> I do believe MS has changed. As a general rule, businesses will play nice when they have to (because of competition, public opinion, or government regulation

> I do believe MS has changed. As a general rule, businesses will play nice when they have to (because of competition, public opinion, or government regulation), and they'll be ruthless where they can get away with it (due to monopoly status, high barriers of entry, poor regulation, etc.). If you believe anything about a company, believe that. No company is fundamentally good or evil. Now... corporations do have internal cultural that biases their ethical decision-making (positively or negatively) and various factors (inertia, founder effect) which slow down the rate at which they adapt their ethics to a new set of market/regulatory conditions. So perhaps you can trust/predict a particular company for the short-term.