6 ms·

He's talking about humiliation from dragging Microsoft's and Bill Gates personal brands in the dirt, not actual penalty adjudicated. Basically if we had videos

He's talking about humiliation from dragging Microsoft's and Bill Gates personal brands in the dirt, not actual penalty adjudicated. Basically if we had videos of Pichai stuttering and unsuccessfully trying to weasel out of sharp questions in every news report for a couple of weeks that would perhaps open more eyes and hurt Google more than a fine of so many zeroes.

JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
> > He's talking about humiliation from dragging Microsoft's and Bill Gates personal brands in the dirt, not actual penalty adjudicated. Yeah, like Trump's Access Hollywood tape... At that huge scale whatever topic except for maybe CP ends up becoming a 50-50 split with fans loving the character and his brand even more and haters conversely hating it even more too. That's because when people that you normally hate side against [insert divisive character] then the choice is to automatically jump on his bandwagon and viceversa. So at such scales it rapidly escalates to a 50-50 split or thereabout. The best you can do is to have some sort of marginal victory against the character in a winner take all settings (such as an election or a supreme court ruling) and hope it demoralizes him. Like when Trump lost the Presidency he was demoralized and disappeared for a while, but had he kept his morale high he'd have been the Monday Morning armchair shadow President critiquing and undermining everything Biden did from his Twitter account addressing to the 70M people who voted for him
- passwordoops 3y ago
  I generally agree with you, but distaste for tech giants is one place where there does seem to be overlap across the left-right political-sport dichotomy. This falls more along class lines and can easily be equated with the Sacklers not being punished, government corruption going unpunished, etc
smoldesu 3y ago
> that would perhaps open more eyes and hurt Google more than a fine of so many zeroes. Because that definitely worked with Microsoft, right? I don't think most Americans could tell you what Netscape is, let alone why Microsoft was sued or why it should have been humiliating.
- rashkov 3y ago
  As per the article, the significance is that Microsoft did not use its platform dominance to crush an upstart google
  - btilly 3y ago
    I understood it very differently at the time. Microsoft felt that it had won the browser wars so thoroughly that they dismantled most of their IE team and took their eyes off the ball. Nobody else could make a competitive browser, and therefore nobody could add browser features that would undermine the importance of Windows for applications. They didn't realize that they already had added the key feature for the Outlook team. The first real use of XMLHttpRequest was Gmail in 2004. Most people just thought of it as a cute trick. It wasn't until Google Maps and the coining of the term AJAX that people thought differently. Microsoft, of course, had already been hit with the 2004 EU decree, and kept its eyes off the ball. By the time Microsoft paid attention, everyone was using it, Firefox was competitive with IE, Safari wasn't too far behind, and Google was already working on Chrome. But by then it was too late. Microsoft didn't have the IE team, and had been shocked at the EU penalties. Therefore I give the credit for Microsoft not crushing Google to the EU antitrust, and not the USA antitrust. Which really did have no teeth. As can be seen by their efforts to anticompetitively promote Windows Media Player.
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      Funny enough, XMLHttpRequest[0] was conceived because Microsoft needed to build out a web client for Exchange[1], which was a precursor to Gmail in many ways. In absolute terms, Gmail had more users and showcased the possibilities of web apps more broadly, however Outlook for the web in 2001-2004 was pretty sophisticated for its time [0]: Though it was called ActiveXObject for a time [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://www.alexhopmann.com/xmlhttp.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://www.alexho...
      - btilly 3y ago
        That's what I was referring to with, They didn't realize that they already had added the key feature for the Outlook team.
shadowgovt 3y ago
That's an argument for extrajudicial punishment though. If anything, that's an argument in favor of sealing the court. There are good reasons to have open proceedings but providing the public more opportunities to spin sound bites into hate-mobbing isn't one of them.
throwaway-blaze 3y ago
This is the largest reason behind Bill stepping back and ultimately completely retiring from Microsoft. Despite his nerdy exterior, he has quite an ego, and didn't like being portrayed that way.

JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago

> > He's talking about humiliation from dragging Microsoft's and Bill Gates personal brands in the dirt, not actual penalty adjudicated. Yeah, like Trump's Access Hollywood tape... At that huge scale whatever topic except for maybe CP ends up becoming a 50-50 split with fans loving the character and his brand even more and haters conversely hating it even more too. That's because when people that you normally hate side against [insert divisive character] then the choice is to automatically jump on his bandwagon and viceversa. So at such scales it rapidly escalates to a 50-50 split or thereabout. The best you can do is to have some sort of marginal victory against the character in a winner take all settings (such as an election or a supreme court ruling) and hope it demoralizes him. Like when Trump lost the Presidency he was demoralized and disappeared for a while, but had he kept his morale high he'd have been the Monday Morning armchair shadow President critiquing and undermining everything Biden did from his Twitter account addressing to the 70M people who voted for him

passwordoops 3y ago
I generally agree with you, but distaste for tech giants is one place where there does seem to be overlap across the left-right political-sport dichotomy. This falls more along class lines and can easily be equated with the Sacklers not being punished, government corruption going unpunished, etc

smoldesu 3y ago

> that would perhaps open more eyes and hurt Google more than a fine of so many zeroes. Because that definitely worked with Microsoft, right? I don't think most Americans could tell you what Netscape is, let alone why Microsoft was sued or why it should have been humiliating.

rashkov 3y ago
As per the article, the significance is that Microsoft did not use its platform dominance to crush an upstart google
- btilly 3y ago
  I understood it very differently at the time. Microsoft felt that it had won the browser wars so thoroughly that they dismantled most of their IE team and took their eyes off the ball. Nobody else could make a competitive browser, and therefore nobody could add browser features that would undermine the importance of Windows for applications. They didn't realize that they already had added the key feature for the Outlook team. The first real use of XMLHttpRequest was Gmail in 2004. Most people just thought of it as a cute trick. It wasn't until Google Maps and the coining of the term AJAX that people thought differently. Microsoft, of course, had already been hit with the 2004 EU decree, and kept its eyes off the ball. By the time Microsoft paid attention, everyone was using it, Firefox was competitive with IE, Safari wasn't too far behind, and Google was already working on Chrome. But by then it was too late. Microsoft didn't have the IE team, and had been shocked at the EU penalties. Therefore I give the credit for Microsoft not crushing Google to the EU antitrust, and not the USA antitrust. Which really did have no teeth. As can be seen by their efforts to anticompetitively promote Windows Media Player.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Funny enough, XMLHttpRequest[0] was conceived because Microsoft needed to build out a web client for Exchange[1], which was a precursor to Gmail in many ways. In absolute terms, Gmail had more users and showcased the possibilities of web apps more broadly, however Outlook for the web in 2001-2004 was pretty sophisticated for its time [0]: Though it was called ActiveXObject for a time [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://www.alexhopmann.com/xmlhttp.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://www.alexho...
    - btilly 3y ago
      That's what I was referring to with, They didn't realize that they already had added the key feature for the Outlook team.

shadowgovt 3y ago

That's an argument for extrajudicial punishment though. If anything, that's an argument in favor of sealing the court. There are good reasons to have open proceedings but providing the public more opportunities to spin sound bites into hate-mobbing isn't one of them.

throwaway-blaze 3y ago

This is the largest reason behind Bill stepping back and ultimately completely retiring from Microsoft. Despite his nerdy exterior, he has quite an ego, and didn't like being portrayed that way.