26 ms·
For whom was in tech during 90s and now in 2020s, what are the differences between Microsoft back then and Apple now in terms of why the regulators are so "soft
by braza 3y ago
For whom was in tech during 90s and now in 2020s, what are the differences between Microsoft back then and Apple now in terms of why the regulators are so "soft" against an actor that is overplaying it's hand for consumers?
I was not in tech in that time, but I was cognizant about the fact that entire segments of media and policy makers just dunked on Microsoft due to anti-competitive practices back then, and I recall congressmen and congresswomen, members of DoJ and so on openly talking about break Microsoft in pieces and I wonder why we do not have those conversations today in the biggest markets (China, US and EU)?
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago> what are the differences between Microsoft back then and Apple now in terms of why the regulators are so "soft" against an actor that is overplaying it's hand for consumers? The monetary proportion that big-tech contributes to US GDP. It would be silly to assume the US would ever kneecap it's most profitabile and rising industry. After killing its manufacturing industry, tech and finance is all ti has.
- kaashif 3y ago> After killing its manufacturing industry Manufacturing's share of US real GDP has remained relatively stable over time: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/us-manufacturing-really-declining https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/us-manu... i.e. the quantities of goods produced is growing about as fast as the economy. The reason manufacturing is dropping as a percentage of nominal GDP is that inflation for manufactured goods has been lower than for other goods.
- laborcontract 3y agoMicrosoft's market share was well over 90% in the 90s. The iPhone's market share is 60%. Very different market dynamics. It was a lot easier to see how Microsoft was being mean-spirited for consumers versus Apple. I'd argue that Apple's policies are consumer agnostic, and the only people really up in arms about Apple are developers and some of its partners. Also the US is no longer in a position to be punching it's own companies, given the onslaught of Chinese companies that are seeking to undercut in even auto manufacturing now.
- karmelapple 3y agoThis is the right answer. Apple was nearly dead. Microsoft literally gave them a big investment to keep them alive [1] , in part to avoid monopoly-related issues [2]. Microsoft was doing everything in its power to kill the only other serious browser at the time, Netscape, and it basically had "won" the desktop and server market. It's pretty astounding that Apple was ever able to do as well as it did in the server, laptop, and desktop market. 1. https://www.neowin.net/news/a-quick-look-back-at-when-microsoft-invested-150-million-in-apple-46-years-ago-today/ https://www.neowin.net/news/a-quick-look-back-at-when-micros... 2. https://www.engadget.com/2014-05-20-what-ever-became-of-microsofts-150-million-investment-in-apple.html https://www.engadget.com/2014-05-20-what-ever-became-of-micr...
- scarface_74 3y agoThis is not true. The “big investment” was $250 million dollars after Apple had already secured a multi billion dollar loan. Apple then turned around and used $100 million to buy PowerComputings Mac assets. Apple continued to lose millions after that. The investment did not “save” Apple
- yardie 3y agoIt was $250M, a public acknowledgment of continued Office for Mac development, and the announcement of Internet Explorer for Mac gave investors, business buyers, and developers confidence in Apple. Because if Microsoft, the biggest tech company at that time, was bullish on Apple the rest of the industry could have faith in them too. The $250M was largely symbolic, everyone knew that.
- JustExAWS 3y agoThe person I replied to in fact did not know that > Apple was nearly dead. Microsoft literally gave them a big investment to keep them alive
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
- KoolKat23 3y agoFrom Felix Richter: "The information technology and communication services sectors, i.e. most things tech, were responsible for more than 70 percent of the S&P 500’s total return of 26.3 percent last year. Excluding companies from these two sectors, the index would have returned just 7.6 percent in 2023. The “Magnificent Seven” – Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and Alphabet – accounted for roughly 60 percent of the index’s total return, illustrating how top heavy last year's rally has been." In short, nobody wants to be perceived as the one that cooked the golden goose.
- throw0101a 3y ago> […] the index would have returned just 7.6 percent in 2023. And in 2022 tech was a big reason why the S&P 500 tanked, dropping 30% when the rest of the market dropped 20%. Live by the sword die by the sword.
- silverquiet 3y agoIn the US at least, I tend to think that was the last gasp of an old anti-trust regime that had basically run out of gas by then. The 80's saw a conservative revolution that extinguished a lot of worker and consumer protections. https://www.promarket.org/2019/09/05/how-robert-bork-fathered-the-new-gilded-age/ https://www.promarket.org/2019/09/05/how-robert-bork-fathere...
- HatchedLake721 3y agoApple makes both the hardware and software, it’s their device, hence they can do almost anything they want. Microsoft at the time provided only software and put legal and technical restrictions on PC manufacturer’s ability to uninstall Internet Explorer.
- muro 3y ago> Apple makes both the hardware and software, it’s their device, hence they can do almost anything they want. Somehow, that is repeated so often as if it was the truth. Making both HW and SW makes it even worse, not better.
- theshrike79 3y agoIt makes it less ambiguous. There is no suggestion when you enter the Apple ecosystem that there is any way to use 3rd party hardware or software. There is one supplier for the hardware: Apple. One supplier for the OS: Apple. And for phones, tablets, TVs and watches, only one supplier for software: Apple's official store. Apple hardware like a gaming console. You buy an Xbox because you want/need an Xbox. You don't start fantasising about installing Arch on it and playing indie games from itch.io. You're perfectly happy getting what's available in the official store.
- mlazos 3y agolol if this were true why is Apple one of the most valuable companies on earth?
- muro 3y agoSee the parent comment - it's in the context of restrictions.
- zigzag312 3y agoThere are regulations in many industries that prevent companies doing almost anything they want. IMO there are good reasons for some regulation of platforms.
- paganel 3y agoThere's a big geo-political component now at play, at least when it comes to Europe (I live in Europe). Meaning that the Europeans can try and upset the big American corporations up to a point (almost 2 billion euros as in this case), but not any further, because at the end of it all the security of the continent depends on American hegemony, on American guns and ultimately on American money. From that point of view the situation back in the '90s was a lot more fluid, as at some point there were even talks of an Europe that would have extended "from Lisbon to Vladivostok" (so leaving the Americans out of it altogether).
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago> the security of the continent depends on American hegemony, on American guns and ultimately on American money. And the security of the American chip industry depends on ASML machines, and American airline passengers depend on EU made airplanes. What's your point? Every post-WW2 economy is dependent on the other economies nowadays. There's no fully independent economy that can survive on its own anymore. US (and other including EU) companies get fined because they break EU laws, it's not done out of spite. If they dont wanna get fined they should stop breaking the laws. Simple.
- paganel 3y agoI didn't say it was "out of spite", to the contrary, I said that the measures should have been (and could have been, given a different geo-political context) a lot harsher, such as trying to breaking up Apple's operations in Europe and more. That type of action is off the table for the foreseeable future, and the same goes for the other big US tech companies that are operating in Europe in defiance of the spirit of EU laws, such as Alphabet and Meta (anything related to Musk is a special case because of politics-related concerns).
- pb7 3y agoThe US doesn’t need Airbus. Europe needs American tech.
- 3y ago
- shellac 3y agoI think you have to appreciate just how egregious the behaviour of Microsoft was in the 90s. We're talking about systematic attempts to use their absolutely dominant market advantage to move into new areas and kill rival technologies, plus quite deliberate sabotage of open standards process to prevent the web taking off. (I knew a few people involved in W3C then and Microsoft's behaviour was breathtaking) Personally I'd avoid comparisons since you're looking at one of the worst situations imaginable, so anything else is bound to seem less harmful.
- beeboobaa 3y agoSo I guess apple learned how to be slightly more subtle, and to let their rabid fanbase do some of their work for them. It's still wild to me how they managed to get people to argue against the freedom to install whatever they want on their device.
- pb7 3y agoPeople buy product. People like product. People that don’t buy product try to change product. >rabid fanbase
- nolok 3y agoYeah, those linux and netscape crazies trying to stop OS monopolies and internet explorer bundling. Let Microsoft sell the better product to their users !
- ginko 3y agoI own an iphone (because google is even worse) but I want to run Firefox
- Elfir3 3y agoUnfortunately the impact is not limited to Apple product, but a wider ecosystem. For example the browser. If a feature is not implemented in Safari, as only available browser on IOS, every website needs to be compatible with it. Songs must be available on Apple Music if you want to be available for Apple owners...
- matwood 3y agoProbably a host of reasons. MS had 90%+ of the OS marketshare (Excel had ~90% of the spreadsheet market). I think it's hard for people to understand just how dominant MS was at the time - closest might be peak Google with search. Bill G while likable today because of his philanthropy, was really painted then as a ruthless businessman. MS ignored DC and politics for the most part. At the time, the west coast was even more of a different world than what was going on in DC. All the companies today learned from MS. They have armies of lobbyists and court politicians. They are all ruthless business people, but come across as more human and cuddly. They have become key parts of the US economy. I think there's also some fear that if they do go after big tech they could inadvertently make things worse for constituents. Remember, the only thing a politician thinks about is getting re-elected.
- lozenge 3y agoDespite all the talk Microsoft wasn't broken in pieces and never paid a significant penalty. The loudness of the congressmen was to compensate for that. Now the Overton window has moved and people no longer believe a company can be broken up.
- riskable 3y agoWhy do people always assume there's only two ways to deal with a monopoly? All you ever hear about in terms of dealing with monopolies are: 1) Break them up 2) Fine them From history we know that #1 is really friggin hard to get right (see: AT&T). We also know that #2 is usually ineffective and can harm consumers that are still locked into the monopoly. There's other options! * End the company (corporate death penalty). Auction off all their assets and force all their intellectual property into the public domain. * Force FRAND-style licensing of all their products and services. Make it so that if they want to make money they *require* 3rd parties to sell customized versions of their stuff. * A combination of forced public domain on their intellectual property and FRAND-style licensing. Possibly with forced selling of assets. Basically, just force the company out of whatever market they were abusing. Monopolists are always difficult to break up and there's always going to be negative consequences. Whole towns could go bankrupt as a result of ending a company! Thousands of workers could suddenly be jobless. The list of possible negative outcomes goes on and on. It behooves society to look past these short-term consequences though and look towards the future. The longer a monopoly goes on the more it stifles the future. It may feel like you're cutting off an arm when you end a really big, powerful company but it's more like cutting off a tree branch. More and better branches will grow in its place and younger, nearby trees will now have access to more sunlight. Unpopular opinion (here on VC-funded HN): The way capitalism is supposed to work is that large, old companies are meant to be overtaken by newer, more nimble ones. It shouldn't be so easy for large companies to acquire smaller ones. That's a big reason why tech monopolies persist! SO many of Microsoft's "staple" products wouldn't be part of their portfolio today if it weren't for acquisitions.
- sircastor 3y agoI recall reading that Microsoft basically had government oversight personnel on site. I also recall learning somewhere that the thing that basically saved MS from having the book thrown at them was that George W Bush was elected in 2000, and the DOJ switched hands - and didn't care much about pushing the issue. [1]https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/federal-antitrust-oversight-of-microsoft-formally-ends/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/federal-antitrust-ov...
- mrtksn 3y agoApple is nowhere near as bad as Microsoft. Microsoft was so bad that Bill Gates had to eradicate deceases from the surface of the planet to redeem himself. Apple still has great customer experience and they still sell their products to willing customers and their damage is essentially to their competitors and the users might be losing out on even better service or can be overpaying. Microsoft was considered the Devils incarnation. Awful lot of people still hold grunge towards Microsoft due to the suff they had to face because of the Microsoft's abuse of their market position. People who are really really angry with Apple are not that many, it's mostly people who get sherlocked or were denied the ability to publish their idea on the AppStore. Also, there a few who think they could make more money if Apple didn't take a cut or didn't stop them from collecting data. If Microsoft was Saddam, Apple would have been Lee Kuan Yew - Singapore's dictator.
- rightbyte 3y agoSaaS has given corparations so much more power over users and devs, that anything good ol' M$ did (remember that abbreviation?) could not be nearly as bad as a dominating company could do today.
- gnfargbl 3y agoIt might be hard to imagine in a world where open source mostly won, but in the 90s Microsoft essentially had a de facto monopoly over the computer industry. Mac OS was a thing, but it was different and expensive enough that it was not really a viable alternative to Windows 95 for most people. Solaris and HPUX existed, but were not accessible to home users. The alternative platforms of the late 80s (Atari, Amiga, Acorn) had pretty much died out by the mid 90s. Linux was very much a thing, but without a viable web browser it was really tricky to use on a day to day basis... and the only really viable web browser was Internet Explorer, so you ended up dual booting to Windows. If you (I) wanted to use a computer, that's how it was. In short, the kind of monopoly that Apple has with its App Stores affects some consumers in some ways, but the kind of monopoly that Microsoft had in the 90s affected almost every computer user in almost every way.
- Agingcoder 3y agoAt the end of the 90s, the internet was also not everywhere. Many people had 56k modems, smartphones did not exist ( and mobile phones weren’t exactly ubiquitous) so there was no way out, ie your apps were tied to your operating system, which meant windows to most people.
- scarface_74 3y agoApple is a “monopoly” in the EU with less than 40% market share?
- madeofpalk 3y agoWho's being 'soft' on Apple? In the past few years Apple's faced significant regulatory and legal action over it's App Store in the US, South Korea, Japan, United Kingtom, Australia, and the EU. The EU has just forced Apple to open up to alternative App Stores and enforce browser ballots when you first open Safari.
- actionfromafar 3y agoI hope the EU follows through, Apple's "compliance" is actually obstructing.
- devjab 3y agoLegislation has always been extremely slow when it concerns major corporations. Partly because there isn’t a great public incentive to really care about Apple vs Spotify, which means there is less political focus and in term less allocated resources. But mostly because EU law is complicated and large companies have a gazillion lawyers to poke at its holes.
- briHass 3y agoInvolvement in the political process, i.e. donations to candidates/campaigns and general lobbying spend.
- ralfd 3y ago> For whom was in tech during 90s and now in 2020s, what are the differences between Microsoft back then and Apple now in terms of why the regulators are so "soft" against an actor that is overplaying it's hand for consumers? Microsoft had a monopoly with the ambition to capture the whole market: “A microcomputer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software.” It is impossible for Apple to do that, it is against their DNA. They only sell limited product categories, all their hardware products would fit on a desk in their Apple Store if the merchandize wouldn't be so spaced apart. Their products are targeting a higher price point and if a product spirals to a race to the bottom (mp3 players, wifi routers) they leave the market. They dislike to partner with other companies. They are targeting consumers/prosumers, not business market. This all means there will always be very large gaps in the market which Apple won't cater too.
- amelius 3y ago> It is impossible for Apple to do that, it is against their DNA. Just wait until they've integrated their entire supply chain.
- noirscape 3y agoGenerally speaking, what changed was the value in the tech sector skyrocketing (enabling political lobbying as well as propaganda - the latter of which Apple is extremely good at, just look at the amount of HN comments mindlessly repeating their propaganda about how opening their platform is such a massive security problem. Meanwhile the App Store has been rife with spam and fake apps for the past decade; you literally can't easily find government apps here because shady app companies buy adspace on the searches and put up apps with similar sounding names but with aggressive monetization) combined with ~20 years of US regulators just not really enforcing much in the way of antitrust cases whilst the EU was still on the boat of "maybe we should ask nicely" since that usually works for local enforcement. Things are finally changing on that end (far moreso in the EU because big tech basically keeps pretending it's just the backyard rather than to be taken seriously and it's pissing off regulators), but it's still somewhat of an oddly prescient fact that Silicon Valley/US tech companies broadly more or less "invent" old corporate crimes that take a decade to get enforced because regulators don't get that the difference between a physical form of fraud and a digital form of fraud isn't really that big. EU is catching on and has been passing landmark regulations specifically to attack this crap, while the FTC is doing what it can in spite of the GOP having been pulling it's teeth for the past 20 years.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jojobas 3y agoFWIW Microsoft software and generic hardware of the time were way more open for anyone. Competing with MS was hard or even impossible, but they didn't try to control what you code or run on your machine, didn't try to interfere with software vendors' revenue streams and didn't even go after piracy the way they could. Those was right calls that made Windows so ubiquitous.
- matthewfcarlson 3y agoCould be wrong but Microsoft also had a policy back then to not spend much on lobbying before the trial. They now spend quite a bit. In the US, Apple spent a measly ~6 million a year before bumping it up to 9 a year in 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1043061/lobbying-expenses-of-apple/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1043061/lobbying-expense... By contrast, microsoft has consistently spent 9-10 million a year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1043105/lobbying-expenses-of-microsoft/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1043105/lobbying-expense... Could it be a coincidence? Obviously. But it does seem like if you play the game, you’re less likely to get burned. Of course, that’s a very US centric approach and it makes sense that the EU is the one bringing on these challenges. Standard “my opinions are my own” post script.
- oneplane 3y agoThe difference is that Microsoft was targeting general purpose computing with policy-based restrictions, and Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices and later on a service ecosystem to go with it. We could re-qualify mobile phones as general purpose devices (which technically they could be but in reality they are not), that would make the parallels much closer, and we could also have the service ecosystem made non-optional (it still is optional) to make it a bundled requirement, that would make the parallels even closer. Other than that, the landscape and context have drastically changed, especially when it comes to presence, attention, personal attachment and the abuse of all of that (addition, mass media consumption, personal information that gets stolen or mined, attacks on devices that have a real world impact). So even if we were to make it just a browser war it wouldn't really be the same. It's a shame Palm, RIM, Microsoft and Nokia are no longer playing the same game, it would have been interesting to see what their take on the market would be. Considering all of their hardware and software had the exact same model (release it as an appliance, all software and in some cases all traffic goes through them), it would have allowed more people to have some perspective.
- perryizgr8 3y ago> Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices Huh? Apple chips are not Turing-complete? Or are they "not general purpose computing devices" because Apple would like us to believe so?
- xav0989 3y agoMany Logitech peripherals have Turing-complete chips (ARM processors), but no one is claiming that my mouse is a general purpose computing devices. Apple is selling a system made of a combination of hardware they make and the software running on top of it.
- 8note 3y agoThere's really no reason a laptop or a desktop should be considered as some special device that's required to not be locked down either. It's just a combination of hardware and software running on top of it
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- HumblyTossed 3y agoDifferent times. The corporate propaganda machine that resulted from the Powell Memo hadn't yet infected the majority of minds (even with Reagan's heavy push) so there were still more people willing to hold companies accountable.
- tambourine_man 3y agoThrough the late 90s and yearly 2000s I needed to purchase an expensive and slow emulator plus a Windows license just to do banking, taxes or accurately open some Office files. That's a monopoly. If you buy an Android phone, you can use Uber, Instagram, Spotify, banking, maps, accurately render web pages, taxes, etc. There's nothing essential to modern mobile that's iOS only. MS had ≈ 95% global market share back then, Apple has ≈ 30% of mobile market share now. You may not like Apple's attitudes, but claiming they have a monopoly on mobile is comical.
- rsynnott 3y agoMS was a bigger chunk of the market, and it was, well, a lot more _blatant_. And already had a history of dubious behaviour by the late 90s (eg see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code). As someone else mentioned, MS in the 90s to early noughties was probably the most egregious case of tech misbehaviour ever (though some of Intel's stuff also wasn't great), so you're kind of grading on a curve here.
- vanguardanon 3y agoApologies for this, but it's "for who" not "for whom" in your case since it's the subject of the sentence.
- iamthepieman 3y agoAll the sibling comments trying to compare exactly how alike or different MS vs Apple behavior is, like a compare and contrast high school essay, are missing the mark. Some are very insightful and bring up information I wasn't aware of. They aren't low value comments but I just don't understand why you would think it's even possible to compare two of the largest, most profitable companies (depending on the time we're talking about) 30 years apart. I mean, it's informative to discuss for sure but the markets, tech, laws and public opinion have all changed since then. Apple doesn't have to be as bad, in the same way, with the same motives as Microsoft, for it to be bad, anti-competitive behavior. The markets are both bigger, and more segmented as well. I don't think we're going come up with a universal measuring stick to apply here though I'm sure some tech reporting outlets will try.
- Aerbil313 3y agoOne absolutely key factor is that tech dominates a far higher fraction of life today than it did in the past. So these companies will be increasingly powerful entities, which makes it hard to litigate against them.