It's called tall poppy syndrome.

It's called tall poppy syndrome. MS suffers from it too. Although, theirs is deserved because they have gained their top rank status through dodgy dealing, backstabbing and anti-competitive behavior.

Ubuntu is suffering from it for different reasons. One reason is jealousy - my distro is better than yours and I am jealous of your distro's success. Another is that MS Fanboys (who will never switch just because they are rebelling against rebelling) are sick of hearing about it.

But who can really honestly complain about what Ubuntu is doing. They might arguably be considered "helpful" in regard to proprietary software/codecs/etc. But, they are still taking GNU/Linux mainstream and that is something to applaud. More users means a bigger and better community. More users exposed to the principles and ideals of free software. Gotta love them for that.

It's also called link baiting. One of the popular techniques for getting traffic: go against the main flow. This draws traffic from people who go "WTF?!?! I have to find out why this guy is complaining" ... "Oops I just looked at all his ads and made him money even though his article is garbage".