I had a nice chuckle this morning was I was browsing around my usual slew of websites.  A small post on the Search Engine Watch blog pointed to an Associated Press article about more alleged Microsoft bribery.  According to the articles, Microsoft attempted to pay an independent blogger to update some technical information on Wikipedia.

Microsoft spokesperson Catherine Brooker told the AP that Microsoft feared the Wikipedia articles has been written by employees at IBM and were, therefore, slanted against a Microsoft technical standard.  Redmond hadn't been able to resolve the problem using Wikipedia's built-in flagging system, so an employee at the software giant contacted an independent expert on the subject and offered to hire him to fix the misinformation.

Bruceclay.com has more details, include excerpts from the email sent by Microsoft to the blogger.  According to that email, full disclosure of the request was permitted and Microsoft said it had no desire to approve or edit the changes made.  The blogger could, if he accepted the offer, say anything he wanted about it.

In an interesting twist, Microsoft later said that a "low-level" employee made the offer without getting approval from his superiors.  In addition, they say no offer of money was made and no money was ever paid.

In all honesty, I love this.  Not only does it make me laugh, but it also just goes to show that Microsoft will try anything.