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Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices. Frequently criticized are the ease of use, robustness, and security of the company’s software. They’ve also been criticized for the use of permatemp employees (employees employed for years as “temporary,” and therefore without medical benefits), the use of forced retention tactics, which means that employees would be sued if they tried to leave.^[246]

Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many cases, leading to burnout within just a few years of joining the company. The company is often referred to as a “Velvet Sweatshop”, a term which originated in a 1989 Seattle Times article,^[247] and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft’s own employees.^[248] This characterization is derived from the perception that Microsoft provides nearly everything for its employees in a convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health.

As reported by several news outlets,^[249][250] an Irish subsidiary of Microsoft based in the Republic of Ireland declared £220 bn in profits but paid no corporation tax for the year 2020. This is due to the company being tax resident in Bermuda as mentioned in the accounts for ‘Microsoft Round Island One’, a subsidiary that collects licence fees from the use of Microsoft software worldwide.

Dame Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP in the UK said, “It is unsurprising – yet still shocking – that massively wealthy global corporations openly, unashamedly and blatantly refuse to pay tax on the profits they make in the countries where they undertake business”.^[250]

In 2020, ProPublica reported that the company had diverted more than $39 billion in U.S. profits to Puerto Rico using a mechanism structured to make it seem as if the company was unprofitable on paper. As a result, the company paid a tax rate on those profits of “nearly 0%.” When the Internal Revenue Service audited these transactions, ProPublica reported that Microsoft aggressively fought back, including successfully lobbying Congress to change the law to make it harder for the agency to conduct audits of large corporations.

“Embrace, extend, and extinguish” (EEE),^[253] also known as “embrace, extend, and exterminate”,^[254] is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found^[255] that was used internally by Microsoft^[256] to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to strongly disadvantage competitors. Microsoft is frequently accused of using anticompetitive tactics and abusing its monopolistic power.

People who use their products and services often end up becoming dependent on them, a process known as vendor lock-in. Microsoft was the first company to participate in the PRISM surveillance program, according to leaked NSA documents obtained by The Guardian^[257] and The Washington Post^[258] in June 2013, and acknowledged by government officials following the leak.^[259]

The program authorizes the government to secretly access data of non-US citizens hosted by American companies without a warrant. Microsoft has denied participation in such a program. Jesse Jackson believes Microsoft should hire more minorities and women. In 2015, he praised Microsoft for appointing two women to its board of directors

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Related contents:

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