but had to backstep due to Ballmer getting 100,000+ emails in support of the MVPs.

I'm astonished. If there are only a few thousand MVPs, that means there must have been close to 100,000 non-MVPs sufficiently enamored of the MVP program that they were prepared to send an email to Balmer. Are you sure this isn't an urban legend?

IMHO the whole program could become a problem for MS. It is true that other industries (e.g. medicine) also involve perks provided by vendors who like the message on offer, but those vendors do not decide who is the top performer or who has the best results to be reported. Where vendors are involved, other industries and professions have learned to look very closely to ensure that the process is transparent, reproducible and clean.

Unfortunately the MVP award seems to have taken on some sort of assumed aristocracy role so that the vendor does select the Professor and our industry is so immature that this process apparently is celebrated by at least 100,000 people! And there has been little emphasis on a clean reproducible process according to other posts here.

MS must be aware of the risks in this approach. It made sense in the old days when the online BBS was the main source of assistance for an industry consisting mostly of lone rangers, but times have changed. The accusations against a certain infamous poster to the effect that he negotiated an MVP award by promising to promote NET to VFP developers must have sent a shiver down MS's spine. Whether true or not, the award is wide open to that sort of accusation and as the industry matures, of course people are going to compare to what happens elsewhere. It would be very smart for MS to measure contributions very carefully so they can at least assert that the process is based on measured performance rather than any other accusation that might arise.