6 ms·

No matter what shine Microsoft or Gates have since put on their actions, this should never be forgotten. This was a person and company so greedy that billions u

No matter what shine Microsoft or Gates have since put on their actions, this should never be forgotten. This was a person and company so greedy that billions upon billions weren't enough, complete control was necessary. Has Gates ever come out and acknowledged that his actions at that time were wrong? In retrospect it's kind of amazing that the government even took the actions they did there. It's hard to imagine today. The article touches on it, but the big companies seem to have wizened up to it. They don't need or want complete control, they just want control of their customers. Every once in awhile they'll send off a 1984-ish salvo against each other, but actually outright winning is too costly. It's way too productive to just screw over customers, and they all do it, because they can. The discussion about Google and others at the end is interesting: He understood completely what Microsoft was doing, and, as I like to say, there are only about eight plays in the monopolist’s playbook. He saw all of them. So that when he got market power [as the CEO of Google], he could execute those same kinds of exclusionary plays and he knew exactly what to do. He knew what worked for Microsoft and what didn’t. It’s a very, very parallel situation. … There are no coincidences here. Unfortunately with government as it is in the US, it's probably not going to save us. It's going to take new, better companies to beat the current giants. Hopefully some of you are trying. As an aside, this video of the Windows 95 launch is great. Ballmer is naturally acting like an idiot, but there's Gates in the background, so seemingly mild, but whom was in fact one of the most cutthroat businessmen in the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAkuJXGldrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAkuJXGldrM.

blueside 8y ago
Like clockwork, this kind of anti-MS comment get downvoted on HN. I've been fascinated by this, what am I missing? Gates is highly celebrated now, but it seems like he was the furthest thing from a fair and honest competitor. If Gates and Ballmer had their way, I don't want to even imagine what the internet would look like today.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Have any of the modern tech companies been "fair and honest" competitors? How was what MS did back in the day any different from what Google did to Yelp or various shopping sites (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/you-should-be-outraged-at-googles-anti-competitive-behavior/2017/07/07/e117b704-5de1-11e7-9b7d-14576dc0f39d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/you-should-be-outrag...) The antitrust case didn't have much to do with Microsoft's loss of dominance to Google, Apple, Amazon and FB.
- gaius 8y ago
  Gates is highly celebrated now, but it seems like he was the furthest thing from a fair and honest competitor. Compared to Uber, Google, Facebook and Theranos, Gates and co are saints. The standard for "evil" has shifted a lot since the 90s, now those look like innocent times!
- furgooswft13 8y ago
  > If Gates and Ballmer had their way, I don't want to even imagine what the internet would look like today. Could it be worse than the bloated javascript ad-ridden social media hellscape we have today? All Microsoft "did" to the internet was abandon development on their dominant browser as a way to keep developers on the Windows platform. And lo-and-behold, _market forces_ foiled their plans on that one, not the government. If anything did the internet in, it was the iPhone and the mass adoption of smartphones afterwards, which brought in untold numbers of tech-illiterate consumers to be easily exploited by our current crop of Evil Tech Companies.
- dang 8y ago
  Most anti-Microsoft comments don't get downvoted. Out of curiosity, I looked through https://hn.algolia.com/?query=microsoft&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=microsoft&sort=byDate&dateRang... for recent negative comments about Microsoft, and 3 out of 4 were upvoted. For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162203 was heavily upvoted. Most things people say about HN comments aren't true in general, but only of the subset of comments that the person happens to notice. And we notice the things we dislike way more than we notice everything else.
scarface74 8y ago
Every business is cuttthroat. Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, etc aren't run by Mother Theresa acolytes.
- aaron-lebo 8y ago
  Of course, and that's what I'm saying. We, as consumers and employees of these companies should have a higher standard than "they did it, too".
  - scarface74 8y ago
    So what alternatives do consumers have? It's the nature of capitalism that every company does what it can to legally maximize profit.
    - aaron-lebo 8y ago
      It's the nature of those companies, but there's nothing that says capitalism requires that.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        Yes it does. The minute a company doesn't maximize profit you will have activist shareholders come in and demand they do something!to increase profit.
        aaron-lebo 8y ago
        You don't have to go public and you don't have to always go for short term profit (Bezos didn't, for a long time). This is just how the game is played because that's how it has always been played. It's not very imaginative if we assume that maximizing profit is truly the requirement of all companies, because it's not. There's also nothing that says that customer satisfaction and profit aren't mutual, it's just many companies lean towards profit.

blueside 8y ago

Like clockwork, this kind of anti-MS comment get downvoted on HN. I've been fascinated by this, what am I missing? Gates is highly celebrated now, but it seems like he was the furthest thing from a fair and honest competitor. If Gates and Ballmer had their way, I don't want to even imagine what the internet would look like today.

scarface74 8y ago
Have any of the modern tech companies been "fair and honest" competitors? How was what MS did back in the day any different from what Google did to Yelp or various shopping sites (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/you-should-be-outraged-at-googles-anti-competitive-behavior/2017/07/07/e117b704-5de1-11e7-9b7d-14576dc0f39d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/you-should-be-outrag...) The antitrust case didn't have much to do with Microsoft's loss of dominance to Google, Apple, Amazon and FB.
gaius 8y ago
Gates is highly celebrated now, but it seems like he was the furthest thing from a fair and honest competitor. Compared to Uber, Google, Facebook and Theranos, Gates and co are saints. The standard for "evil" has shifted a lot since the 90s, now those look like innocent times!
furgooswft13 8y ago
> If Gates and Ballmer had their way, I don't want to even imagine what the internet would look like today. Could it be worse than the bloated javascript ad-ridden social media hellscape we have today? All Microsoft "did" to the internet was abandon development on their dominant browser as a way to keep developers on the Windows platform. And lo-and-behold, _market forces_ foiled their plans on that one, not the government. If anything did the internet in, it was the iPhone and the mass adoption of smartphones afterwards, which brought in untold numbers of tech-illiterate consumers to be easily exploited by our current crop of Evil Tech Companies.
dang 8y ago
Most anti-Microsoft comments don't get downvoted. Out of curiosity, I looked through https://hn.algolia.com/?query=microsoft&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=microsoft&sort=byDate&dateRang... for recent negative comments about Microsoft, and 3 out of 4 were upvoted. For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162203 was heavily upvoted. Most things people say about HN comments aren't true in general, but only of the subset of comments that the person happens to notice. And we notice the things we dislike way more than we notice everything else.

scarface74 8y ago

Every business is cuttthroat. Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, etc aren't run by Mother Theresa acolytes.

aaron-lebo 8y ago
Of course, and that's what I'm saying. We, as consumers and employees of these companies should have a higher standard than "they did it, too".
- scarface74 8y ago
  So what alternatives do consumers have? It's the nature of capitalism that every company does what it can to legally maximize profit.
  - aaron-lebo 8y ago
    It's the nature of those companies, but there's nothing that says capitalism requires that.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Yes it does. The minute a company doesn't maximize profit you will have activist shareholders come in and demand they do something!to increase profit.
      - aaron-lebo 8y ago
        You don't have to go public and you don't have to always go for short term profit (Bezos didn't, for a long time). This is just how the game is played because that's how it has always been played. It's not very imaginative if we assume that maximizing profit is truly the requirement of all companies, because it's not. There's also nothing that says that customer satisfaction and profit aren't mutual, it's just many companies lean towards profit.