Re:Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
by ThrowawayR2 on Sunday June 11, 2017 @10:27AM
(#14532051)
The point is not to excuse Microsoft's past behavior. The point is the common "Microsoft is the most villainous tech company that ever existed and ever will exist!" meme among older techies is basically ignoring the fact that, once a company gets to that size, nobody's hands are clean, even good old "Don't be evil" Google. To constantly repeat that meme is to demonstrate that one is living in the past instead of facing the reality of the present.
Re:Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
by jacquesm on Sunday June 11, 2017 @12:11PM
(#14532491)
I did not say anything about Amazon, Google, Apple or other companies because those were not the subject. Note the 'not many' in the comment you replied to. The fact that other companies are bad does nothing to diminish what MS did (and I haven't seen Google finance a lawsuit against Linux yet, for one thing).
The reality of the present is that Microsoft is still at it with their telemetry, forced upgrades and piggy backing of things that further drive their business on what are supposed to be security updates.
Re:Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?
by ThrowawayR2 on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @05:14PM
(#14548707)
> The fact that other companies are bad does nothing to diminish what MS did (and I haven't seen Google finance a lawsuit against Linux yet, for one thing).
Well, let's revise your original words to take that into account: "Not many companies have such a sordid history of unfair competition as Microsoft does, merely almost all of the ones of the same size and influence."
Rather takes a lot of the rhetorical weight out of it, doesn't it?
Microsoft was ruled an abusing monopoly (though the remedies were exceedingly limited).
Google is presently operating under a US DoJ consent decree. I'd have to check what the status for Facebook is. IBM saw its court actions. AT&T was a regulated, monopoly-abusing entity from the 1910s, and the only reason you're making heavy use of Unix-based systems today is that AT&T's 1949 consent decree (one of several in the company's history):
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/should-we-thank-...
There were similar battles involving Westinghouse, Edison Electric, RCA, NBC, Xerox, and Land, in the tech field, and Standard Oil, numerous railroads, etc., in other fields.