Microsoft threatens blog
By Ria Sharma

Technology giant Microsoft has cash reserves of tens of billions of dollars.  And a small army of lawyers at its command.  It had the advantage of moving first into the market, great leadership, good products and the American Government’s help in its battle against piracy.

American company Bountii is a price search startup that has built a search engine capable of finding shoppers lower and more accurate prices than any existing price comparison service. It specializes in electronics and appliances and so covers much of the tech market. Bountii was founded in the Summer of 2007 by Samir Meghani and John Puskarich. Initial investment was provided by Y Combinator, a venture firm that specializes in funding early stage startups.

Microsoft USA launched a ‘Bing Cashback’ offer where the idea was to give discounts to consumers who buy online.  Only problem?  The Microsoft ‘Bing Cashback’ site had some security flaws.

While Bountii publicly pointed out the security flaws in this Microsoft Bing Cashback website, Microsoft sent the lawyers in.  Instead of fixing the security flaws and thanking Bountii, Microsoft forced it to take down the blog post.  For good measure, Microsoft even ejected Bountii from the Bing Cashback site.

Not surprisingly, the public is not amused.  If Bountii had tried to cheat Microsoft then they should be taken to court. But their only crime was to point out security flaws. Many internet users perceive this as a big powerful company intimidating an honest blogger.

Bountii has blogged about the Microsoft legal threat and given the reasons why they had to back down.