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Some pretend Microsoft has turned into this benevolent corporation lately with their "Microsoft <heart> Linux" and adopting Android and Chrome. Well all those
by gerash 6y ago
Some pretend Microsoft has turned into this benevolent corporation lately with their "Microsoft <heart> Linux" and adopting Android and Chrome. Well all those were done because they'd lost market share in servers, mobile OS and desktop browsers despite being the dominant player and forcing their offerings the whole time.
Microsoft used to run smear campaigns (remember Scroogled?) when they hired Hillary Clinton's strategist. This last case shows they don't even care if it means everyone can be sued for not paying for a hyperlink. Say whatever you want about AMP or Google reader or whatnot but when was the last time Google spent their money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival?
Microsoft's corporate tactics have remained the same.
- ggambetta 6y agoSome people are too young to remember. I recently worked with new grads in a startup, and for these 20-somethings Microsoft has always been somewhat cool, and Bill Gates has always been this benevolent old guy that cures diseases. They were very surprised where I shared the articles where they were saying literally LINUX IS CANCER. With a mixture of time passing and billions of dollars, it looks like they've successfully "cleaned" their image :(
- tpmx 6y agoHigh-end, (long-term) consistent PR management works very well. (Remember how everyone used to hate George W. Bush with the passion of a thousand burning suns?)
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI think there might have been something else that helped dim that hatred than just PR management. A sort of comparative effect as it were.
- tpmx 6y agoA key element of this long-term consistent PR is timing. Time makes old criminal idiocy pale, and there'll always be another clown.
- benrbray 6y agoOn a related note I'm 25 and am bitter about how older generations lived through Watergate / Iran-Contra / etc, and not only let everyone involved off the hook, but then let them all pull the strings behind the scenes throughout the 2000s and into the Trump era.
- tpmx 6y agoIncluding during the Obama era? That would be a ballsy statement. I might have misunderstood you though - I'm not a native English speaker. (And also, we are drifting off-topic.)
- thatguy0900 6y agoObama continued being a middle east warmonger. He just got a Nobel peace prize for it instead of being vilified
- UnpossibleJim 6y agoDon't confuse politicians with "everyone". To be honest, being an east coast transplant on the west coast, I was shocked that no one remembered Trump during the Clinton era, or when he was pulling real estate cons. Either way, this isn't the place for me to get into politics. I hope that isn't what this forum becomes. P.S. Everyone is bitter about how the "older generation" handled things without the lens of modern values. I'm Gen X and we were angry all the time. EDIT: phone changed east to easy. They are not equal.
- benrbray 6y agoI should clarify that I'm upset that they lived through it but still manage not to let that experience inform their votes today. Hindsight is 20/20, and now they have the benefit of hindsight!
- skinnymuch 6y agoEveryone is like that all the time. Look at how things have been recently. People forget things all the time in politics. Then the same BS continues.
- Salgat 6y agoIt's not about PR, it's about some fundamental changes in their business goals. Azure allowed them to embrace Linux and open source in a way where they benefitted. Also they are no longer ran by that shithead Steve Ballmer. Microsoft isn't perfect but as far as massive corporations go they're no where near that bad.
- tpmx 6y agoI've learned from experience: There is no way on HN to successfully comment negatively on something like that. Good luck with whatever you are doing with the the Microsoft platform.
- amarant 6y agoAgreed! I used to work for a Microsoft owned game studio a while back, and during their Microsoft <3 Linux campaign, or shortly after, I noticed that xbox.com wouldn't work on Linux, unless I changed the user-agent to Chrome-windows or Chrome-Macos Loves Linux but blocks Linux by user agent. Nice. They changed it tho when we contacted them, so I guess there is some love, at least they were willing to change (when it impeded their own developers). Don't trust Microsoft!
- f6v 6y ago> Don't trust Microsoft! The fact that people might consider trusting ANY corporation is sad.
- edoceo 6y agoYou can trust Edoceo, Inc. :)
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoMicrosoft loves Linux in a very specific context—on servers, and as a development environment, in the latter case preferably running as a container or virtual machine inside of... well, you know.
- alpaca128 6y agoSimilarly, if you want to directly download the Windows 10 ISO on a Windows machine you need to fake the user agent. In which case the site always claims that you're running an old version of Windows, even if you actually loaded the site on Linux.
- prussian 6y ago>Loves Linux but blocks Linux by user agent. Nice. Reminds me of Office 365. If your UA has Windows in it, all of a sudden they offer SSO authentication as if Linux can't be set up for it.
- merb 6y ago
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago> ...when was the last time Google spent their money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival? Somehow, of all the abuses and injustices Big Tech commits, this one is way, way, way down on the very bottom of my list.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoMost people seem upset that they said / did mean things to competitors or bundled IE with Windows. Meanwhile the FAAG (facebook, amazon, apple, google) is being investigated for antitrust not in the distant past, but right now.
- xahrepap 6y agoI try not to complain when proper competition causes improved behavior. I’m a fan of “the new MS”. Do I trust them? Not any more than a massive company. But do I love all the open source software they’re producing now? Yes! Do I pretend that it’s because MS has seen the light and become penitent? No! But at least this time when MS turns its back on their users, we can fork .net, edge, and vscode and go on with our lives. MS can’t unmerge their contributions to the Linux kernel or other open source projects they’re selfishly contributing to.
- gerash 6y agoI agree. If the outcome is a win for both Microsoft (or any other entity for that matter) and the rest of the ecosystem that's perfect. But they have shown that as a corporation they are comfortable playing nasty when it suits them.
- brokencode 6y agoPretty much every large company will play nasty when it suits them and if they think they can get away with it. That’s why they call it “corporate warfare”, not “corporate hugs and kisses”.
- buran77 6y agoI never found much sense in this line of reasoning. MS as a corporation is an abstract legal concept with a name. Every action taken under this "umbrella" is an executive's decision (or a group's), not the actual abstract corporation doing it. It's fair to assume most of the leadership from '90s MS has moved on. So is your concern with the current leadership or the abstract concept of the corporation? Is it that "they did it once so they might do it again" the real worry? Do we assume the corporation has hysteresis and the executives of today will take similar actions to those of the past because of operating under the same "umbrella" named MS? If so how far back do you go with this record of bad or good deeds? I see a lot of people sort of bragging with being old enough to remember evil '90s MS (so around 35+). How far back do you look at a company to judge them? I can think of a lot of companies who flip-flopped several times because the leadership changed and the market demanded it. So once they go bad do they stay forever bad? Your worry should be MS's current leadership and their ability to execute in the future, not what Gates did 20 years ago. Similarly you don't judge today's Google by their actions of 20 years ago. Saying "I don't trust MS because Gates in the '90s" tells me you might be stuck on the actual name and that's the only aspect that will ever matter to you (a simple "if MS then Bad"). You've seen Google go from do no evil to whatever they are now. Apple from whatever they were to champions of user privacy. MS from whatever they were to embracing open source and such. None of it because corporations are sentient beings with intentions but because of leadership and market imposed necessity. If anything you (and I) are more rsponsible for what MS, Google, Apple, etc. do than those companies themselves. They do what we allow them and what we reward simply because their leadership acts in the interest of profits.
- CharlesW 6y ago> …when was the last time Google spent their money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival? That's a PR stunt. You should be Actually Concerned about how much Alphabet is spending on lobbying.
- gerash 6y agoLobbying is like the prisoner's dilemma. If you don't do it but your rival does then you'll end up with these extortion laws that hands Murdoch free money as we saw in Australia
- CharlesW 6y agoThat's totally fair, and I understand that Google isn't unique in that respect. My point is that just because Google isn't doing flashy ad campaigns doesn't mean that they're not surreptitiously doing everything they can to continue to establish and cement their position as an unavoidable toll-taker on the internet.
- Siira 6y agoThey provide much more value than what they capture, and what they capture is pretty much necessary to serve those services (in the search space, not Android etc). The only way to make them capture less value is by tax, as we have seen. Other big tech companies are much more rent-seeking and can actually unlock swaths of value with proper regulation.
- SllX 6y agoIf they’re spending a lot of money and still getting raked over the coals in various legislatures including Congress, why should we be worried? Lobbying only gets your interests on the table; it doesn’t get you a seat at the table.
- RHSeeger 6y agoBecause there is no real difference between lobbying and bribing. And I think a lot of us have a problem with companies bribing politicians to get laws passed; especially companies that have enough money to bribe <the number of politicians needed to pass the law regardless of what anyone thinks about it> of them.
- HPsquared 6y agoThey're in the 'embrace' phase.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoThe bulk of Microsoft's income is not from hoarding user data and serving ads. Microsoft makes most of it's money by making good products that people pay for. I've got my eye on them, but they aren't the same company under Satya.
- mupuff1234 6y agoWhat good products are they making? Haven't used any of their products in ages but I still get the impression that no one really enjoys their products (excluding excel maybe?)
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoWindows, Xbox, visual studio, office, surface tablet, hololens are no good? I daily drive Linux and don't own an Xbox, but I'm also not a hater. I like companies that build things.
- astrange 6y agoXbox, Azure, Office365 and Hotmail, C# are all good as far as I know. I've heard Bing search is good in some areas (supposedly it's actually made to be the best at searching for adult content…) I'm surprised at some of their products that don't get enough criticism. Like Windows is still bad of course, you can't expect anything out of a PC with any 3rd party system software on it, but also Bing Maps is worse than Apple Maps, and nobody complains because nobody uses it.
- mupuff1234 6y agoThat list mostly strengthens my impressions tbh. Aside from Xbox, can't say I know any person that is really excited by any of those products. I am surprised that MS seems to fly under the anti-trust radar nowadays and I wonder how much tax payer money goes into MS pockets via government contracts.
- gerash 6y agoI disagree with this way of assessing things. Most big tech companies have been investing to diversify their income sources. Whether those investments have had a massive return to take over their original cash cow is a separate concern. Google has been investing in hardware and cloud, Apple in building online services, Amazon in pretty much everything.
- skinnymuch 6y agoDoes Duck Duck Go not still run smear campaigns against Google? Their sites in my opinion are exaggerated to the point of being close to misinformation. At least misleading to the lay person. Yet Duck Duck Go is beloved far more than Microsoft. Note: I am not anti Duck Duck Go.