8 ms·
I took a course taught by a former Microsoft exec who worked at the company before and after the DOJ's anti-trust settlement. He said the settlement profoundly
by nugget 6y ago
I took a course taught by a former Microsoft exec who worked at the company before and after the DOJ's anti-trust settlement. He said the settlement profoundly changed the internal culture of competitiveness and innovation. Lawyers were embedded on many product teams, review cycles became slower, and execs became complacent. I think the only way Amazon or Google ever start to stagnate is if a similar fate befalls them.
- wtvanhest 6y agoI worked at Intel for a brief 3 month summer internship in finance (2010). One thing that struck me was that I was not allowed to put certain words in presentations because they didn't want those words used against them in court. Its been a long time so I don't remember what words, but that was a long time after the first set of anti-trust actions. Maybe someone that has been there more recently can attest or counter my point, but it seemed to at least leave a surface wound on the culture.
- refurb 6y agoI work in healthcare, a highly regulated industry and we do the same thing. It’s to the point that we’ve developed euphemisms for all these words.
- mrep 6y agoNot intel, but I definitely have seen training videos about not saying "dominate the market" or "crush the competition".
- pradn 6y agoThere's similar guidance inside Google. These exact phrases are used as "no-no"s.
- kudokatz 6y agoThere has been official training at multiple, large tech companies other than Intel specifically geared towards preventing even accidental use of language that can be taken out-of-context. The practice is alive and well.
- riskyfive 6y agoUber had training that said you could never call a driver an employee or anything related to that, they were 'driver partners' or some such with words that imply a platform user
- walshemj 6y agoThats slightly diferent - there is a lot of law about employees status - mainly because the IRS doesn't want to lose out any $ not for any liberal concern for employees
- sureshv 6y agoThe entire mentality of the company changed. IMO it affected every product group across the company.
- save_ferris 6y agoThat’s not exactly an unbiased opinion if he was an executive at the company that was subject to anti-trust action. I’m not suggesting that he’s lying, but it’s important to remember that the anti-trust action likely had a financial impact on him, particularly if he had a lot of comp tied up in company stock. Here we are 20 something years later and Microsoft looks to be just doing just fine to me.
- nostrademons 6y agoHis complaint wasn't that Microsoft (or himself) didn't make money, it's that Microsoft became complacent and lost the will to innovate. Microsoft made plenty of money between 1998 and 2014. They also basically ceased innovating. I was a child and teenager during Microsoft's glory days from 1985-2000. They were basically unstoppable: if you thought you had a good software-related idea, Microsoft was already doing it, doing it better, and bringing some nasty market-power tricks to bear (much like Google in their glory days from ~2000-2015). I started my career soon after the DoJ consent decree, and Microsoft became a joke. They were the 800 lb. gorilla that sat in the corner milking their Windows/IE/Office monopolies (and eventually losing them) while the web became a bigger platform than Windows ever was.
- remarkEon 6y agoIs your argument that the consent decree preventing Microsoft from innovating wrt to the web, or that they were afraid to because of the recent anti-trust action? The former I have a hard time believing (though I probably haven't read enough history on it to make an informed decision), but the latter seems very plausible.
- nostrademons 6y agoMore the latter. Same thing happened with IBM: they were willing to let Microsoft retain the rights to MS-DOS because they were under antitrust scrutiny throughout all of the 70s.
- 6y ago
- tropdrop 6y agoIn my impression of Google products (Gmail is a notable example), the company has been more on the "stagnation" side and less on the "innovation" side already.
- beambot 6y agoIf anyone from Google is reading: Please disregard this comment. We like our Gmail exactly how it is. If you want to substantially "innovate" on email, please consider a new, independent product -- one that you can safely shutter after 12 months. Thanks.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoi don't think the previous poster meant moving buttons around and changing icons as "innovation".
- beambot 6y agoI wasn't referring to basic updates such as minor UI/UX, security, etc. I specifically said, "substantially innovate."
- tmpz22 6y agoYes! You can even use a brand name distinctly different from Gmail like "Inbox".
- erik_seaberg 6y agoToo soon, man.
- wavepruner 6y agoI wouldn't mind if they fixed the problem where my old profile picture keeps appearing in gmail and calendar. It's been changed for over a year now.
- 6y ago
- normalnorm 6y ago> I think the only way Amazon or Google ever start to stagnate is if a similar fate befalls them. Google has been stagnating for more than one decade. What have they created since 2010 that is even remotely interesting, let alone in the interest of society? And Amazon is Rube Goldberg machine of human suffering. Who cares?
- mehrdadn 6y ago> What have they created since 2010 that is even remotely interesting? Translate has gotten a hell of a lot better and it's been helpful for humanity, for one thing.
- einpoklum 6y agoI think it existed before 2010. But then, several Google services have improved since 2010. (Not search though...)
- xnx 6y agoIt's hard to remember exactly what result quality was like in 2010, but I'm very satisfied with the utility I get form Google search. I can throw a dozen different oddball questions at it and either get the answer directly (without even needing to click through to an often slow and cluttered page), or get what I was looking for as the top result. They do all this in an extremely adversarial environment where "SEO" people spend the majority of their effort trying to boost their pages for specific words.
- einpoklum 6y agoGoogle is manipulating search results in bad faith: It has admitted engaging in political censorship of results to divert traffic away from undesirable sites. Also, it seems to have a bias in favor of the larger websites generally, but this is an anecdotal observation of mine, there may or may not be evidence to support it.
- spydum 6y ago
- paxys 6y agoAnd yet the Microsoft of today is faster and stronger as a company than it was during the antitrust days. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing for them.
- redisman 6y agoPlus a lot more diversified. Not sure if it's all a good thing as the huge companies are making land grabs everywhere. Github, Skype, Linkedin Xbox, Nokia phones unit, VSCode, basically all my favorite medium-sized game companies (inxile, double fine, obsidian). Feels like their presence is a lot more oppressive than the Windows 95 and IE days we were all freaked out about.
- sz4kerto 6y agoThe industry as a whole has grown enormously. Microsoft is as big as it was, but relatively speaking it's not even remotely as strong. Microsoft used to have the power of FAANG together, it was so ahead of everyone else in terms of (pricing) power. Nobody was a threat to them before the antitrust suit.
- ThrowawayB7 6y agoThat only came about because a lot of the old guard, like Sinofsky, Myerson, Turner, etc., left the company or were pushed out in the early '10s. I don't foresee a similar revitalization of leadership happening at Google anytime soon.
- einpoklum 6y ago> Lawyers were embedded on many product teams Perhaps because the natural organizational tendency was to conspire to create user lock-in and other nefarious practices? 95% of software companies (I am guessing here) don't need to consult their lawyers during software development. > review cycles became slower "Q: But why can't I force the users to also install Internet Explorer? A: You just can't Johnny, you'll have to rewrite this component." > and execs became complacent ... after being really sharp and on-it before. Bottom line: Cry me a river.
- jaywalk 6y ago100% of software companies not named "Microsoft" do not have to follow the special legal rules that Microsoft does.
- hyperbovine 6y agoFun fact, MSFT and AAPL currently have the exact same market cap. The story of Microsoft dying a slow death having missed the boat on internet, cloud and mobile is like 10+ years out of date. If anything, I'd say the antitrust trial was actually beneficial in the long run. It is a much nimbler company now than it used to be.
- nostrademons 6y agoNadella brought life back into MSFT, but they were an also-ran from about 2000-2014.
- intended 6y agoCredit to Ballmer as well - Nadella took over and pushed many products and changes that Ballmer had started, recognizing that they needed to change. Not that I’m complaining - the surface line revitalized laptop and stylus tech for windows.
- pianoben 6y agoYou know you _say_ that, but during that timespan their annual net income rose from $5B to $22B, and global revenue for the same timespan from $28B to $86B. Eighty-six billion dollars. Can you really call them an also-ran, or Ballmer an unqualified failure? Yes, they missed the mobile boat and were late to IaaS/PaaS, but to dismiss them for nearly two decades is perhaps unfair. IMO their biggest failure was losing their developer base. DevDiv really seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel - or to have been neutralized by the OS group. [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-revenue-since-2002/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...
- nostrademons 6y agoInnovation is a different skillset from maximizing profits of an existing product portfolio. Ballmer was pretty good at the latter and sucked at the former. With the exception of Azure (which was a little late to the party), the business lines that Ballmer milked were all initially developed under Gates. The biggest years of profitability for most tech companies come after their innovation heyday (when they've already established their market position and no longer reinvest large amounts of cash into new product development), but without continued innovation a tech business eventually fades away into irrelevance.
- mrkramer 6y agoYea Gates said that "Windows Phone" would become Android if there wasn't antitrust lawsuit, and that Microsoft would be worth $500bn more.
- gowld 6y agoWindows Phone was simply terrible. Without monopoly pressure, no one chooses Microsoft.
- crazygringo 6y ago> Lawyers were embedded on many product teams As they should be at a large corporation that was known for abusing its market power. It's not like engineers are experts in whether a feature breaks the law or not -- nor are they supposed to be. > review cycles became slower Oh come on, legal approval is just one more checkbox along with 20 others. And if it's slowing down reviews for a few important features or products, that's the point -- that legal considerations actually get considered rather than ignored or steamrolled over. The same way there are approvals for privacy, security, accessibility, and so on that are "slower" -- again, that's the point. > execs became complacent I don't believe this for a second. Execs at every company want to meet/beat metrics, get promoted, and make more salary. Nobody's complacent ever. The idea that execs become "complacent" because of a single highly targeted regulation is baloney. It's a total fiction invented for political lobbying purposes. Remember: removing monopoly abuse means a company has to work harder to to compete, instead of resting complacently on lazy market dominance. If anything, these execs were forced to be less complacent. But it's a nice lie they're trying to tell.
- WJW 6y ago> It's not like engineers are experts in whether a feature breaks the law or not, nor should they be. "Full stack engineer" gets ever more all-encompassing. > If anything, these execs were forced to be less complacent. An alternative explanation would be that the hypercompetitive win-at-all-costs types left for less regulated pastures, leaving the more complacent ones.
- alkibiades 6y agogoogles already like that... they just get away with it because of the money printing machine they have with ads
- sytelus 6y agoAntitrusts haven't been good in 10-20 year timeline but on more longer term may be overall good for society. In short term it stifles and extinguishes the innovation contrary to belief. Classic case is Ma Bell which ended Bell Labs. Big giants like these make huge amount of money but they also fund things like Bell Labs (in Google's case DeepMind/Google Brain/Google X etc). Once this collapse, usually it takes decade or two before these massive innovation pipelines gets built up again.