It's like Google found developer goodwill burdensome, and decided to pack it all up into container trucks and ship it all to Microsoft.

I agree. It is truly unbelievable. Same with user goodwill.

Microsoft is vaccuuming it all up. Meanwhile Microsoft is making tons of great moves to get devs and users back on their side.

You have to read that comment from a long-time Microsoft developer : https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2019/05/24/github...

The referenced comment rehashes the evils of Ballmer's Microsoft which Nadella has mostly corrected. Satya Nadella has embraced (but not extended!) Open Source. Their Azure strategy puts all platforms on a level playing field - yet has also made Azure an incredible place to make Windows/Microsoft technologies shine. It's a great place for all apps.

Yes, they control Office and are the defacto office document standard. What they do with Office now is affordable and ubiquitous. No other office document suite can do this. They are a for-profit company, and Office serves their customers very well. Yes, in Ballmer's days this wan't the case, but today you can run Office (365/Cloud) on a Chromebook and on Android and iPhone as supported apps.

Do you live in a parallel universe where it was Ballmer and not Steve Jobs that founded Microsoft and was its CEO in 1995 ?

Meh, he lost me when he tried to say Microsoft success in cloud is due to Office. Microsoft's success in cloud is due to having a good enough cloud platform and being better at selling to enterprises than Amazon or Google. IBM and Oracle can sell to enterprises but lost because their cloud platforms suck.

MSOffice gives a pretty big advantage when you want to sell to enterprises !

And I've heard that these days, Office 365 collaborative work is at least as good as Google Docs, if not better !

So, in your opinion, Microsoft is a bad company because they have a better product and they're using it to make money from other corporations?

Wow, that's pretty damning!

And what do you think will happen when all devs and users join Microsoft? The same cycle will repeat.

Linux and Open Source tech is a huge part of Azure now. They profit from people using Linux on Azure. They don't have a reason to chase customers away when they are making money from them.

There comes a time in every corporate's life where good will is neither important nor needed.

Such as switching their browser to be based on Chromium, which is controlled by Google?

>It's like Google found developer goodwill burdensome, and decided to pack it all up into container trucks and ship it all to Microsoft.

Funny how that changes. If anyone told me in 1999 that Microsoft would eventually become one of the Good Guys...

Nah. "Stands against the Big Bad" is not sufficient to become one of the Good Guys...but it's a very convenient spin.

They did not. Read up a few levels, Skype refuses to work with Firefox, because it's inconvenient for them.

Skype is now owned and maintained by Microsoft. I don't see goodwill in either company.

Every large player has been wilfully degrading user experience in any browser they don't approve of for a few years now. This is a ship that has sailed - from the lack of antitrust suits we can deduce that there are in fact very few legal ramifications, if any.

I am very surprised that Alphabet Inc. has gotten away with what they have so far today when I look back at the history of Big Bell being broken up.

Yeah, sure, the government spent millions to break up AT&T and the Baby Bells, then let AT&T get back into the local phone and Internet business by buying up companies left and right. Now AT&T is part of a nationwide duopoly with cable companies, and most US consumers have exactly 2 choices: either AT&T for non-cable or some other company for cable.

It's government's responsibility to foster competition to push back against companies wanting to limit it. Govt is doing a shitty job and gets an F.

It seems like Google just treats fines due to antitrust lawsuits as the cost of doing business, and they're potentially making more money with such behavior than they are losing due to legal costs.