I'm not even kidding. Look it up for yourself. The Bush DOJ took down Enron even when it destroyed people's pensions. Meanwhile, Wall Street destroyed the country's economy requiring trillions of spending (read: debt) to "fix" and how many went to jail? Oh yeah... one--a scapegoat.
And the statistics don't lie. Prosecutions of white collar crimes have dropped from 17.6% in 1995-7 to 9.4% in 2010-12. Did everyone stop committing crimes? Did everyone say they're sorry? In 2015, prosecutions were at a "20 year low". 20 year low... during one of the largest economic collapses in US history, where there should be sky high rates.
Don't act like Microsoft, of all companies, is some poor victim. They compete their ass off, and sometimes they win, sometimes lose. They lost that time.
I also remember something about how Google demanded that Microsoft implement something that wasn't technically possible at the time in order to get the Youtube app to be fully compliant. I don't remember what that was exactly, but I think it had something to do with how they were rendering the videos.
I was a Windows Phone user at the time, and was very irritated about Google being petty and not working with Microsoft to get the app working with ads.
Competition is fair game. Consider:
- the existence of Bing
- Every version of IE and Windows starting from over a decade ago has made it more difficult to change the default search engine from Bing. Comically difficult, even
- Microsoft's creation/funding of entities like Fairsearch.org, whose primary reason for existence is to destroy Google
- Stealing Google's search results
- etc etc
Microsoft has tried to defeat Google from day one. Again, they competed and lost. If they had built up any good will maybe Google would have helped. But they didn't.
Microsoft got forcibly fucked by the US government for unfairly damaging their competition. Is that really the path that Google wants to follow?
However, I don't see Google being sued in the USA. Why? Because (per my other comment) prosecution of White Collar crimes dropped over 20% (a whopping amount) when Eric Holder came into power over the DOJ. 20% DROP DURING one of the largest recessions in USA history! Bush destroyed Enron and sent them to jail even though that would kill people's pensions. Meanwhile, Eric Holder brought about the Too Big To Fail era where the DOJ was outright AFRAID of prosecuting big companies.
We basically don't have a government now. We have corporations. And they don't have to wait to be voted in, and they don't have to leave after four years.
Look at how companies like Comcast (after the Telecommunications Act) can now own NBC, and NBC news. They can own the entire chain of wire, to media, to control of information itself. Is it any wonder why, when ~5 companies control 90% of all US media, that we never hear of "big bad evil corporations" anymore? In the 90's everyone was rushing to burn Wal-Marts to the ground for pushing out "the little guy". Now when Google does it, platform liberals and news pundits cry "Free market!". Are we supposed to believe that in ~25 years, the same corporations suddenly became ethical? Why is there never any serious talk of unions (a central tenant of the Democrat platform) anymore? Because they corporations (not Democrats) control the news now.
Google's comment was
>The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimized for WebKit browsers such as Chrome and Safari. However, since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the mobile web.
The problem is, mobile IE uses the same rendering engine as desktop IE10, which works. Firefox works even though it's not Webkit. And if you visited maps.google.co.uk, everything worked perfectly. And it worked before Google blocked it. Between the time Google blocked WP8 from viewing Google Maps and the time they said "oh hey the browser works now", there were no updates to Windows Phone to change browser functionality.
In short, Google blocked their competitor from accessing their website, got called out, issued a complete lie of a statement, then rolled back the change. Yes, as a Windows Phone user at the time I was not amused, and that was when I stopped using Google services.
Windows mobile was a mess last I had to deal with it. As far as I recall, Windows Mobile uses IE11 within an app, or Edge from the browser. Both had either proprietary or buggy touch events. Supporting Windows phone was a nightmare for us (and as it turned out, a complete waste of time).
Not defending Google, just saying my facts are different from yours.
This just encourages folks on the receiving side to come up with situations for google to panic over then reap the predictable "lobbying".
Other companies across industries approach things differently- they get their targets hooked on a steady stream of "lobbying" and use the withdrawal of that as leverage.
Microsoft is actually quiet good at lobbying and has been successful on many fronts to keep their products and services the dominant solution for US government systems.
It has its own contracts and obligations with its creators and label companies. When Microsoft's officially branded agent-provocateur-ish version lets you download videos, YouTube can't really independently decide on how to respond.
Remember when Microsoft did the stuff Google does now and the government actually cared enough to do something about it?