Microsoft Admits MSN China Ripped Off Plurk

By Geoff Duncan December 16, 2009

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The technology world is full of little ironies. Today, one of them is that one of the world’s largest software makers—which has been working with law enforcement, industry groups, and legislators for decades in efforts to counter software piracy and copyright infringement—has itself engages in outright theft of another company’s software. Microsoft has come clean, admitting that its MSN China joint venture stole code from Canadian micro-blogging service Plurk.

The fracas stems from MSN China’s launch of a social networking and microblogging service dubbed Juku, which bore more than a little resemblance to Canada-based microblogging service Plurk. Then the resemblance was brought to Plurk’s attention, they claim to have found hundreds of instances of, essentially, outright theft of Plurk’s code, on top of a not-even-barely-concealed ripoff off Plurk’s interface and feature set. And it’s not as if Plurk’s interface is generic: the service uses a unique side-scrolling timeline for users’ posts and activities.

Microsoft is setting the blame for the copying on a third party vendor with whom it contracted to produce the Juku service, but is nonetheless assuming responsibility for the theft. “We are obviously very disappointed, but we assume responsibility for this situation,” Microsoft wrote in a statement. “We apologize to Plurk and we will be reaching out to them directly to explain what happened and the steps we have taken to resolve the situation.”

Microsoft has suspended access to its Juku service indefinitely.

Although Plurk isn’t a major player in the North American social networking scene (unlike, say, Twitter), Plurk has found quite a lot of traction in Asia. Plurk claims to be 10 times more popular than Twitter in Taiwan.

The companies haven’t revealed whether Microsoft will be offering any sort of financial compensation for ripping off Plurk’s interface and code, or whether Plurk intends to pursue any legal remedies.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Best Microsoft Office deals: Get Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for free

Students using Microsoft Office software on their laptops outside.

Even though Google Docs and Google Sheets are free, Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 remain the golden standard in the fight between Microsoft vs Google on the most widely used office software. Unfortunately, this market dominance means that both Microsoft Office and 365 can still be quite expensive, and even though you can certainly get a free trial of Microsoft Word, if you want the full version and the rest of the suite, you'll need to pay. Luckily, there are quite a few good deals you can take advantage of that don't require you to spend the high prices that you would if you bought directly from Microsoft. To that end, we've gone around and collected the best deals we could find below.
Best Microsoft Office deals
Microsoft Office is a pay once, receive once service. You don't have to pay recurring monthly fees to use it, but the software also never updates. For what it's worth, the Microsoft Office packages are labelled "2021", so they're all fairly recent but also ripe for a good deal. With the exception of AI integrations, not much has really changed in the past couple of years when it comes to your basic document creation and these programs should continue to be effective for years to come. Depending on what package you get, you'll get access to different apps, based on the needs of the target audience. For example, Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 keeps it lean and cool and with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint being the only apps included.

Here are our favorite deals for the classic Microsoft Office experience:

Computing

Ends tonight: Get 42% off a year subscription to Microsoft 365

Office 365 Apps on an orange background.

For a complete set of productivity apps that will be familiar to most people, you may want to take advantage of this offer from HP -- a 42% discount on a one-year subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal, which brings its price down to just $40 from its original price of $70. That's $30 in savings on software and services that will be helpful to both professionals and students. You're going to have to hurry in completing the transaction if you're interested though, as there's not much time left before the bargain gets taken down.

Why you should buy Microsoft 365 Personal
Microsoft 365, formerly known as Office 365, is a subscription service that gives you access to all of the brand's most popular productivity apps, among other things. If you sign up for Microsoft 365 Personal, not only will you be able to use Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft OneNote, but you'll also get 1TB of cloud storage where you can save your files and access them from anywhere, as well as protection from Microsoft Defender. Any software updates will be done automatically, so you won't have to keep checking if there are any newer versions yourself.

Computing

Best Buy just knocked $440 off this Surface Pro 9 with keyboard

The Surface Pro 9 in laptop mode on a table.

Microsoft's line of Surface Pro devices are highly functional and extremely portable, which is why there's always high demand for Surface Laptop and Surface Pro deals. Here's an offer that you wouldn't want to miss -- a $440 discount from Best Buy for the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with Surface Pro Keyboard, which slashes its price from $1,540 to $1,100. The savings won't be available for a long time, so if you're interested in taking advantage of this bargain, you have to proceed with the purchase as soon as you can.

Why you should buy the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with Surface Pro Keyboard
The performance Microsoft Surface Pro 9 is smooth and fast enough to handle all of your daily activities for work or school, as it's powered by the 12th-generation Intel Core i5 processor and 16GB of RAM that's on the same level as top-tier laptops, according to our guide on how much RAM do you need. The device also features a 13-inch PixelSense touchscreen with support for Dolby Vision for impressive picture quality, and dynamic refresh rate of up to 120Hz for an extremely smooth on-screen experience. It runs on Windows 11 Home, which is pre-loaded in its 256GB SSD.