4 ms·

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 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

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.