8 ms·

I got down voted last time I mentioned this like it is some sort of conspiracy and not historical fact, but Microsoft literally used the phrase "Embrace, Extend

I got down voted last time I mentioned this like it is some sort of conspiracy and not historical fact, but Microsoft literally used the phrase "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" [1] as a strategy to defeat competition. So anytime you hear of them embracing something you would do well to be skeptical of their motives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

jedberg 8y ago
Sure, but that was two CEOs ago, and they were the dominant market player in all categories at the time. They're a different company now.
- imglorp 8y ago
  True but maybe they will be applying the tactic at Azure. Their new strategy appears to be cloud services, all in [1]. Desktop, mobile, hardware, patents, dev tools... everything ties back to encouraging Azure use now. They're offering massive partnerships and credits (first one is always free) to attract new migrations. In the last year their managed service primitives (db's, queues, lambdas, lb, etc etc) has matured tremendously, so now it's convenient and practical to quickly build full hosted applications. Like AWS but different. As they make more open source contributions, forking popular projects and making their own spin on things, there can be MS flavored Kafka and Classic Kafka, for example. Then once your service is hosted in Azure, with forked nonstandard services and APIs, it's inconvenient to leave: things aren't close enough to other clouds so you need to re-invest. This is the definition of lockin. Here at $work we have swallowed the whole lure: investment, credits, partnership, migration, custom services. And that lure has big treble hooks in our gills. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/26/why-amazon-cant-match-microsoft-in-the-cloud-10-insights-from-satya-nadella/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/26/why-amazon...
- warmwaffles 8y ago
  > They're a different company now. I would argue that they are still driven by sales and bottom lines.
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  That’s no reason to stop being skeptical, necessarily, but it’s certainly a good sign!
- Fnoord 8y ago
  EEE [1] still happened under Ballmer's reign. Ballmer was CEO from 2000 till 2014, a confident of Gates (being employee #30 and the first business manager being hired by Gates) [2]. The Halloween documents [3] also contain FUD [4] disinformation from 2002-2004: Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft's 'investment' in The SCO Group, and the 'Get The Facts' campaign. That SCO lawsuit shenanigans lasted till when, 2008? I have no issue when people argue Microsoft has changed since Ballmer left and Nadella took charge but like Gates, Ballmer was no angel either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#History_with_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#History_with_Mic... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

jedberg 8y ago

Sure, but that was two CEOs ago, and they were the dominant market player in all categories at the time. They're a different company now.

imglorp 8y ago
True but maybe they will be applying the tactic at Azure. Their new strategy appears to be cloud services, all in [1]. Desktop, mobile, hardware, patents, dev tools... everything ties back to encouraging Azure use now. They're offering massive partnerships and credits (first one is always free) to attract new migrations. In the last year their managed service primitives (db's, queues, lambdas, lb, etc etc) has matured tremendously, so now it's convenient and practical to quickly build full hosted applications. Like AWS but different. As they make more open source contributions, forking popular projects and making their own spin on things, there can be MS flavored Kafka and Classic Kafka, for example. Then once your service is hosted in Azure, with forked nonstandard services and APIs, it's inconvenient to leave: things aren't close enough to other clouds so you need to re-invest. This is the definition of lockin. Here at $work we have swallowed the whole lure: investment, credits, partnership, migration, custom services. And that lure has big treble hooks in our gills. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/26/why-amazon-cant-match-microsoft-in-the-cloud-10-insights-from-satya-nadella/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/26/why-amazon...
warmwaffles 8y ago
> They're a different company now. I would argue that they are still driven by sales and bottom lines.
floatingatoll 8y ago
That’s no reason to stop being skeptical, necessarily, but it’s certainly a good sign!
Fnoord 8y ago
EEE [1] still happened under Ballmer's reign. Ballmer was CEO from 2000 till 2014, a confident of Gates (being employee #30 and the first business manager being hired by Gates) [2]. The Halloween documents [3] also contain FUD [4] disinformation from 2002-2004: Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft's 'investment' in The SCO Group, and the 'Get The Facts' campaign. That SCO lawsuit shenanigans lasted till when, 2008? I have no issue when people argue Microsoft has changed since Ballmer left and Nadella took charge but like Gates, Ballmer was no angel either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#History_with_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#History_with_Mic... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt