Microsoft Uses Blog to Refute Rumor

It’s kinda nice to see blogs being used well by companies. It almost feels like a conversation again.

Microsoft has done a good job with the Windows7 launch of blogging a lot about what they’ve done, how they’ve been trying to approach the launch, interesting commentary on the evolution of the Windows Taskbar, and now, to refute a rumor that Windows7's great user-interface was really stolen from the Mac.

This conversation is on-fire in twitter and elsewhere on the web and, without some kind of authoritative response, the rumor could turn into something people just believe without question (though Mac fans will do that anyway, and Windows fans will really deny it no matter what Redmond says).

Decide for yourselves which side of the story is true, or if this is some just corporate legal positioning to avoid a lawsuit from Cupertino, but in the end, I wanted to comment that this is a great way to use your company/team’s blog to openly discuss sensitive and otherwise disastrous Public Relations issues.

You can’t control the conversation, but ignoring it is clearly unhealthy.