Microsoft dirty tricks, part two: Technology Evangelist

This was, for Microsoft, a perfect ending. The damning tapes were lost in a way that could be blamed on a contractor -- a contractor over which Microsoft had great power -- power greater than just a services contract. The contractor "accepted" responsibility though there was no real evidence they had done anything wrong. It could just as easily have been a Microsoft employee who destroyed the tapes. It is clear that Microsoft never [r]evealed to the court either that the tapes had been found or that they had been destroyed. This would have had to have taken place at the spoliation hearing that would have happened had Microsoft not settled with Burst for $60 million.