4 ms·
Their products/services are ubiquitous not because they are good but because they got where they are today by abusing monopoly power and shady tactics. On the
by thewebguyd 2mo ago
Their products/services are ubiquitous not because they are good but because they got where they are today by abusing monopoly power and shady tactics.
On the business side, with M365, they use lock-in tactics and extremely aggressive bundle pricing. The only competitor is Google Workspace, and it's missing features you get bundled with something like an E5 license. So your choice becomes: just pay Microsoft $60/user/month and get Identity, Office, Intranet, MDM, EDR, DLP, ZTNA, the works. Or, buy Google Workspace and then also buy Slack, Okta, JamF (or Jumpcloud or similar), some ZTNA product, etc. and you are now at double or more the price of an E5 license.
On the consumer side with Windows, they secured their monopoly via internet explorer, and predatory OEM contracts to prevent machines being sold with anything else. Now Windows is just an ad-delivery network disguised as an OS. People don't leave Windows because its still, through those shady backroom deals, the default OS on every off the shelf PC, and because of existing software.
Microsoft has zero incentive to build a good product now, they already won. People use it because they have to not because they want to.
- fryanyway_swe 2mo ago>extremely aggressive bundle pricing I mean it's a good deal. As you say, when a company goes above a certain size, it does not make sense to pay for GSuite + Slack + Zoom + RMM/MDM + Zscaler Windows is still good for gaming PCs, and it will now handle and update itself reliably. No I don't need to hear anecdotes, I work in the IT desktop space. IT janitor monkey if you will. There is no way an enterprise will convert laptops to linux or chromebook. You see it as malicious, but well, even Google have trouble in this space. Because it is hard.
- tombert 2mo agoIt decidedly does not “update itself reliably”. Windows Update is still broken garbage that will break your computer.
- sitzkrieg 2mo agoi agree, but only because i’m on a windows 10 LTSC install with no store, defender neutered and updates disabled. these installs work forever
- sigseg1v 2mo agoThe Windows updates have become so unreliable and broken so many laptops that my org switched to Linux and it's been smooth sailing ever since. Can't believe the amount of frustration we put up with using Windows for so long. Maybe for a non tech company yes they cannot navigate anything better due to user expectations, but in my experience those companies usually have support for Mac and at this point I'd rather have that if forced to choose between it and Windows.
- fryanyway_swe 2mo agoDid you actually manage windows updates properly with intune/gpo or just let it rip?
- WalterBright 2mo ago> by abusing monopoly power and shady tactics > Google Workspace, and it's missing features Sounds like Microsoft got there by having the features.
- pipes 2mo agoDon't agree at all. Microsoft originally hoped that other vendors office type offerings would be good enough, they weren't (lotus notes) so Microsoft did it themselves. Bill gates also understood the value great programmers. The whole business revolved around this premise. this was different from other software companies at the time. Read the likes of Gabe Newell and Joel spolsky said about their time there. It was in a league of it's own. There are a lot of great things we got from Microsoft, a zero fee platform to target, a platform that would run on what ever cobbled together pc parts you threw at it. An unbelievable attention to backwards compatibility. Compare that to what we have now in the app store and play store.
- tombert 2mo agoI am skeptical of the “backwards compatibility” claims. Often playing older Windows games is easier and more reliable on Linux with Wine/Proton than on Windows 11.