"Microsoft is still evil outside of Dev Circles"

TBH, I consider Google much more evil than Microsoft, in or outside of Dev Circles. Microsoft dropped the evil baton and Google picked it up and sprinted away.

I wonder whose circles are those, most non-technical people I know doesn't care less about evil, good or whatever.

Google will continue to have the upper hand in public image until stuff like that happens. Yes, this would be a PR challenge, but one MS might even be able to spin in a way they can benefit from...

Agree.

What Microsoft gain after Windows Phone YouTube app case? Nothing. Google successfully fucked up Microsoft.

There are dev circles where Microsoft isn't evil? I've been a Unix/Linux dev for thirty years so maybe I'm not keeping up, but the general view was that if Microsoft had a platform we needed to target it was because it made us money and we assumed we'd eventually get burned - which nearly every time we did.

And I've worked for Google in the past, but their main issue has always been that they change a lot which makes them a moving target which is annoying in its own way.

Microsoft earned its public image and while it's made nicer noises recently it's not an organisation that fills me with trust.

> "What will Microsoft gain if they Win?"

Uh, money? It might not exactly be a noble incentive for a lawsuit, but it's sure as hell an incentive, isn't it?

I wonder what sort of information Google might dredge up during discovery that Microsoft wouldn't want to see the light of day. I'm no lawyer/accountant, so I don't know what amount of money would be worth that risk.

With a lot of legal issues, sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

hiybbprqag for one - https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/

I mean google was recently caught doing the same thing with baidu... https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-se...

"What will Microsoft gain if they Win? Nothing. "

They'll get a more level playing field.

CEO's generally don't order this stuff to happen. More often it's a director, manager, VP or whatever that's just really aggressive. Possibly the CEO knew or not.

When a company gets bloodied for a pile of money, they generally have to own up to it, which makes them look bad (by they way, these things do have a cumulative effect) - but more importantly, they have to at very least 'go through the motions' of getting staff to 'not do this stuff'.

So they have 'training' and 'oversight' etc.. However ingrained it is into behaviour (or even a single rotten apple) the likelihood of recursion goes down.

For example - if an inner legal team gets some responsibility for oversight on these issues, they can make life difficult for managers on these things.

I worked at a Fortune 50 that was sued by a patent troll, and it seriously and fundamentally changed internal culture to the point wherein we needed lawyers involved in everything, it was really bad. Obviously a negative example.

But especially Microsoft has enough $ to drag Google into court, they should do it.

That said: I'll bet $100 that MS might be doing some tricky things of their own anyhow.

Microsoft and Google exist in a bit of a cold war. They don't want to destroy each other in court. You can't just take free shots and not expect a response.