5 ms·

It's interesting to see Microsoft unashamedly exercising what's left of their monopoly power to force market share of unrelated products up. Defaulting storage

by zmmmmm 13y ago

It's interesting to see Microsoft unashamedly exercising what's left of their monopoly power to force market share of unrelated products up. Defaulting storage to SkyDrive, integrating Bing as a default search every time someone does any kind of search, even tying the windows login itself to a microsoft account, integrating Skype as a default installed app and giving no opt out once you accept linking your Windows login. I notice they've made it extremely difficult to set Google as your default search engine in IE (no default search provider for it, can be quite hard to find in the search provider list). It's the kind of thing that used to get them in a lot of trouble. I wonder if they are past this or whether they will get rapped on the knuckles for this at some point?

nebula 13y ago
They are doing what they are extremely good at :)
joseph_cooney 13y ago
This was always going to be the way with Windows 8....and continues with 8.1. Now that the consent decree imposed by the US gov. has been lifted, since Microsoft's monopoly looks far less threatening these days, and Apple and google are getting away with it in the mobile space I think it is game on for vertically integrated software and services from MS.
- TheAnimus 13y ago
  Some say monopoly, others say horizontal integration. Most non-tech savvy types want the ability to have their email, cloud document storage, cloud music service, browser history / favourites, all effortless syncronised between devices. MS have actually been not that bad at doing this in metro. The share charm is extendible, integrating things like DropBox wouldn't be hard. So long as they make APIs for say extending the images selection thing available to 3rd parties, I don't think its that bad.
kenjackson 13y ago
If you view Metro as a tablet OS, which many do, they are not monopoly. How easy is it to match the iCloud experience on iPad?
RexRollman 13y ago
Is that really any worse than Google? At least with Windows, the Microsoft account is optional; you can't even create a local ChromeOS account without a Google account (which is a little bit more disturbing these days).
- zmmmmm 13y ago
  The difference with Google is that millions of consumers and businesses are simply forced to buy Windows because that is the only way to run software that they need. There is pretty much nothing you can run on ChromeOS that you can't run outside ChromeOS almost just as easily, including all the related Google services if you want them. Thus people buying it are buying it on its own merits and people using Google services related to it are using those on their own merits. I think the bigger case against Google on this front is with how they are tying Google+ to Google Search. I am actually kind of surprised they have not gotten more heat for it - if Facebook ever succumbs its market share to Google I suspect an issue will be made of it. But then, even with search you have to work very hard to make the case that people are "locked into it".
  - hobs 13y ago
    Android is the place where Google is doing this. Want to use Android without Google? If you are anyone who is non-technical, you damn sure wont!
    - Hyrum_Graff 13y ago
      That's why I've switched to Ubuntu Touch.
    - Alphasite_ 13y ago
      Well, Amazon et. al, but your point still stands.
    - devcpp 13y ago
      If Windows was FOSS and we could "swap ROMs" and extract their stuff easily as many of us do on Android, it would be much more acceptable. Forcing your users to use your other products when you have a monopoly is absolutely outrageous. As it is, I'm staying on Windows 7 (I have only one laptop and need Word, otherwise I'd be using Linux instead of a Linux VM) and Paranaoid Android. No unwanted Micrsoft or Google products anywhere.
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
> It's the kind of thing that used to get them in a lot of trouble. Given how few consequences past infractions have had, I doubt Microsoft worries about that. It has made a lot of money breaking laws but no-one was ever sent to jail and the company got to keep most of the spoils.
- adventured 13y ago
  You definitely make a valid point, however, many of those laws are only broken when ruled so in hindsight. Most of the foundation of anti-trust, for example, rests on deciding after the fact what qualifies and what does not. It's extraordinarily subjective, and varies frequently depending on who is in power. What qualifies as an abuse of market power? That's up to the Feds to decide, there is no set objective definition that can be run like an equation, such that you can be 100% sure you're breaking the law. It's extremely difficult to know beforehand, and the only safe way to approach it is to either directly ask a federal oversight committee (which many companies do once they're in such a position), or to shy away from any kind of aggressive competitive behavior.
  - scholia 13y ago
    The decisions about monopoly were not just made in hindsight, they were made in the context of Judge Penfield Jackson's definition of the market that SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED both Apple and Linux as they were uncompetitive. But as you appreciate, usually when a criminal is trial, the argument is about whether or not they did X [illegal act]. With anti-trust, the argument is not whether the criminal did X but whether X is illegal or not. It's always opinion. Either way, Microsoft should still be judged entirely on what it did in 1995. It's not like the world has changed since then ;-)
sliverstorm 13y ago
At this stage, Microsoft isn't a whole lot more powerful than Google or Apple, and all three of them are doing the same things. If anything, Microsoft is last to the party.
- adventured 13y ago
  Not to mention Microsoft's influence in the consumer space looks exceptionally weak, when you're talking 5 to 10 years forward (short of a small miracle in mobile). They're clearly going to continue to be left out in the cold in search. The PlayStation 4 looks very competitive with the XBox One (and the One is a helluva expensive Netflix or Blu-ray player). Mobile remains a disaster, certainly in terms of market share; ditto tablets for now. Skype is interesting in consumer and business, but it'll struggle to ever pay for the acquisition (maybe in 30 years). Their business / server / tools groups are by far and away the future of the company, as of right now.
  - criley2 13y ago
    >Their business / server / tools groups are by far and away the future of the company, as of right now. Further evidence of this: The Sony PS4 that you point out as being competitive, is built on top of more than one Microsoft technology: "Sony is building its CPU on what it's calling an extended DirectX 11.1+ feature set, including extra debugging support that is not available on PC platforms. This system will also give developers more direct access to the shader pipeline than they had on the PS3 or through DirectX itself ... The development environment coders will use is based on Windows 7 and fully integrated with Visual Studio 2010 and 2012, allowing developers to debug PS4 code just like PC code." http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/sony-dives-deep-into-the-ps4s-hardware-power-controller-features-at-gdc/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/sony-dives-deep-into-t...
- melling 13y ago
  Microsoft has a 90% desktop monopoly, which they've maintained for about 2 decades. When 9 out of 10 computers run your software, you're pretty darn powerful.
adventured 13y ago
They'll only get rapped on the knuckles if they succeed in conquering another space using that leverage. Regulators mostly won't care so long as all it accomplishes is Bing having 17% market share (or similar), and Windows Phone having 5% market share. Skype might be an interesting case, but I suspect the Feds appreciate it having a mass installed base (and that already existed before the acquisition).
scholia 13y ago
Since every article you read now says Microsoft is doomed, that its products are irrelevant, that PCs are in decline and being completely replaced by tablets, that Apple is the world's most (or next-most) valuable company and iPads and iPhones rule the universe, et cetera, then it's probably going to get harder to ding Microsoft for being monopolistic. Also, integration is good for consumers when it ensure things just work, and Microsoft's approach is not fundamentally different from Apple's or Google's. Indeed, Microsoft is arguably less monopolistic than both of those. Finally, it's extremely easy to set Google as your default search in IE10. It just requires an extra step, which means most people won't bother. However, it's not clear why Microsoft should give Google $1 billion to $5 billion a year's worth of benefits for nothing.
arikrak 13y ago
I previously asked on Quora about why Apple could do things that Microsoft couldn't. But it seems Microsoft can now do them too. I think they may no longer be considered a monopoly. http://www.quora.com/Why-can-Apple-favor-their-own-programs-against-competitors-but-Microsoft-cannot http://www.quora.com/Why-can-Apple-favor-their-own-programs-...
duaneb 13y ago
They're really late to the game in terms of all of this—see Mac OS X (which practically begs you to get an apple ID at every chance, which is really enticing until you realize it only works with apple products) and ChromeOS, which actually used the lack of local storage for documents as a way to market the OS.
siamore 13y ago
>They made it quite hard to find in the search provider list yeah it's not as easy as in firefox, this was how it looked http://cdn.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/image318.png http://cdn.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/image318... but now google has bubbled up to the top http://www.iegallery.com/en-us/addons?callback=true&featuretype=2 http://www.iegallery.com/en-us/addons?callback=true&featuret... I find the term "Microsoft Account" to be disingenuous as it can be any email ID (my friends use their GMail) and that is a really nice touch since you can login to all their services with just your old gmail or whatever ID.
mdmarra 13y ago
SkyDrive | iCloud MS account | Apple ID Skype | FaceTime As for changing the default search, it took me about 90 seconds to figure out. I'm really not seeing a problem here. None of the things you mention are mandatory.
- Bosence 13y ago
  The perspective to take is that of a normal consumer and not someone technically able with technology.
  - mdmarra 13y ago
    My point was that Microsoft isn't doing anything egregious. In fact, there are strong parallels to what Apple does with similar technologies.

by zmmmmm 13y ago

nebula 13y ago

They are doing what they are extremely good at :)

joseph_cooney 13y ago

This was always going to be the way with Windows 8....and continues with 8.1. Now that the consent decree imposed by the US gov. has been lifted, since Microsoft's monopoly looks far less threatening these days, and Apple and google are getting away with it in the mobile space I think it is game on for vertically integrated software and services from MS.

TheAnimus 13y ago
Some say monopoly, others say horizontal integration. Most non-tech savvy types want the ability to have their email, cloud document storage, cloud music service, browser history / favourites, all effortless syncronised between devices. MS have actually been not that bad at doing this in metro. The share charm is extendible, integrating things like DropBox wouldn't be hard. So long as they make APIs for say extending the images selection thing available to 3rd parties, I don't think its that bad.

kenjackson 13y ago

If you view Metro as a tablet OS, which many do, they are not monopoly. How easy is it to match the iCloud experience on iPad?

RexRollman 13y ago

Is that really any worse than Google? At least with Windows, the Microsoft account is optional; you can't even create a local ChromeOS account without a Google account (which is a little bit more disturbing these days).

zmmmmm 13y ago
The difference with Google is that millions of consumers and businesses are simply forced to buy Windows because that is the only way to run software that they need. There is pretty much nothing you can run on ChromeOS that you can't run outside ChromeOS almost just as easily, including all the related Google services if you want them. Thus people buying it are buying it on its own merits and people using Google services related to it are using those on their own merits. I think the bigger case against Google on this front is with how they are tying Google+ to Google Search. I am actually kind of surprised they have not gotten more heat for it - if Facebook ever succumbs its market share to Google I suspect an issue will be made of it. But then, even with search you have to work very hard to make the case that people are "locked into it".
- hobs 13y ago
  Android is the place where Google is doing this. Want to use Android without Google? If you are anyone who is non-technical, you damn sure wont!
  - Hyrum_Graff 13y ago
    That's why I've switched to Ubuntu Touch.
  - Alphasite_ 13y ago
    Well, Amazon et. al, but your point still stands.
  - devcpp 13y ago
    If Windows was FOSS and we could "swap ROMs" and extract their stuff easily as many of us do on Android, it would be much more acceptable. Forcing your users to use your other products when you have a monopoly is absolutely outrageous. As it is, I'm staying on Windows 7 (I have only one laptop and need Word, otherwise I'd be using Linux instead of a Linux VM) and Paranaoid Android. No unwanted Micrsoft or Google products anywhere.

Samuel_Michon 13y ago

> It's the kind of thing that used to get them in a lot of trouble. Given how few consequences past infractions have had, I doubt Microsoft worries about that. It has made a lot of money breaking laws but no-one was ever sent to jail and the company got to keep most of the spoils.

adventured 13y ago
You definitely make a valid point, however, many of those laws are only broken when ruled so in hindsight. Most of the foundation of anti-trust, for example, rests on deciding after the fact what qualifies and what does not. It's extraordinarily subjective, and varies frequently depending on who is in power. What qualifies as an abuse of market power? That's up to the Feds to decide, there is no set objective definition that can be run like an equation, such that you can be 100% sure you're breaking the law. It's extremely difficult to know beforehand, and the only safe way to approach it is to either directly ask a federal oversight committee (which many companies do once they're in such a position), or to shy away from any kind of aggressive competitive behavior.
- scholia 13y ago
  The decisions about monopoly were not just made in hindsight, they were made in the context of Judge Penfield Jackson's definition of the market that SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED both Apple and Linux as they were uncompetitive. But as you appreciate, usually when a criminal is trial, the argument is about whether or not they did X [illegal act]. With anti-trust, the argument is not whether the criminal did X but whether X is illegal or not. It's always opinion. Either way, Microsoft should still be judged entirely on what it did in 1995. It's not like the world has changed since then ;-)

sliverstorm 13y ago

At this stage, Microsoft isn't a whole lot more powerful than Google or Apple, and all three of them are doing the same things. If anything, Microsoft is last to the party.

adventured 13y ago
Not to mention Microsoft's influence in the consumer space looks exceptionally weak, when you're talking 5 to 10 years forward (short of a small miracle in mobile). They're clearly going to continue to be left out in the cold in search. The PlayStation 4 looks very competitive with the XBox One (and the One is a helluva expensive Netflix or Blu-ray player). Mobile remains a disaster, certainly in terms of market share; ditto tablets for now. Skype is interesting in consumer and business, but it'll struggle to ever pay for the acquisition (maybe in 30 years). Their business / server / tools groups are by far and away the future of the company, as of right now.
- criley2 13y ago
  >Their business / server / tools groups are by far and away the future of the company, as of right now. Further evidence of this: The Sony PS4 that you point out as being competitive, is built on top of more than one Microsoft technology: "Sony is building its CPU on what it's calling an extended DirectX 11.1+ feature set, including extra debugging support that is not available on PC platforms. This system will also give developers more direct access to the shader pipeline than they had on the PS3 or through DirectX itself ... The development environment coders will use is based on Windows 7 and fully integrated with Visual Studio 2010 and 2012, allowing developers to debug PS4 code just like PC code." http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/sony-dives-deep-into-the-ps4s-hardware-power-controller-features-at-gdc/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/sony-dives-deep-into-t...
melling 13y ago
Microsoft has a 90% desktop monopoly, which they've maintained for about 2 decades. When 9 out of 10 computers run your software, you're pretty darn powerful.

adventured 13y ago

They'll only get rapped on the knuckles if they succeed in conquering another space using that leverage. Regulators mostly won't care so long as all it accomplishes is Bing having 17% market share (or similar), and Windows Phone having 5% market share. Skype might be an interesting case, but I suspect the Feds appreciate it having a mass installed base (and that already existed before the acquisition).

scholia 13y ago

Since every article you read now says Microsoft is doomed, that its products are irrelevant, that PCs are in decline and being completely replaced by tablets, that Apple is the world's most (or next-most) valuable company and iPads and iPhones rule the universe, et cetera, then it's probably going to get harder to ding Microsoft for being monopolistic. Also, integration is good for consumers when it ensure things just work, and Microsoft's approach is not fundamentally different from Apple's or Google's. Indeed, Microsoft is arguably less monopolistic than both of those. Finally, it's extremely easy to set Google as your default search in IE10. It just requires an extra step, which means most people won't bother. However, it's not clear why Microsoft should give Google $1 billion to $5 billion a year's worth of benefits for nothing.

arikrak 13y ago

I previously asked on Quora about why Apple could do things that Microsoft couldn't. But it seems Microsoft can now do them too. I think they may no longer be considered a monopoly. http://www.quora.com/Why-can-Apple-favor-their-own-programs-against-competitors-but-Microsoft-cannot http://www.quora.com/Why-can-Apple-favor-their-own-programs-...

duaneb 13y ago

They're really late to the game in terms of all of this—see Mac OS X (which practically begs you to get an apple ID at every chance, which is really enticing until you realize it only works with apple products) and ChromeOS, which actually used the lack of local storage for documents as a way to market the OS.

siamore 13y ago

>They made it quite hard to find in the search provider list yeah it's not as easy as in firefox, this was how it looked http://cdn.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/image318.png http://cdn.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/image318... but now google has bubbled up to the top http://www.iegallery.com/en-us/addons?callback=true&featuretype=2 http://www.iegallery.com/en-us/addons?callback=true&featuret... I find the term "Microsoft Account" to be disingenuous as it can be any email ID (my friends use their GMail) and that is a really nice touch since you can login to all their services with just your old gmail or whatever ID.

mdmarra 13y ago

SkyDrive | iCloud MS account | Apple ID Skype | FaceTime As for changing the default search, it took me about 90 seconds to figure out. I'm really not seeing a problem here. None of the things you mention are mandatory.

Bosence 13y ago
The perspective to take is that of a normal consumer and not someone technically able with technology.
- mdmarra 13y ago
  My point was that Microsoft isn't doing anything egregious. In fact, there are strong parallels to what Apple does with similar technologies.