How Microsoft of them.
That is more up Microsoft's alley. The article is a better example of doing good through some bad, a moral quandary.
Microsoft's schtick is to sit there and tell you with a straight face that browsers like Chrome, Firefox & Opera (and all Mac browsers) can't possibly display a calendar in a month view. This is a feature unique to the rendering powerhouse that is IE6 or higher.
It just doesn't seem like the same thing to me. One seems to further the progress of the web through less than reputable means, the other is intentional crippling for no gain whatsoever other than locking out your competitors.
Article 1: "Microsoft today announced the release of a suite of web-based applications designed to compete with Google's popular apps, including Gmail and GoogleDocs. We're not sure yet what will motivate Google users to migrate, though."
Article 2: "It looks like Microsoft is going to release an update which will cause all IE users to be prompted to use Microsoft's new suite of web-based applications instead of Google's..."
I loathe IE 6 as much as the next person, and I appreciate the cleverness that went into Google's solution to this, but it would be dishonest of me not to call it sneaky, shrewd, and anti-competitive.