8 ms·
Bill Gates sums up Microsoft's abusive history
- nazgulnarsil 17y agogovernment causes this with laws that allow microsoft to sue people that create workarounds. telling people what they can do with your product after they purchase it is silly. why blame MS for simply following the incentives to make money?
- alttab 17y agoGovernment causes this? Or does government allow this? To think Microsoft was sitting on a huge pile of money without lobbying with some of it would be naive at best.
- idm 17y ago...and yet, until the 1990s, Microsoft invested almost nothing in lobbying and political campaigns. Once the antitrust case entered the equation, Microsoft rapidly became interested in influencing government. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000115 http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000115 1996 contributions: $251,474 1998 contributions: $1,364,821 2000 contributions: $4,628,893
- alttab 17y agoProps to you good sir for getting concrete numbers. While 4 million isn't a lot considering how much they made during those years, it certainly shouldn't surprise anyone. Plus, that's the money that went on the books - not the all expenses paid vacations and under the table proverbial hand jobs. Some would say that lobbying is necessary for the government to know what its people needs - but then again they listen to the LOBBYISTS and not the people who write senators letters. Flawed argument. What a concept.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- nazgulnarsil 17y agohow exactly would microsoft pursue you without the support of the courts? come to your house with guns? not a good business strategy. they only do this because they can outsource coming to your house with guns to government.
- greyman 17y agoI don't want to defend MS, and yes, proprietary formats are evil. But as I remember, every big company did it that way, it was just the understanding at that time.
- robin_reala 17y agoIt might have been the understanding, but (as I understand it) that’s still blatantly monopolistic behaviour which has been illegal for a lot longer than the last 10 years.
- byrneseyeview 17y agoI'd be interested in how that law works! I'm pretty sure lots of companies do this kind of thing, all the time. Apple, for example, likes to sell hardware and software that only works with their proprietary operating system. Lego likes to sell bricks that fit into Legos rather than other toys. Etc. It would be pretty hard to create a law that bans what Microsoft did, without banning what lots of other people do, too.
- robin_reala 17y agoThere’s nothing illegal about keeping things proprietary, but as I understand it (and I am most certainly not a lawyer) it becomes a monopolistic practise to do that when you already have a monopoly in the market. That is, it’s not having a monopoly that’s bad, it’s leveraging it to keep you in a monopoly that’s the issue.
- abrahamsen 17y agoAnti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas. This is how Microsoft can violate anti-trust laws despite usually being more open than their competitors. Lego has nowhere near a monopoly on toys (or even on building bricks), and Apple is not in a monopoly situation on computers or operating systems. However, Apple's traditional closedness do bring them in trouble with regard to music distribution, where the iTunes store is in such a dominating position that tying it too closely to the iPod has brought Apple in the spotlight of EU anti-trust control.
- loup-vaillant 17y agoLooks like an excerpt from the Halloween documents, which, as a whole, are much more incriminating. http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/ http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/
- coliveira 17y agoexcept that these documents were not written by BG.
- bshock 17y agoTry googling "Microsoft" and "theft."
- tome 17y agoYes, what?
- dpcan 17y agoI may not understand law very well, but why isn't Apple getting sued for anti-trust, or monopoly type practices? They seem to keep EVERYTHING closed and proprietary. Why the double standard?
- mseebach 17y agoAnti-trust is about avoiding the negative consequences of monopolies, not forcing things to be open. Apple isn't anywhere near a monopoly, except maybe once in the iTunes/iPod sphere, but opened up by removing the iTunes DRM.
- jamesbressi 17y agoThat may be one of the best short and thorough answers I have seen when explaining anti-trust. Thanks for that.
- socratees 17y agoYou can read more about the anti-trust law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Trust_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Trust_Law. From what I understand, Microsoft was sued because of its anti-competitive behavior with Netscape. It lost the case because there was enough evidence against Microsoft - in that it tried to squeeze Netscape out of the consumer market by deliberate force, leveraging the power they had over the OS market. Apple hasn't done anything like that. If Apple tries to engage in any anti-competitive behavior, then it may become target of the Anti-Trust division of US DoJ.
- jacquesm 17y agoI think they crossed that line when they kept google off the iphone.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoApple is not a nice company. They make some nice products (or at least some very pretty and shiny products) but they are not friendly to consumers, developers, or competitors. If Apple had won out over Microsoft back in the day we would all be in a much worse position. Apple today is very much like IBM was 30 or 40 years ago. Only, Apple is far more hip and savvy than IBM ever was, which is rather scary. Regardless, the iPhone is not yet a monopoly, though it may well be soon enough.
- chrischen 17y agoThey do this with their xbox division too, often buying out exclusivity or paying to dumb down products (so that ps3 version don't get any enhancements) and various other ways to artificially improve their product instead of truly innovating.
- eru 17y agoSources?
- chrischen 17y agoGTAIV exclusive content http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160380 http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160380 They're also paying for CoD4:MW2 exclusives.
- roc 17y agoHow is paying for exclusive content any worse or different than first party games in general? Do you have a source for that 'dumb down' claim? Because that practice would actually support your assertion.
- chrischen 17y agoBecause buying exclusive content is one way to artificially enhance the Xbox's value. First party games are different from buying exclusive content because making a first party game does not take additional effort to benefit the first party. Buying exclusive content is going out of their way to devalue the competition's product without directly improving their own product. To be honest I can't find the source of the 'dumb down' claim, so it might be a bad memory. From what I can remember, the memory was associated with GTA IV, but I think it might have just been the Xbox forcing GTA IV to be dumbed down to one disc simply because of the technically inferior capabilities of the Xbox (and not because of Microsoft coercion).
- roc 17y ago
- aik 17y agoHow is this example any different than putting tons of effort into keeping other devices from making use of iTunes to transfer music? Or only allowing your OS to run on the hardware you choose? etc. I don't agree with any of this of course. But anyway, Microsoft has changed since this time, haven't they? I hope so.
- chrischen 17y agoBecause palm isn't supposed to identify itself as an iPod. And it would actually take effort to support other devices, not the other way around. As for the OS thing, Apple isn't dominating enough of the market for people to care. Microsoft has not changed. Read my comment on the xbox. As long as they benefit from proprietarity, they will try to undermine anything not theirs. It's because proprietarity opens up various strategies besides just improving a product, which is usually the hardest way to gain market. It allows you to take advantage of exclusivity and your existing powers (market share).
- shpxnvz 17y agoAnd it would actually take effort to support other devices Except that Apple is expending effort specifically to break efforts at compatibility. It appears to me that they are intentionally preventing competition, and as a long time Apple customer that upsets me. Apple isn't dominating enough of the market for people to care Claiming that bad behavior is okay so long as you only hurt a few people is a pretty weak argument. I own three Apple computers, have spent a boatload of money with them and as a customer I care about how they conduct themselves as a company.
- JoeAltmaier 17y agoIts the great American Pastime to throw mud at the big guy - hurray for the common man! Boo to Big Oil, or Big Software or whatever. Remember Bill was one of us. Perhaps his biggest issue is, he didn't change gears when he went from Entrepreneur to The Man. Keep that in mind, Next Big Winner Guy.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoA lot of Microsoft bashing is unjustified (easily >90% of it), but some of it is warranted. And this is a good example of that. In this case, rather than figuring out how to make its products better for consumers MS instead sought to make its products look better than the competition, by making the competition look worse. This is anti-competitive and anti-consumer.
- rbanffy 17y ago"Bill was one of us" No. He was never one of us. I think it is safe to assume folks here have high ethical standards, something he has repeatedly shown to lack. High ethical standards cost money, cost business and market share. It's not easy to keep them, but, I am sure most of us here do it regardless of the cost to the business, for not doing so has a much higher cost in out consciousness. When you command a group, be it a company, a department or a bunch of kids, people will do what you want them to do and do whatever your behavior and apparent standards enable them to. If you are ruthless and have little regard for law or quality of your products, so will your team. If you are willing to break the law, they will do it for you. Many times out of loyalty. As a leader, it is nothing but your duty to take full responsibility for the acts of your people for you are the one who enabled them.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoI disagree, maintaining ethics does not necessarily come at a cost to business. It is possible to gin up short term business by going into "ethical debt", so to speak, but the "interest" on that ethical debt will bite you in the ass in the long run. It takes a long time to build a brand that people can trust, destroying that brand to make a quick buck isn't a good business proposition.
- arjunb 17y agoKeep in mind: this quote is from 10 years ago.
- timothychung 17y agoWell, at least Billy is helping the poor in third world countries. :-)
- gxs 17y agoIn their position, you would do the exact same thing: protect your market share. The burden isn't on Microsoft to play nice; the burden is on you to come up with a better product and unseat them. Sure, they make it difficult, but I will reference you to the success of Apple and Google alone as indicators that it can be done. Firefox is another example. *sp