5 ms·

How the hell did we get here? Were Microsoft and oracle and all these super rich tech giants asleep when Google was eating their lunch? Facebook too. It’s nuts

adventured 3y ago
No, almost everybody saw Google rising. Their capture of the search market and the relatively quick translation of sales from that was a very prominent event in tech circles. And Facebook wasn't relevant during the initial establishment and rise of Google (Facebook's first billion dollar sales year was 2010, 12 years after the founding of Google). Steve Ballmer (then CEO of Microsoft) swore he'd kill Google and bury Eric Schmidt - this is 2005 or earlier. Google's sales for 2004 for reference were $3.18 billion (for Alphabet now it's $282 billion). https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2005/09/1106/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2005/09/1106/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/court-docs-ballmer-vowed-to-kill-google/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/court-docs-ballmer-v...
ranting-moth 3y ago
I think Oracle is/was run by salespeople. They wanted you to pay a fortune for a database. Even if you could use a free database, they wanted you to pay a fortune for theirs. Because theirs could do a barrel roll and a hand-stand at the same time. Then of course when sales went down, you can always threat and extort your current customers: https://archive.is/Tbvw0 https://archive.is/Tbvw0 Microsoft just wanted to protect their windows thingy and pretend the internet didn't exists. They couldn't so they tried to embugger it. Once they had dominating market share with IE6, they simply said they weren't making money on IE and weren't going to update it any more. So they left it bug ridden for 5 years until the next release. Google shows up, with all their bondage and evil intentions carefully wrapped in satin and free beer on tap. But now the beer is finished and the satin is worn out. Everybody is hungover and tied up. The sounds coming from the next room is like something is being strapped on.
Karellen 3y ago
The thing is, even though I distrust Google a lot, I distrust Microsoft, Oracle and Facebook even less. Even if Bing got 2x better than Google at being able to show me what I actually wanted to find, I'd probably prefer Google for quite some time before even thinking of giving Bing a shot. For all I know, they do have better search engines than Google right now. But also, fuck those guys.

adventured 3y ago

No, almost everybody saw Google rising. Their capture of the search market and the relatively quick translation of sales from that was a very prominent event in tech circles. And Facebook wasn't relevant during the initial establishment and rise of Google (Facebook's first billion dollar sales year was 2010, 12 years after the founding of Google). Steve Ballmer (then CEO of Microsoft) swore he'd kill Google and bury Eric Schmidt - this is 2005 or earlier. Google's sales for 2004 for reference were $3.18 billion (for Alphabet now it's $282 billion). https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2005/09/1106/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2005/09/1106/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/court-docs-ballmer-vowed-to-kill-google/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/court-docs-ballmer-v...

ranting-moth 3y ago

I think Oracle is/was run by salespeople. They wanted you to pay a fortune for a database. Even if you could use a free database, they wanted you to pay a fortune for theirs. Because theirs could do a barrel roll and a hand-stand at the same time. Then of course when sales went down, you can always threat and extort your current customers: https://archive.is/Tbvw0 https://archive.is/Tbvw0 Microsoft just wanted to protect their windows thingy and pretend the internet didn't exists. They couldn't so they tried to embugger it. Once they had dominating market share with IE6, they simply said they weren't making money on IE and weren't going to update it any more. So they left it bug ridden for 5 years until the next release. Google shows up, with all their bondage and evil intentions carefully wrapped in satin and free beer on tap. But now the beer is finished and the satin is worn out. Everybody is hungover and tied up. The sounds coming from the next room is like something is being strapped on.

Karellen 3y ago

The thing is, even though I distrust Google a lot, I distrust Microsoft, Oracle and Facebook even less. Even if Bing got 2x better than Google at being able to show me what I actually wanted to find, I'd probably prefer Google for quite some time before even thinking of giving Bing a shot. For all I know, they do have better search engines than Google right now. But also, fuck those guys.