1. It corrupted the political system – the previous government signed a deal with them for using (not even buying!) MS Windows and MS Office at price which was twice the street price: as of today Bulgaria has paid more than $ 900 for each computer used by the government. (total amount spent so far: $ 44 M)
2. It has ruined the idea about e-government, by creating the so-called Pilot Portal of the E-government, which for 5 years offered only one service. See here, here, and here for more (here, and below, all links are to articles in Bulgarian)
3. It tried to sell to the schools software worth of $ 1.56 M – an attempt which was stopped only thanks to the Sofia city prosecution office
4. Instead of dealing directly with the government, it used a private company, CAPK “Progress”, created in the time of communism, to be their commercial agent. Thus, instead of getting support from Microsoft, the government actually had to pay additional money, as if for training; there’s no information that the training actually ever took place.
5. It sold Microsoft products against the law – without having translated even the end-user license agreement; thus making potentially everyone a criminal. The translation argument was used by former minister Kalchev to justify the contract for renting Microsoft software.
6. It worked through the Business Software Alliance to mis-train judges, prosecutors and law-enforcement officers in combatting copyright crime, by sending them to confiscate computers of end-users. (See here, here, here, and here – last article in English)
7. It “created” a portal for education, which keeps on not working quite often.
Can you add more? And can you tell some… one reason why Microsoft is good for Bulgaria?
And at the end – I don’t have anything against Microsoft – I just want them to play by the rules, and not corrupt anyone.