Sunday, August 4, 2013

Bribing Developers : Samsung Ad Agency



In the past, Samsung was paying students to post negative comments and reviews of their competitors products. They specifically got caught paying people to make posts online claiming they had a terrible experience with HTC products, however, it's unknown who else they were targeting. Recently, a number of developers came forward saying an ad agency representing Samsung came to them offering as much as $500 to mention development for Samsung. Is anyone surprised that Samsung is using morally reprehensible tactics to promote their products?

Samsung, once again,
is denying that they intentionally did this. They're pushing all the blame off on the advertising agency. Although, that's incredibly hard to believe. Anyone who has worked for a business that takes other businesses as clients knows how picky they can be. No money would have been spent on an advertising ploy that Samsung didn't approve. They're having their ad agency take the blame. There's no way they'd be able to offer developers money for a program that wasn't approved by their client.

Clearly, Samsung is trying to make their competitors look inferior. This, along with the paid attacks against HTC prove that Samsung is trying to distance themselves from other Android developers. Their goal has always been to be the top phone manufacturer, even if that means throwing other Android manufacturers under the bridge. It's surprising that Google continues to support them in legal battles.

Samsung has shown that they clearly don't take business ethics seriously. In their marketing efforts, they have: threatened to leave bloggers in a foreign country, bribed students, bribed developers, hired judges, used deceptive marketing, copied Apple designs, used child actors from Apple commercials,falsified screenshots, cheated benchmarks, used their supply chain to cripple a competitor, and a whole lot more. The list of unethical business practices goes on. Samsung is clearly not a trustworthy company, which makes one wonder why so many people are willing to trust their products. I haven't been especially harsh with Samsung, they've just done many bad things to make it to the top of the Android pile. If anything, I haven't been harsh enough on them.
Source: The Verge

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