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Ask HN: What was the actual impact of Microsoft anti trust case on the industry?
What projects were affected - stopped existing or the opposite, could grow.
How was the atmosphere at Microsoft at the time? How normal devs were affected?
What implications it had on other companies?
In general, what changed after threat of break up
How big topic that was? Did people outside IT even know about it?
- simonh 4y agoAs a user the most immediate effect was having to deal with the stupid browser selection screen. I suspect it did have a cooling effect on some of Microsoft's more egregious business practices for quite a while, but that's a case of making things not happen that otherwise would have, which is impossible to quantify.
- coding123 4y agoDoes anyone even know what changed in Windows? I can't recall a version of windows where IE was not available. This is from the Wikipedia [1] article: > Bundling them is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of IE I kinda wonder about statute of limitations but I do think that Microsoft should probably sue the United States government at this point because it has since been proven without a doubt that bundling IE did not present an unfair advantage in the browser wars [2] that eventually lead to Chrome easily overtaking all other browsers. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars#/media/File:BrowserUsageShare.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars#/media/File:Brows...
- toast0 4y agoMicrosoft should sue for what? They agreed to a settlement with the DOJ that mostly didn't require them to do very much. Then they ignored internet explorer for years and it kind of petered out, even when they tried to get back into it.
- resoluteteeth 4y agoIn what way does your link show that "it has since been proven without a doubt that bundling IE did not present an unfair advantage in the browser wars"?
- mgraczyk 4y agoIt's pretty hard to speculate with any certainty, but I suspect companies like Amazon and Google would have had much more difficulty growing if Microsoft had more power to control their access to Windows users. In the same way that Google and Apple made it difficult to block ads on mobile or sideload apps without using the App/Play stores, MSFT would have found a way to get bigger slices of the Amazon retail and Google search pies.
- yuppie_scum 4y agoOn the other hand, if as a result Facebook never existed (in its long-Zuckerberg form) the world could have been a better place.
- mgraczyk 4y agoDisagree that FB is a net negative, but it doesn't really matter since FB came over a decade later. I doubt MSFT antitrust would have had any predictable effect on anything that far in the future. Amazon came just two years later and GOOG 3-4.
- scarface74 4y ago
- cmdr2 4y agoEnd of Bill Gates in the driver's seat, for better or for worse.
- UIUC_06 4y agoDavid Boies got an undeserved reputation out of it as the killer cross-examination lawyer. People used to do the "Jaws" theme when he approached the witness stand. I think Gates made it too easy for him. Since then, he completely soiled himself with Theranos and trying to intimidate the whistleblowers and the press.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoAnd SCO.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoWithout the DOJ lawsuit, 3 things off the top of my mind: Apple would not exist. Google would not have android as part as their Berhshire Hathaway-esque portfolio of technologies/companies. They'd have still beaten Microsoft in the search engine business. Somebody would have killed Bill Gates or at least tried to, like it has happened with many POTUS. The person who is perceived as #1 will get all sorts of lunatics after them. (You could argue that is a safety system that nature installed in humans in order to avoid one person to monopolize decisionmaking) . Kinda like a more severe and irrevocable DOJ.
- scarface74 4y agoThe DOJ lawsuit had nothing to do with Apple existing. The measly $250 million investment didn’t “save Apple”. Apple turned around and used $100 million of that to buy out PowerComputing’s Mac license.
- gcbasdf 4y agofor older people in the industry the comment was clear to understand it was about Microsoft not being able to kill the iphone and consequently macs by simply forcing verizon and ATT to not sell the devices effectively, like they did on the PC business.
- scarface74 4y agoI don’t think they get too much older than me… But MS had absolutely no leverage on the phone carriers. By the time the iPhone came out, Apple was riding high because of the iPod. Verizon didn’t accept Apple’s terms until they started losing customer to AT&T.
- musicale 4y agoAs I understand it, Verizon initially refused the iPhone, probably due to Apple's requirements of unmetered data and selling unsubsidized phones at full price, so the iPhone launched exclusively on Cingular/AT&T in the US. I'm not sure what leverage Microsoft would have had over AT&T or Verizon to block the iPhone.
- mistrial9 4y agoI believe I have testimony PDF from two or three of the major witness' .. "knife the baby" included.. many of those documents said things in public that had never been confirmed, regarding cozy business aka monopoly practice with Dell, Intuit and others.. maybe they are on the web but might be hard to find at first...
- GWBullshit 4y ago>> In general, what changed after threat of break up Howard Hughes' approach to tax evasion resurfaced.
- pessimizer 4y agoI think the main effect was that the industry was assured that no matter how big the talk was, or how elaborate the ritual was, antitrust would never be seriously applied to software.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- randombits0 4y agoNot much. People seemed to have forgotten that Bill Gates encouraged many shady business practices at the expense of innovation, was a serial purjurer (felony) and monopolist, and presently feel that Gates, a college dropout, is somehow an expert in communicable diseases and pandemics.
- oblio 4y agoThe biggest thing is that FAANG learned to avoid Microsoft's mistakes, up to a point, and for example a bunch of them have policies where they destroy documents after a certain period plus they train employees to not put stuff in writing. It will be much harder to prove something against them because proof will be gone.
- heymijo 4y agoThey lobby. That’s the primary lesson learned. Microsoft, in its hubris, did not.
- oblio 4y agoAh, forgot that! Yup, another big lesson.
- tomohawk 4y agoThat, and it taught them that they needed (a) a large law staff involved in all aspects of the busines, and (b) political connections in DC. That 2nd aspect has led to them getting entangled in all kinds of partisan shenanigans.
- gdhkgdhkvff 4y agoThis is the type of comment I dislike on hackernews. This is said with such authority and uses preconceived notions of the “big tech boogie man” that people assume it’s true. I work in big tech at one of the named companies. This is just flat out incorrect and actually the opposite of what happens. We’re trained TO write things down because, surprise surprise, it helps to be able to look up reasons for previous decisions. The idea that leadership in a company with 100,000+ employees would hand down an edict that you shouldn’t write down decisions anywhere to avoid legal liability is laughable.
- dagmx 4y agoAgreed. Whenever I see comments like that it's almost a guarantee they're not someone who works in the places they're talking about. It's pure FUD.
- srb4 4y agoPractically speaking it had little effect, but as a college student in CS during the trial it helped to solidify a very negative impression of Microsoft. The cool technologies at the time were not coming out of Redmond. UNIX/Linux, Java, and web technologies were the hot things to learn. It took a long time for Microsoft to try to earn back the trust of developers.
- pigtailgirl 4y ago-- it was known outside of tech - for me & I think others it taught us who microsoft was - they notoriously didn't do interviews or spend a lot of time on press - back then it was clear M$ was focused on the business & apple was focused on products - Steve was out there community building but Bill really wasn't - generally people didn't trust microsoft a great deal at the time - so it didn't come as a surprise - but the trial really showed us who Bill was at that time & what was going on at M$ - suspicions for those us totally outside of the "tech scene" but still using tech were certainly confirmed - the second thing was people became a lot less flagrant about trying to obviously dominate a whole stack --
- majani 4y agoAll Microsoft were ultimately trying to do was to insert their business model on to the web. Chances are that without the anti trust case, right now the web would have a lot more areas with an enterprise sales cycle rather than the self-serve sales that is prevalent now.
- rkagerer 4y agoI think Gates has mentioned it distracted the company from other work on product innovations at the time.
- MichaelMoser123 4y agoMicrosoft was involved in a number of high profile court cases: - The one over internet explorer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... - Sun vs Microsoft over the attempt to "embrace and extinguish" the Java virtual machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine I would argue that that second court case was more significant, as it was not a fact that standards were something that could be upheld in court. Also the JDK has had more of a lasting impact on the industry, at least it exists longer than both netscape navigator and internet explorer.