$ cat ./records/microsoft-caught-running-a-fake-grassroots-astroturf-campaign-in--2001.txt
Microsoft Caught Running a Fake 'Grassroots' Astroturf Campaign in Its Antitrust Defense
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In 2001, the Los Angeles Times exposed a covert 'astroturf' campaign defending Microsoft during its antitrust battle: a Microsoft-funded front group, Americans for Technology Leadership, helped generate hundreds of seemingly grassroots letters to newspapers and officials opposing the government's case — some of them, reporters found, sent in the names of deceased people or from nonexistent addresses. The manufactured-public-support effort, run while Gates led Microsoft, became a textbook example of corporate astroturfing and intensified scrutiny of the company's hardball public-relations tactics.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Technology_Leadership
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Bill and Melinda Gates Among the Inaugural Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy Honorees
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Related Accomplishments
2026
Gates Foundation Trust Sells Off the Last of Its Microsoft Stock
In the first quarter of 2026, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust sold its remaining Microsoft shares, fully exiting a position in the very company that created Gates's fortune — capping a long, deliberate diversification away from the stock. The endowment that funds Gates's philanthropy, managed separately from its grant-making through Cascade, is now anchored instead by Berkshire Hathaway, Waste Management, railroads, and heavy-equipment makers. The sale underscored how thoroughly Gates's giving had decoupled from Microsoft's day-to-day fortunes.
2026
Gates's Charitable Endowment Is Now Led by Berkshire, Not Microsoft
By 2026, the publicly disclosed stock portfolio of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust — the endowment that funds Gates's philanthropy — was led not by Microsoft but by Berkshire Hathaway, Waste Management, Canadian National Railway, Caterpillar, and Deere. Decades of diversification, plus Warren Buffett's stock gifts, left it concentrated in railroads, waste, heavy equipment, and Buffett's conglomerate, while Microsoft — the source of the original fortune — had largely been sold down. The unglamorous, value-oriented mix reflects the long stewardship of Gates's money manager, Michael Larson, through Cascade Investment.
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