Microsoft and companies whose products run its software are important ad buyers at CNET. It is hard not to think about that when I see a headline on one of CNET’s blogs that reads:

“Get over it already. Microsoft is not the Anti-Christ.”

Well, first of all, I don’t know who’s saying that. But informed people are saying that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist with a long history of anti-competitive practices, livid hostility to open source software, an embarrassingly lame portable media player, and a disastrously bad new operating system whose horror stories have deterred me (a Microsoft DOS/Windows user since the 1980s) from wanting to buy another Windows machine when I upgrade.

But why focus on that? Why not attack a straw man who proclaims Microsoft to be an apocalyptic danger to the world, or whatever?

Taking some Microsoft lawyer at his word, the author wants us to believe that Microsoft has thoroughly changed its spots. Maybe he’s just stupid–but again, it’s probably just the advertising money talking.

Perhaps realizing that he has gone a bit too far to have any credibility on the matter, toward the end of the CNET post the author, Charles Cooper, offers this assertion:

“I’m not going to alibi for Microsoft.”

Fair enough, but only because “alibi” is not used as a verb by most educated people. That aside, Cooper is certainly shilling for Microsoft.