of Intel and Microsoft (actually, Bill Gates himself) in trying to thwart Negroponte’s charitable efforts. Last year I wrote:
Several years ago, MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte started a non-profit project called One Laptop per Child (OLPC) to help bring computing to poor children around the world. To their shame, Microsoft and Intel have tried to kill the idea. Bill Gates personally went out of his way to make disparaging remarks and Microsoft has done what it could to scuttle the project. The Wall Street Journal put it this way, “How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants“.
A recent article from the Sunday Times (UK), Why Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the XO $100 laptop, relates the sad story of this example of bad corporate citizenship. The story begins:
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, supreme prophet of digital connectivity, revealed a strange tent-like object. It was designed to change the world and to cost $100. It was a solar-powered laptop. Millions would be distributed to children in the developing world, bringing them connection, education, enlightenment and freedom of information. The great, the good, the rich and the technocrats nodded in solemn approval.
And then some of them tried to kill it.
Microsoft, makers of most of the computer software in the world, tried to kill it with words, and Intel, maker of most computer chips, tried to kill it with dirty tricks.
When companies become as rich and powerful as Intel and Microsoft, they have to realize that profits and market share cannot be their only concern. They must also have a sense of responsibility to society. Corporations must be good citizens as well as money makers.
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