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On the one hand it's a good move to pound into people's brains that all base belong to Microsoft - design be damned.

On the other hand does it really help to associate your brand with the bottom of the barrel laptop / desktop?

And then hide the Microsoft brand on Xbox360 / Zune?

MSFT is more like a country in a state of perpetual civil war than they are a computer company.

Having come from Microsoft not too long ago, I really think that "warring city-states" is a much better description of how Microsoft internal politics works than the typical Microsoft-as-monolith metaphors.

Do you think it's more a "warring city-states" structure than most other very large corporations?

As Microsoft is the only very large corporation I've worked for so far, I'm afraid I can't really make a comparison.

A bit off topic, but [Warring States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_states) happens to be the golden age of Chinese philosophy, akin to Europe's Age of Enlightenment. The intellectual output grew out of necessities of competition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought

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