8 ms·

Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data

by d--b 8y ago

Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data, which everybody hates. Apple's bad rep is probably due to high pricing, tech lock-in, horrible apple store experience, bad behavior regarding right-to-repair, pretty bad software overall.

denzil_correa 8y ago
> Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data, which everybody hates. Microsoft has many business models and one of them is based on advertisements, example : LinkedIn.
- d--b 8y ago
  Sure, but Microsoft is not exactly looking to brag about the fact that it owns LinkedIn. There's zero mention of Microsoft on the LinkedIn website.
- organsnyder 8y ago
  My hunch is that LinkedIn derives a substantial (perhaps the majority) of revenue from premium memberships sold to recruiters.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    The recruiters and amount of spam (those two overlap heavily in the Venn diagram) are what drove me to delete my LinkedIn account.
- bni 8y ago
  Windows 10 business model for consumers is also based on ads and tracking/surveillance.
- kristianc 8y ago
  > Microsoft has many business models and one of them is based on advertisements, example : LinkedIn. LinkedIn make bank from selling Sales Navigator. Ads are a tiny proportion of their revenue.
  - cosmie 8y ago
    I was surprised to see this is true about their advertising! While dated, their 2016 disclosures showed ads making up only 18% of revenue ($109mm)[1]. Which was only about 10% of the $1.6bn that Bing pulled in around that time[2]. Having managed ad campaigns on LinkedIn, that's both surprising and not. They have a horrifically high cost per click compared to other channels, but the results in B2B verticals were usually enough to warrant putting up with it. So it's surprising it was only pulling in around $100mm. But then, their self-service component didn't allow for accessing all of their inventory, and none of my clients wanted to go in with the commitments necessary for the high-touch placements. So that may have dampened demand a good bit. That said, Sales Navigator (and premium subscriptions) is an equally small portion of revenue. 65% of their money came from their "talent solutions" recruiting features. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120214/how-does-linkedin-lnkd-make-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120214/how-does-lin... [2] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/313837/microsoft-revenue-from-bing-search-ads-rose-in-201.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/313837/micros...
- zantana 8y ago
  Yes, it is always a reality check from the feel good vscode/wsl/Nadella lovefest when they foist some unwanted telemetry or ads in various parts of Windows, that they are a beast with many heads.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Bing is their major ad business, not Linkedin which makes its money mostly from subscriptions and jobs.
organsnyder 8y ago
> Apple's bad rep is probably due to high pricing, tech lock-in, horrible apple store experience, bad behavior regarding right-to-repair, pretty bad software overall. How times have changed. It wasn't long ago that many of us (myself included) were saying virtually the same thing about Microsoft's product.
- michaelcampbell 8y ago
  > How times have changed. Including people at the top running things. Interesting (to me) how the sales guy CEO's having been changed led the companies in different directions afterwards.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Ironically I recall a minority pointing out Apple would be even worse than Microsoft if they were in Microsoft's place given their controllingness - Microsoft was fine with third party manufacturers as opposed to suing to stop "Hackintoshes". There never was an equivalent for Microsoft.
  - pwinnski 8y ago
    Microsoft was in the position of the Hackintoshes, though. It was IBM in Apple's position, and IBM did sue. A software company (MS) and a hardware company (Apple) definitely make different choices!
    - sneakernets 8y ago
      Isn't MS making hardware now?
      - pwinnski 8y ago
        Sure, though not enough to really be called a hardware company. The comparison was between MS in the 90s and Apple now, as I understood it. At the time they might have been making peripherals, maybe? But not computers.
sametmax 8y ago
> Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data, which everybody hates. You mean they don't put ads in the windows home menu or hundred of spywares in the OS ? Or that they don't have ads in bings, skype or outlook ? > Apple's bad rep is probably due to high pricing, tech lock-in, horrible apple store experience, bad behavior regarding right-to-repair, pretty bad software overall. Or maybe you mean they don't lock in with proprietary formats, avoiding to publish the specs and when they then do don't follow it like with Office ? Hopefully this has been compensated by the fantastic Windows Update experience and good behavior. I'm not an FB, Apple or Google fan. In fact I don't have an FB account, I voluntarily don't buy Apple products and refused a job interview with Google. But let's not forget the numerous bad deeds of MS. That's how we never solve the problems we have: we let people misbehave and after a while, they are all forgiven. It's the same with politics, bad bosses, abusive spouses, etc. Don't let people forget.
- flyingpenguin 8y ago
  I mean every company has problems... Microsoft just seems to be generally headed in a better direction vs worse which seems way more common.
  - sametmax 8y ago
    Every people have problems too. Some beat their wife, some are a bit moody. MS has been repeatedly caught lying, cheating, insulting and corrupting. Can I slap you if I give a treat to a puppy later ? Because being pro-microsoft now that their PR is more human and their actions more positive looks pretty much like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they make TypeScript and VSCode. But they need 20 years of being a good boy to compensate for what they did. More if we want to take in consideration they became incredibly rich doing it.
    - intern4tional 8y ago
      They don't need 20 years of anything; they simply needed a change in leadership, which they got. Satya is drastically changing the culture and with it the business. I get there are people out there that will always have an ax to grind (you seem to be one of those) but if you wait 20 years to trust a business again, you'll be left behind with any improvements or optimizations that happen in the meantime. If Microsoft sustains its direction for a few more years at most, given the pace at which the industry they are in evolves, the legacy practices they had won't much matter.
reacweb 8y ago
Microsoft got a bad rep because of its nefarious behavior in the 90s. It has killed many concurrent. It has fought against linux, java, netscape, ... It has tried to replace win32 many times creating a mess for developers. How do silverlight experts feel ? Recently, Microsoft has changed. visual studio code is excellent and OSS. WSL is getting very good.
scarface74 8y ago
Apple only has a "bad rep" for tech lock-in and right to repair among the small "less space than the Nomad. No wireless." inward looking, geek crowd.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  I don't know if that is true anymore. One of my friends who is very much non-technical but has been an iPhone user since 2009 and Mac user for almost as long just asked me for a recommendation on an android phone a few weeks ago. He specifically cited the battery issues, and after having keyboard problems had done some googling for alternatives. Repairability was specifically mentioned, since he has had to have screens replaced on phones. There has been a fair amount of negative press, this is filtering to 'normal' people, not just Lewis rossman's viewers
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Well. We have more than anecdotes. We have retention rates. https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/11/apple-narrows-ios-loyalty-rate-gap-with-android-in-q3-retention-rates-at-all-time-high https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/11/apple-narrows-ios...
- Yetanfou 8y ago
  Another reason Apple gets a bad rep is the often obnoxious behaviour of a group of people who defend the brand's every step and misstep with an almost religious fervour.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Have you heard of a guy name Richard Stallman?
    - Yetanfou 8y ago
      I don't think he uses Apple products so in that respect he is unlikely to fit the category. He has been implicated in giving Apple a bad rap in other ways though.
alasdair_ 8y ago
>Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data, which everybody hates. I really hate Windows 10 automatically turning off all my privacy setting each time it updates, and re-installing ads for candy crush and other junk on my start menu after I'd explicitly removed it. Windows 10 tracks damn near everything you do and sends it back to Microsoft.
- kerbalspacepro 8y ago
  The answer is to use Microsoft apps on an Apple machine (or Linux if you're that kind of person)
  - gowld 8y ago
    What are the caveats of running Wine to get Windows apps? http://go/wiki/Wine_(software)#Other_versions_of_Wine http://go/wiki/Wine_(software)#Other_versions_of_Wine
    - filoleg 8y ago
      You don't need Wine to run majority of MSFT apps on macOS these days. The whole Office suite has native apps, as well as VS Code.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    It's even easier to simply not use Microsoft apps.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  I consider Windows 10 to be a privacy nightmare, and I don't use it outside of work (where it's necessary because it's one of our target platforms). However, and this is big to me, Microsoft doesn't pretend that Windows 10 isn't doing what it's doing. That means, even though I don't consider Windows suitable for my own use, that doesn't reduce the amount of trust I have in them as a company.
stochastic_monk 8y ago
I think you're looking for 'bad rap' instead of 'bad rep', by the way.
babypuncher 8y ago
> horrible apple store experience Care to elaborate? I've never had a negative experience making purchases or getting devices repaired at the Apple store. Compared to HTC, which left me without my brand new phone for two months while they shipped my $800 One M8 back and forth with a different defect every time it came back to me.

by d--b 8y ago

denzil_correa 8y ago

d--b 8y ago
Sure, but Microsoft is not exactly looking to brag about the fact that it owns LinkedIn. There's zero mention of Microsoft on the LinkedIn website.
organsnyder 8y ago
My hunch is that LinkedIn derives a substantial (perhaps the majority) of revenue from premium memberships sold to recruiters.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  The recruiters and amount of spam (those two overlap heavily in the Venn diagram) are what drove me to delete my LinkedIn account.
bni 8y ago
Windows 10 business model for consumers is also based on ads and tracking/surveillance.
kristianc 8y ago
> Microsoft has many business models and one of them is based on advertisements, example : LinkedIn. LinkedIn make bank from selling Sales Navigator. Ads are a tiny proportion of their revenue.
- cosmie 8y ago
  I was surprised to see this is true about their advertising! While dated, their 2016 disclosures showed ads making up only 18% of revenue ($109mm)[1]. Which was only about 10% of the $1.6bn that Bing pulled in around that time[2]. Having managed ad campaigns on LinkedIn, that's both surprising and not. They have a horrifically high cost per click compared to other channels, but the results in B2B verticals were usually enough to warrant putting up with it. So it's surprising it was only pulling in around $100mm. But then, their self-service component didn't allow for accessing all of their inventory, and none of my clients wanted to go in with the commitments necessary for the high-touch placements. So that may have dampened demand a good bit. That said, Sales Navigator (and premium subscriptions) is an equally small portion of revenue. 65% of their money came from their "talent solutions" recruiting features. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120214/how-does-linkedin-lnkd-make-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120214/how-does-lin... [2] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/313837/microsoft-revenue-from-bing-search-ads-rose-in-201.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/313837/micros...
zantana 8y ago
Yes, it is always a reality check from the feel good vscode/wsl/Nadella lovefest when they foist some unwanted telemetry or ads in various parts of Windows, that they are a beast with many heads.
manigandham 8y ago
Bing is their major ad business, not Linkedin which makes its money mostly from subscriptions and jobs.

organsnyder 8y ago

> Apple's bad rep is probably due to high pricing, tech lock-in, horrible apple store experience, bad behavior regarding right-to-repair, pretty bad software overall. How times have changed. It wasn't long ago that many of us (myself included) were saying virtually the same thing about Microsoft's product.

michaelcampbell 8y ago
> How times have changed. Including people at the top running things. Interesting (to me) how the sales guy CEO's having been changed led the companies in different directions afterwards.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Ironically I recall a minority pointing out Apple would be even worse than Microsoft if they were in Microsoft's place given their controllingness - Microsoft was fine with third party manufacturers as opposed to suing to stop "Hackintoshes". There never was an equivalent for Microsoft.
- pwinnski 8y ago
  Microsoft was in the position of the Hackintoshes, though. It was IBM in Apple's position, and IBM did sue. A software company (MS) and a hardware company (Apple) definitely make different choices!
  - sneakernets 8y ago
    Isn't MS making hardware now?
    - pwinnski 8y ago
      Sure, though not enough to really be called a hardware company. The comparison was between MS in the 90s and Apple now, as I understood it. At the time they might have been making peripherals, maybe? But not computers.

sametmax 8y ago

> Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data, which everybody hates. You mean they don't put ads in the windows home menu or hundred of spywares in the OS ? Or that they don't have ads in bings, skype or outlook ? > Apple's bad rep is probably due to high pricing, tech lock-in, horrible apple store experience, bad behavior regarding right-to-repair, pretty bad software overall. Or maybe you mean they don't lock in with proprietary formats, avoiding to publish the specs and when they then do don't follow it like with Office ? Hopefully this has been compensated by the fantastic Windows Update experience and good behavior. I'm not an FB, Apple or Google fan. In fact I don't have an FB account, I voluntarily don't buy Apple products and refused a job interview with Google. But let's not forget the numerous bad deeds of MS. That's how we never solve the problems we have: we let people misbehave and after a while, they are all forgiven. It's the same with politics, bad bosses, abusive spouses, etc. Don't let people forget.

flyingpenguin 8y ago
I mean every company has problems... Microsoft just seems to be generally headed in a better direction vs worse which seems way more common.
- sametmax 8y ago
  Every people have problems too. Some beat their wife, some are a bit moody. MS has been repeatedly caught lying, cheating, insulting and corrupting. Can I slap you if I give a treat to a puppy later ? Because being pro-microsoft now that their PR is more human and their actions more positive looks pretty much like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they make TypeScript and VSCode. But they need 20 years of being a good boy to compensate for what they did. More if we want to take in consideration they became incredibly rich doing it.
  - intern4tional 8y ago
    They don't need 20 years of anything; they simply needed a change in leadership, which they got. Satya is drastically changing the culture and with it the business. I get there are people out there that will always have an ax to grind (you seem to be one of those) but if you wait 20 years to trust a business again, you'll be left behind with any improvements or optimizations that happen in the meantime. If Microsoft sustains its direction for a few more years at most, given the pace at which the industry they are in evolves, the legacy practices they had won't much matter.

reacweb 8y ago

Microsoft got a bad rep because of its nefarious behavior in the 90s. It has killed many concurrent. It has fought against linux, java, netscape, ... It has tried to replace win32 many times creating a mess for developers. How do silverlight experts feel ? Recently, Microsoft has changed. visual studio code is excellent and OSS. WSL is getting very good.

scarface74 8y ago

Apple only has a "bad rep" for tech lock-in and right to repair among the small "less space than the Nomad. No wireless." inward looking, geek crowd.

zrobotics 8y ago
I don't know if that is true anymore. One of my friends who is very much non-technical but has been an iPhone user since 2009 and Mac user for almost as long just asked me for a recommendation on an android phone a few weeks ago. He specifically cited the battery issues, and after having keyboard problems had done some googling for alternatives. Repairability was specifically mentioned, since he has had to have screens replaced on phones. There has been a fair amount of negative press, this is filtering to 'normal' people, not just Lewis rossman's viewers
- scarface74 8y ago
  Well. We have more than anecdotes. We have retention rates. https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/11/apple-narrows-ios-loyalty-rate-gap-with-android-in-q3-retention-rates-at-all-time-high https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/11/apple-narrows-ios...
Yetanfou 8y ago
Another reason Apple gets a bad rep is the often obnoxious behaviour of a group of people who defend the brand's every step and misstep with an almost religious fervour.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Have you heard of a guy name Richard Stallman?
  - Yetanfou 8y ago
    I don't think he uses Apple products so in that respect he is unlikely to fit the category. He has been implicated in giving Apple a bad rap in other ways though.

alasdair_ 8y ago

>Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data, which everybody hates. I really hate Windows 10 automatically turning off all my privacy setting each time it updates, and re-installing ads for candy crush and other junk on my start menu after I'd explicitly removed it. Windows 10 tracks damn near everything you do and sends it back to Microsoft.

kerbalspacepro 8y ago
The answer is to use Microsoft apps on an Apple machine (or Linux if you're that kind of person)
- gowld 8y ago
  What are the caveats of running Wine to get Windows apps? http://go/wiki/Wine_(software)#Other_versions_of_Wine http://go/wiki/Wine_(software)#Other_versions_of_Wine
  - filoleg 8y ago
    You don't need Wine to run majority of MSFT apps on macOS these days. The whole Office suite has native apps, as well as VS Code.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  It's even easier to simply not use Microsoft apps.
JohnFen 8y ago
I consider Windows 10 to be a privacy nightmare, and I don't use it outside of work (where it's necessary because it's one of our target platforms). However, and this is big to me, Microsoft doesn't pretend that Windows 10 isn't doing what it's doing. That means, even though I don't consider Windows suitable for my own use, that doesn't reduce the amount of trust I have in them as a company.

stochastic_monk 8y ago

I think you're looking for 'bad rap' instead of 'bad rep', by the way.

babypuncher 8y ago

> horrible apple store experience Care to elaborate? I've never had a negative experience making purchases or getting devices repaired at the Apple store. Compared to HTC, which left me without my brand new phone for two months while they shipped my $800 One M8 back and forth with a different defect every time it came back to me.