You probably weren't around in the 90's and didn't see the damage done to the market by Microsoft. It's not about Microsoft "being sued" or making a "closed platform". It was their pushing IE4 as part of OS updates to kill Netscape. It was about cutting a sweetheart, loss-leader deal with AOL to replace the browser in the biggest ISP in the world. It was about shipping a mostly compliant Java 1.1 implementation and then refusing to update it, basically breaking Java in the browser by default (applets written for the Sun plugin would run and fail). And after achieving market dominance in browsers, it was about sitting on the technology for years, providing minimal updates and no standards work while competing browsers struggled vainly to move the technology forward (all done to try to kill off the "web" as a platform, of course). It's about releasing a completely worthless "XML" document format based on undocumented binary legacy stuff, and attempting to bribe and cajole multiple standards bodies into endorsing it.
MS is not a nice company. But they've maneuvered themselves into a position where they are no longer dominant, and are having to compete on technology. So they certainly seem nice enough now (and they did in the early 80's too). But I don't trust them; the culture is broken and evil.
(Edit, because some of the responses are conflating the issues: to be clear, I don't think Apple is a "nice company" either. But their position and dominance today isn't nearly as damaging as MS's was in the 90's. I worried for a while that it would be, maybe 2 years ago, but the truth is iOS has very robust competition, and is actually losing market share slowly. I'm not worried. Let Apple be evil as long as it's within their own universe and not affecting the market.)
A lot of your examples could be used against current darling companies.
Cutting a sweetheart, loss-leader deal with AOL to replace the browser with their own? Isn't that pretty similar to what Google is doing with Firefox to the tune of a couple hundred million a year? (And something that Microsoft has been banned from doing with their own proprietary browser?)
They refused to update Java -- Apple refuses to even allow Flash, which is elsewise standard on something like 97% of computers.
'Pushing IE4 as a part of OS updates' -- wait, they're not supposed to promote their own software (notwithstanding the business with uninstalling Netscape, that was indeed evil).
Trying to kill off the web? Okay, at this point you've lost it.
Cutting a sweetheart, loss-leader deal with AOL to replace the browser with their own? Isn't that pretty similar to what Google is doing with Firefox to the tune of a couple hundred million a year? (And something that Microsoft has been banned from doing with their own proprietary browser?)
Oh come on. If you're going to argue here, at least have your facts straight. The Google deal with FF is only about the default search engine and homepage. Most people switch their homepage to something else anyways. And all the major search engine plugins ship with FF; it's just that Google is the default one. (Did MS ship Netscape with Windows?)
Also, it's not "loss leader" for Google, unless you have radically redefined the meaning of "loss". Google makes a ton of money from FF searches; it just chooses to share a portion of the proceeds with Mozilla. Microsoft has deeper pockets than Google, and there's nothing preventing MS from buying out FF's search bar, _given_ that they have lots of money.
> Apple refuses to even allow Flash, which is elsewise standard on something like 97% of computers.
.... and responsible for 97% of the malware out there. I, for one, am glad Apple took this stand. It allowed for HTML5 to blossom.
This is all missing the point. Context matters in antitrust issues. Google doesn't have a 97+% monopoly position in web browsers, nor are they using Firefox (or Chrome) to deliberately harm their competitors in search (quite the opposite in fact). Apple likewise is not using a monopoly to harm Adobe, who have access to a larger smartphone market than iOS already (and in fact are shipping out of the box on most of those devices).
And you realize there's an important difference between "promoting one's own software" and deliberately installing (and making default) a free (!) equivalent to your biggest competitor's software on every single one of your monopoly-sized installed base?
But consider the alternative. Not shipping part of their software that fits on their platform just for the sake of making sure that the consumer's decision is purely unbiased? That'd be an awful business move, and they knew that.
>Cutting a sweetheart, loss-leader deal with AOL to replace the browser with their own? Isn't that pretty similar to what Google is doing with Firefox to the tune of a couple hundred million a year? (And something that Microsoft has been banned from doing with their own proprietary browser?)
What's the loss leader in this analogy? Google makes money off both Chrome and Firefox.
>They refused to update Java -- Apple refuses to even allow Flash, which is elsewise standard on something like 97% of computers.
I'd agree that this is exactly the same thing. Apple is hoping to replicate Microsoft's success, forcing businesses to choose which platform they develop for so that they can chase their competitors out of the market due to a dearth of choices.
> But they've maneuvered themselves into a position where they are no longer dominant
That's a fantasy. Microsoft still dominates their core market (the Office Suite) and they also dominate the enterprise server market. There's really nothing that can match Exchange + ActiveDirectory for ease of use and setup, both on the end-user side and on the admin side. Google Apps is nice, but it's got some shortcomings, and you can't host it on your own hardware.
It's certainly not a "fantasy". I work in the corporate world too, ducking PPTs daily. And I don't use windows, nor office, nor outlook. And it works fine, though I do have to do some impedance matching fairly often. In the consumer space, it's not even true: no one uses MS software beyond Windows and (increasingly less so) IE.
So yes, MS still "dominates" their own shrinking niche. But they are no longer able to leverage that to control other parts of the market. So they're not the threat they once were, even if they're still as evil.
I've seen the sentiment on HN generally is that if it's ageneral conversation about the post-PC world, MS is totally a dying platform losing relevance and Windows 8 is the worse software on the planet which will totally crash and burn and take down MS with no chance of survival in the hands of Apple and Google.
However, if we're talking about Secure Boot in Windows RT or Firefox on Windows RT, suddenly it's Microsoft trying to kill off Linux and Firefox in Windows 8/RT with their utter dominance of computing.
And what boggles the mind is that it's many of the exact same posters making both these arguments.
You're not the only one who was there. And some of us discrete with your interpretation(s). When Microsoft included TCP/IP in Win3.11 for Workgroups, they killed a lot of proprietary, expensive products. Should that have triggered an anti-trust investigation, too?
Did Windows having TCP/IP break my ability to put my SunOS boxes on the internet? Because IE4's crushing dominance sure broke my ability to use a lot of the web from my Linux box in 2001. MS never would have gotten that market share for IE without leveraging their monopoly position in windows.
I don't really want to rehearse that argument again; and this seems to be waaaaay outside the scope of the original post. And, incidentally, nice moving-the-goalposts - you avoided the question of whether putting Trumpet Winsock et al. out-of-business to incorporate what we all consider to be part of the OS should have also been considered illegal.
You're right that this is increasingly a digression. I thought my point was more important, but I'll play on your field: Trumpet Winsock was shipping the same BSD code that everyone else was using, and built a business around it only because MS didn't bother to. When MS took the same code for themeslves, the market for proprietary products evaporated. Where is the "harm to the market" in that? Users got compatible software at a better price.
When Netscape was killed, Unix users lost the ability to use much of the web, because everyone started writing to IE only. And the reason that happened was because MS leveraged their windows monopoly illegally. I note you didn't have a reply to this bit. :)
It seems you are excluding by default that their mindset may have changed and that everyone who work or will ever work will always behave like their predecessors.
Shouldn't they at least get the benefit of the doubt?
(yes, I was around in the '90s and hated MS with a passion)
IE was simple the better browser at the time. I remember using Netscape 4 and then IE was just better and they kept iterating really fast(that seems to be MS' mantra, come in late and iterate fast, see Word, Excel, Powerpoint, XBox, etc and even the big fish Windows(remember the first few versions before Windows 3.11 for Workgroups?). Of course there are some failures like Bing and
Zune but you can't blame them for not trying.
>t was about cutting a sweetheart, loss-leader deal with AOL to replace the browser in the biggest ISP in the world
You mean like Google's loss leader Android which they put on the market for free by using money from their search dominance resulting in killing WebOS, RIM, Nokia and almost everyone else except Apple?
>And after achieving market dominance in browsers, it was about sitting on the technology for years, providing minimal updates and no standards work while competing browsers struggled vainly to move the technology forward (all done to try to kill off the "web" as a platform, of course
There is a grain in truth to what you say, but I believe it was primarily for two reasons. Netscape dying off, and browser releases tied to OS versions(maybe because of the antitrust trial where they claimed they were related). Since Vista got delayed and they hit the reset button the middle, IE7 got really delayed, and of course they didn't want to spend a whole bunch of money and effort to release an interim version, just like Apple doesn't really care about web apps right now or replacing Flash with HTML5(Jobs' blog pont rant about Flash on iOS promised much more and proper HTML5 support is still sorely lacking in iOS) since it is simply not a priority for Apple.
>MS is not a nice company. But they've maneuvered themselves into a position where they are no longer dominant, and are having to compete on technology. So they certainly seem nice enough now (and they did in the early 80's too). But I don't trust them; the culture is broken and evil.
If Apple had their way(which now they seem to be doing), Firefox wouldn't even exist, so there's nothing left to kill. Look at their 30% cut of services provided to iOS users and how it killed many apps and their MFN rule(no service can provide a lower rate for other platforms if it wants to use in app purchasing).
In these conversations(like in Mozilla's blog posts about Firefox on Windows RT etc.), I frequently see that Apple is the elephant in the room that no wants to even mention in passing since it undermines their point.
Just to reply to one thing in isolation (because frankly you can get a better treatment of all this point-by-point stuff by doing a Google groups search from 1997):
> You mean like Google's loss leader Android which they put on the market for free by using money from their search dominance resulting in killing WebOS, RIM, Nokia and almost everyone else except Apple?
Android is open source. I can build it, run it, change it and ship it all by myself for whatever I want. So yes: I make a moral exception here. (edit: cooldeal, stop flaming. I'm running CM9 built from source, with my own modifications, on my very own phone. That passes the test. Trying to equate not-as-open-as-I'd-like-it-to-be behavior on Google's part with Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior in the 90's is just plain insane. Stop it.)
I wept for Netscape because its fall broke web browsing on all platforms other than windows (that's the "damage to the market" part -- I didn't and still don't give a crap about Netscape, Inc.)
I shed no tears for RIM or Nokia, sorry. WebOS was open and good (but the market has spoken and prefers Android), so maybe HP gets a misty eye or two.
>Android is open source. I can build it, run it, change it and ship it all by myself for whatever I want. So yes: I make a moral exception here.
You mean the same Android that all development happens behind closed doors without taking in any patches except for the kernel and one or a few OEMs get sweetheart early access deals from Google? When the device is sold into the market, Google throws a bunch of code over the wall, and everyone including other small OEMs with no sweetheart deals and Cyanogen mod are left to scramble in a mad rush to support their phones and tablets, drivers and software. Ever wonder why it takes such a long time for new Android OS updates? Of course, all this is explicitly designed to favor their Nexus devics over other Android OEMs. Look at how Motorola, HTC etc. are doing in their financial statements. Motorola is at a loss (and got taken over by Google), HTC's profits are plunging and LG is not going good either.
Remember there was no source for Honeycomb at all which hurt Cyanogen mod for tablets and smaller tablet makers had to do with Gingerbread, a phone OS?
Even iOS, Windows Phone and Windows release beta versions etc. for the ecosystem to get ready for new versions.
>I shed no tears for RIM or Nokia, sorry. WebOS was open and good (but the market has spoken and prefers Android), so maybe HP gets a misty eye or two
So when Google does essentially the same thing as others, the market has spoken about WebOS/Meego/Maemo, but when it's MS, the market hasn't spoken about Word Perfect, Lotus Notes, Open Office, Netscape etc. etc. and it was all because of them dumping loss leaders on the market or manipulation?
>Just to reply to one thing in isolation (because frankly you can get a better treatment of all this point-by-point stuff by doing a Google groups search from 1997):
Very interesting that you don't want to talk about Apple, or compare it's "evilness" to Microsoft. Nor was I expecting you to. That usually is the case in these type of conversations. The elephant in the room has grown a second tail and still no one wants to even acknowledge its existence in these type of stories and comments.
> You mean like Google's loss leader Android which they put on the market for free by using money from their search dominance resulting in killing WebOS, RIM, Nokia and almost everyone else except Apple?
Not quite the same thing, when Android is Open Source and available for use by anyone. Now, granted, Google don't do as good a job as they could at doing real community oriented, participatory development of Android... but nonetheless, the source is available and it could be forked and developed by a Google competitor...
Change Android a bit too much for Google and lose access to the Marketplace, Google apps like maps and the ecosystem. Not everyone can pull an Amazon and make their own app marketplace.
MS is not a nice company. But they've maneuvered themselves into a position where they are no longer dominant, and are having to compete on technology. So they certainly seem nice enough now (and they did in the early 80's too). But I don't trust them; the culture is broken and evil.
(Edit, because some of the responses are conflating the issues: to be clear, I don't think Apple is a "nice company" either. But their position and dominance today isn't nearly as damaging as MS's was in the 90's. I worried for a while that it would be, maybe 2 years ago, but the truth is iOS has very robust competition, and is actually losing market share slowly. I'm not worried. Let Apple be evil as long as it's within their own universe and not affecting the market.)