Communications of the ACM
Tech Giant Brings Software to a Gun Fight
On its website, Salesforce.com touts retailer Camping World as a leading customer of its business software, highlighting its use of products to help sales staff move product.
But behind the scenes in recent weeks, the Silicon Valley tech giant has delivered a different message to gun-selling retailers such as Camping World: Stop selling military-style rifles, or stop using our software.
The pressure Salesforce is exerting on those retailers—barring them from using its technology to market products, manage customer service operations, and fulfill orders—puts them in a difficult position. Camping World, for example, spends more than $1 million a year on Salesforce's e-commerce software, according to one analyst estimate. Switching to another provider now could cost the company double that to migrate data, reconfigure systems, and retrain employees.
The change in Salesforce's acceptable-use policy shows how a technology giant is trying to influence what retailers in America sell and alter the dynamics of a charged social issue.
From The Washington Post
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