Washington Post: Microsoft Critic Forced Out. A technology executive whose company does business with Microsoft Corp. has been forced out of his job after he helped write a cybersecurity report critical of the software giant, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

But wait, there's more. According to the story, IDG's CIO Magazine -- which routinely rents subscriber lists for such things -- refused to include the report in an issue as it had been asked. The Post reports that "the magazine informed CCIA representatives that the paper was 'too sensitive' and turned away the business."

I can easily believe that Microsoft made no direct threats in either case, as in "Fire this guy or we'll never do business with you again," or "No more advertising from us if you run this report even as a paid insert."

But I can easily imagine someone from Microsoft expressing great displeasure. And I can more easily imagine internal conversations at the companies that acted in such knee-jerk ways, as in "God, what happens when Microsoft sees this? Isn't business bad enough already?"

So even though the boilerplate denials from the companies are probably true in the strict sense, it's pretty tough to imagine a total lack of connection. Microsoft never abandoned its predatory ways -- it now has the U.S. government's nearly total approval to do as it wishes in this regard -- and it's hard for people to maintain their principles when money is at stake.

Bloggers: Please link to this study (large PDF file) -- perhaps once a day for the next few days -- and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Let's elevate it to prominence at least on Google and the other search engines. There isn't much more we can do, but it's a start.