6 ms·

It was the exposure of Microsoft's business practices to daylight that had the greatest effect, IMO.

btilly 3y ago
If that had a great effect, why did they continue violating antitrust law in the ways documented in the EU? It wasn't like their antitrust history started with browsers. Their business practices were on display before - for instance look at the 1994 consent decree that they signed. Or did you think that Netscape was their first antitrust case?
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  I think it had a huge effect on changing the practices of their potential consumers. I'm aware that Microsoft and Google still have massive marketshare, but there's no way of knowing what the world would look like if that lawsuit hadn't happened. They technically lost in the legal court, but internally may have been congratulating themselves because the penalty was so small. But they lost in the court of public opinion. "Everyone knows" that Microsoft's modus operandi is "Embrace, extend, extinguish" monopoly-building, that IE sucks, that their entire platform is anti-user...it's taken decades of brilliant work on VS Code, on the .NET stack, and in other open source efforts to partially convince some of the developer community that they're not entirely evil. And honestly, Microsoft's character in all of this is a big part of why I daily Firefox on a Linux laptop, and probably a big part of why tools like Firefox and Linux exist. A significant portion of Google's success may be due to people leaving Microsoft's IE (and Bing) and using Chrome instead! Here, "Don't be evil" Google - already somewhat maligned by their Adsense tracking cookies, their gradual degradation of the Search experience, their habit of canceling beloved projects, their own embrace/extend/extinguish model with Chrome, and their other actions, could suffer a similar character impeachment in this antitrust trial. It doesn't matter as much whether industry insiders knew what their behavior was, or whether they take a financial hit, or even whether they're found guilty - what matters most is what popular culture paints them to be.
  - btilly 3y ago
    In what court of public opinion did they lose? Among people who were interested in open source 20 years ago? Sure! But who else doesn't like them? The general public of people our age thinks good things about Microsoft. Even my siblings find my dislike of Microsoft bizarre. The only thing about Microsoft that most people my age ever hated was Clippy. And even Clippy is now generally liked. And developers under 35 seem to find it bizarre that if I call Microsoft the Evil Empire. Just as I once found it strange that developers from the 1980s thought of IBM that way.
    - petsfed 3y ago
      Amongst e.g. PC game nerds who really started playing in the late 90s, there was always a sort of low-level antipathy directed towards Microsoft. It's non-specific, and its certainly not actionable, but there was always a little bit of bitterness that "oh, here's a new update to windows, how many of my games will it break?" Couple that with "I have to buy a copy of windows when I buy a new motherboard?!".
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      Things like "M$" and "Micro$oft" (and many other ways Microsoft was lampooned that I can't recall) where common when I was in highschool (~2008). Not with everyone, but any of the tech literate kids (not even say, the kids who made games in their spare time) were aware of these things, which by that time, gaming was getting to be more mainstream, and there was more exposure to these "in" jokes to a different crowd. They seemed to persist well passed the sell by date, as it were. They definitely took a huge hit in public opinion. I'm from a middle of nowhere town, its not tech adjacent or focused, and these were common online forums where we interacted at the time (and by some extension the broader public ones). Even teachers would poke fun at Microsoft from time to time, as I recall
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      I don't think Clippy is liked as much as he's a common thing people can agree on and as such he gets a lot of attention. Same for MS, it's not an accident that even non-technical folk moved onto chrome away from IE/Edge even though IE had huge marketshare at one point.

If that had a great effect, why did they continue violating antitrust law in the ways documented in the EU? It wasn't like their antitrust history started with browsers. Their business practices were on display before - for instance look at the 1994 consent decree that they signed. Or did you think that Netscape was their first antitrust case?

LeifCarrotson 3y ago
I think it had a huge effect on changing the practices of their potential consumers. I'm aware that Microsoft and Google still have massive marketshare, but there's no way of knowing what the world would look like if that lawsuit hadn't happened. They technically lost in the legal court, but internally may have been congratulating themselves because the penalty was so small. But they lost in the court of public opinion. "Everyone knows" that Microsoft's modus operandi is "Embrace, extend, extinguish" monopoly-building, that IE sucks, that their entire platform is anti-user...it's taken decades of brilliant work on VS Code, on the .NET stack, and in other open source efforts to partially convince some of the developer community that they're not entirely evil. And honestly, Microsoft's character in all of this is a big part of why I daily Firefox on a Linux laptop, and probably a big part of why tools like Firefox and Linux exist. A significant portion of Google's success may be due to people leaving Microsoft's IE (and Bing) and using Chrome instead! Here, "Don't be evil" Google - already somewhat maligned by their Adsense tracking cookies, their gradual degradation of the Search experience, their habit of canceling beloved projects, their own embrace/extend/extinguish model with Chrome, and their other actions, could suffer a similar character impeachment in this antitrust trial. It doesn't matter as much whether industry insiders knew what their behavior was, or whether they take a financial hit, or even whether they're found guilty - what matters most is what popular culture paints them to be.
- btilly 3y ago
  In what court of public opinion did they lose? Among people who were interested in open source 20 years ago? Sure! But who else doesn't like them? The general public of people our age thinks good things about Microsoft. Even my siblings find my dislike of Microsoft bizarre. The only thing about Microsoft that most people my age ever hated was Clippy. And even Clippy is now generally liked. And developers under 35 seem to find it bizarre that if I call Microsoft the Evil Empire. Just as I once found it strange that developers from the 1980s thought of IBM that way.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    Amongst e.g. PC game nerds who really started playing in the late 90s, there was always a sort of low-level antipathy directed towards Microsoft. It's non-specific, and its certainly not actionable, but there was always a little bit of bitterness that "oh, here's a new update to windows, how many of my games will it break?" Couple that with "I have to buy a copy of windows when I buy a new motherboard?!".
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Things like "M$" and "Micro$oft" (and many other ways Microsoft was lampooned that I can't recall) where common when I was in highschool (~2008). Not with everyone, but any of the tech literate kids (not even say, the kids who made games in their spare time) were aware of these things, which by that time, gaming was getting to be more mainstream, and there was more exposure to these "in" jokes to a different crowd. They seemed to persist well passed the sell by date, as it were. They definitely took a huge hit in public opinion. I'm from a middle of nowhere town, its not tech adjacent or focused, and these were common online forums where we interacted at the time (and by some extension the broader public ones). Even teachers would poke fun at Microsoft from time to time, as I recall
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    I don't think Clippy is liked as much as he's a common thing people can agree on and as such he gets a lot of attention. Same for MS, it's not an accident that even non-technical folk moved onto chrome away from IE/Edge even though IE had huge marketshare at one point.