Across Russia, the security services have carried out dozens of similar raids against outspoken advocacy groups or opposition newspapers in recent years. Security officials say the inquiries reflect their concern about software piracy, which is rampant in Russia. Yet they rarely if ever carry out raids against advocacy groups or news organizations that back the government.

As the ploy grows common, the authorities are receiving key assistance from an unexpected partner: Microsoft itself. In politically tinged inquiries across Russia, lawyers retained by Microsoft have staunchly backed the police.

Interviews and a review of law enforcement documents show that in recent cases, Microsoft lawyers made statements describing the company as a victim and arguing that criminal charges should be pursued. The lawyers rebuffed pleas by accused journalists and advocacy groups, including Baikal Wave, to refrain from working with the authorities. Baikal Wave, in fact, said it had purchased and installed legal Microsoft software specifically to deny the authorities an excuse to raid them. The group later asked Microsoft for help in fending off the police. “Microsoft did not want to help us, which would have been the right thing to do,” said Marina Rikhvanova, a Baikal Environmental Wave co-chairwoman and one of Russia’s best-known environmentalists. “They said these issues had to be handled by the security services.”

The company put out a statement saying it would be looking into the situation and, if the company is to be trusted, to rein in its Russian legal team, among other actions. Believe this when you see it.

Microsoft isn’t alone in going beyond the standard tech-industry assistance for foreign repression. Typically this takes the form of obeying legal but odious orders from local authorties, as Yahoo did in China’s jailing of a dissident, an act for which it belatedly (and somewhat unconvincingly) apologized. Two years ago, Business Week published a long and dreary list of U.S. companies that believe authoritarian rule makes for good markets.

What Microsoft seems to have done in Russia is disturbing in new ways, an overt and unusually slimy collaboration with tactics plainly aimed at stamping out dissent. Could the company be sending a more troubling message about its ethics and corporate culture? It’s hard to imagine a more ugly one.

I find myself hoping that top Microsoft executives such as Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie had no idea what was being done with their company’s help. The public statement is weasly and insufficient.

I hope these men will look in the mirror tomorrow morning, after the justified PR firestorm heading their way in the wake of the Times story, and realize how bad this is. And when they get to the office, I hope they’ll announce something better: their intention to crack down on the people who made this happen, at least the ones under their own control.

The story is getting plenty of pickup, even though other Wall Street financial institutions have had similar rules in place for years. There’s something funny about the castration of tough-talking traders, although some of us are laughing through our tears as we contemplate the imposition of Emily Post rules of e-mail etiquette on the one hand while we learn that Goldman is already taking steps to circumvent the new rules of bank reform on the other.

But Goldman is making a mistake. Rather than attempting to change employee behavior, it should be listening, and learning to understand what all the profanity signifies. At least — that’s the lesson I take from a fascinating little story on how Microsoft Xbox Live support staff monitor the traffic flow of profane tweets by Xbox Live users.

For the Xbox Live support crew, a cursing uptick is an early warning alarm bell, a signal that something’s wrong. “‘Foul-mouthed tweens,’” writes Casey Hibbard at socialmediaexaminer.com, “just might be the first tip-off of a major service outage.”

“When people are passionate and they use that kind of language, a lot of times there’s legitimately something wrong with our service,” says McKenzie Eakin, program manager, Xbox LIVE Service Delivery (also known as @XboxSupport Elite Tweet Fleet Sky Captain).

“Our ability to identify and fix emerging issues is so much faster with our ears to the street.”

(I confess — I’ve always considered Microsoft to be a pretty square company. But now that I know that the firm employs “Elite Tweet Fleet Sky Captains” I may have to revise my opinion. However, I am alarmed to learn that the Xbox Live team’s awesome Twitter support won them the “Guinness World Record for Most Responsive Brand on Twitter.” I fear the Guinness Book of World Records is watering down its brand.)

In any case, imagine how Goldman could apply the same strategy. Any time the company’s e-mail monitoring software registered a surge of profanity, supervisors could step in and address the underlying cause — the prevalence of shitty deals! — rather than just try to stamp out the symptoms. This could help avoid the embarrassment of humiliating Senate hearings and SEC fraud investigations. The message Goldman is sending right now is: Don’t curse, but feel free to continue screwing our clients.

Miss Manners doesn’t approve.

It’s the first time the U.S. government has certified a bundle of software programs delivered over the Internet, a trendy concept known as “cloud computing.”

Google has been trying to promote cloud computing as a way for businesses and government agencies to reduce their technology expenses. At the same time, Google is hoping to reduce its financial dependence on Internet advertising, which generated virtually all of its $13.6 billion in revenue during the first half of this year.

Software licensing and other non-advertising services accounted for $558 million of Google’s revenue in that period, a 53 percent increase from the same time last year.

The government represents a potentially huge growth market for Google.

Federal, state and local government agencies combined spend more than $120 billion annually on computers, software and other technology. As they grapple with widening budget deficits, many government officials are looking to reduce their expenses by considering money-saving options such as cloud computing. The upfront and maintenance costs of cloud-computing applications are generally lower than that of software installed on individual computers because the programs are leased and automatically updated by the Web host — in this case, Google.

Google charges $50 per user annually for the premium version of its applications suite. The company won’t say precisely how many businesses and government agencies pay for its top-of-the-line apps as opposed to Google’s more popular free version.

To gain the federal government’s endorsement, Google agreed to store all government data in data centers located in the U.S. Google also is catering to government agencies with a new version of its applications tailored to their needs.

Google already has won several large government contracts, including a five-year deal with the city of Los Angeles in which it outbid Microsoft. Los Angeles wanted to switch over to Google’s e-mail and other applications by June 30, but that target was missed because of security concerns raised by the city’s police department. Google is now hoping to get its apps running for Los Angeles next month.

Later that day, Microsoft reported its quarterly earnings — $16.04 billion in revenue and $4.52 billion in profit — handily beating the numbers reported earlier this week by Apple (and remember, that was the best quarter ever for Steve Jobs and Co.)

So what happens? The stock price declined on Friday. A share in Microsoft? 25 bucks. Apple? 259.

There are some obvious reasons why investors aren’t excited about Microsoft, with the company’s abysmal showing in smart phones leading the list. But still, $4.5 billion dollars in profit in a single quarter is a healthy performance, by any standard. If even that kind of bottom line keeps the sword of Damocles hanging by a thread over Steve Ballmer’s head, I might almost find myself feeling a little sorry for the guy.

Almost.

The way it works is, basically, anyone who wants to can post whatever they want, and Republicans will use their comments in town halls and campaign manifestoes this fall. So far, the site has mostly been notable for two things. The first is strange comments: “Congressmen and women should wear Saran Wrap to work” was featured on the site’s “Transparency/Open Government” section on Thursday morning, and the featured idea under “Constitutional Limits” was, “We should apologize to King George III. He was mentally handicapped, and he couldn’t help but horribly mismanage the government.” The second, of course, is the fact that taxpayer dollars are funding the whole thing. The site is being paid for out of the GOP leadership budget, despite its dot-com (not dot-gov) name.

The worst part about it, though, is that the more successful the site is, the more money it will cost you. Both Microsoft, which provided the software platform and servers that run the site, and House Republican aides confirmed to Salon Thursday that the more traffic the site generates, the more tax dollars the GOP will have to pay in fees to host it.

“The Microsoft TownHall software, which is the underlying software on which the America Speaking Out website was built, is available at no cost,” Microsoft spokeswoman Sarah Anissipour said in an e-mailed statement. “Customers only pay to host their TownHall solution on Windows Azure, which is available using a scalable, pay-only-for-usage model. The number of people visiting a website does have a direct correlation to Windows Azure usage.” Translated out of P.R.-speak, that means the more people who come and post crazy ideas on the site, the more it costs. Brendan Buck, a House GOP leadership aide, confirmed that Republicans are using Azure to host the site.

Asked exactly what the site costs, Buck pointed me to a price list on the Windows Azure site. That says the standard fees are 15 cents per month per gigabyte stored, 12 cents per hour of server time used and 10 cents for each gigabyte of data into the servers, 15 cents for each gigabyte out. Given the site’s graphic-heavy content, those fees could add up quickly if lots of people start speaking out, as Republicans want them to do. Even if it’s not that expensive, a government contract that costs more money the better it works is exactly the sort of thing Republicans love to complain about, now that — out of power — they’ve remembered how much they hate spending. (UPDATE: For some reason, neither Microsoft nor the House GOP pointed this out, but Tim Cameron, an online strategist for Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions, noted that Microsoft is offering free Azure use for TownHall clients until July 31. Which means the fees wouldn’t start for a couple of months. UPDATE 2: Buck wrote later to say the GOP Web site isn’t participating in a free promotion — which means they’re paying already.)

The GOP sees the arrangement as another market-based solution. “Only paying for as much as Americans want to participate?” Buck said. “It’s a pretty efficient way to set it up.”

Democrats, naturally, kept up their mockery of the site. “Republicans did enough damage while in power recklessly spending the American people’s money on huge tax cuts for CEOs and big corporations, and an unpaid-for government-run prescription drug plan,” said Doug Thornell, a spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who’s in House leadership. “The fact that they are continuing this fiscally irresponsible behavior with their glitzy new taxpayer-funded website reflects the GOP’s arrogant belief that they should be held to a different standard from the people they lecture daily on government spending.”

The bottom line, if you’re concerned about keeping government expenses in check? Whatever you do, don’t click on America Speaking Out. Meanwhile, someone should probably tell the 438 people who have submitted ideas in the “Fiscal Accountability” section of the site that they’re now part of the problem.