It's true that Google, Apple, and Facebook are now getting the treatment that Microsoft got a long time ago.

But I'm not sure I agree that everyone would go free software if it didn't happen. If anything, I think another company would just come along and build something slightly less crappy but no more open. These days you don't even own the software anymore, it's just a subscription or SaaS.

> Software companies making shitty stuff, left alone, will die naturally.

You could say the same of many industries, and I don't think it's any more correct for software than it is for cars, phone providers, banks, or any number of hated industries. People make shitty stuff all the time, and it sells.

In the U.S., phone providers are protected by the government. You can't compete with them. The government has basically granted them fiefs.

I feel like cars are great. I don't know where the complaint is there. There is an enormous amount of variety in cars. It's really amazing. Definitely a triumph of capitalism.

I also don't really have a problem with banks. There seems to be plenty of options. People mostly just complain about Wells Fargo. It's easy to switch.

Every truly hated industry is shitty because they are a government fief and nobody can compete with them. In other words, regulatory capture/regulatory ownership. Besides phone providers, the one that comes to mind for me in the U.S. is healthcare. Also, TV providers (AT&T/Comcast)---absolutely government fiefdoms. You can't legally compete with them.

If you find an unregulated industry, people don't buy shit. There is competition and people buy good stuff. Clothing, for instance. And almost all consumer goods. Think about all the amazing gadgets and appliances that are available. Computer hardware (e.g. laptops, desktops).

> I feel like cars are great

This is myopic, to put it lightly.

Toyota own the three brands that are the least costly cars to maintain, followed by Honda. BMW’s cost, on average, three times as much to maintain.[1]

I own a VW because I’m an enthusiast, but I drive a Honda because I also need a reliable vehicle.

Some BMWs should be regulated out of existence. Rang Rovers too. I work directly opposite my mechanic and we often joke, when all four bays have BMWs or Rang Rovers in them you couldn’t make one good car if you scarified the other three.

These cars are absolute garbage. VW’s too. They all have terrible reputations.

I don’t mean to imply the specs aren’t good, some of these cars are smooth riding and handle well, but heaven forbid if anything breaks.

1. https://autowise.com/carmakers-with-the-highest-maintenance-...

If you don't want a BMW or a Range Rover, don't buy one.

People want those cars. They are willing to pay a mechanic to fix them because they like them. And you have the gall to say that they shouldn't be allowed to have them?

You are complaining about the choices we have---which are amazing, by the way, compared to 20 or 50 or 100 years ago---and your solution is to use the government to force people to have fewer choices?

Certain principles are required for the economy and society to function, and you are advocating for the opposite principles.

The existence of garbage brands with terrible reputations that rich people are willing to pay for doesn't mean cars as a whole aren't great. There are of course great brands like Toyota or Honda out there, which most consumers prefer en masse.

He wasn't talking about the cars, he was talking about the fact that BMW does not, in fact, have a monopoly. You can go buy a Toyota/Lexus instead.

I think the car industry is a racket because they frequently have lots of recalls that affect safety, but they often don't admit it freely. (like the Takata airbag incident) Same for requiring car dealerships, and negotiated pricing. Getting a car serviced for a recall then having to wait for months, possibly while not being able to drive your car can be a real problem.

Utilities like cable / internet aren't really protected by the government, in that there is supposed to be competition, but the companies rarely want to compete, so they tend to service different areas.

A lot of banks do a lot of the shady tactics that Wells Fargo does, like ordering deposits and withdrawals just to make sure you get hit with the maximum amount of overdraft fees.

I totally agree with you on healthcare. That is one of the biggest rackets in the US where price fixing is rampant, and price discovery is purposefully non-existent.

Oh, and just to throw one more in, the airlines!

> Every truly hated industry is shitty because they are a government fief and nobody can compete with them.

If you're a monopoly and the government doesn't step in, they are basically granting you a fief over that area.

If you look up the history of car dealerships: the whole dealership system is based on dealers lobbying the government to protect them. It's regulatory capture. The car makers hate the dealers.

There are 2 main kinds of telco in the U.S.: telephone line based ones and cable based ones. Historically, companies got each local municipality or country to give them a monopoly (literally) on one or the other. So yes, the telco industry is a pure monopoly play in the U.S.

Banks: I have no problem with what you are talking about in my personal experience, but you can always switch to a credit union. Basically all a credit union is in practice is a nice bank. That's their niche in the market summed up in 2 words.

> If you're a monopoly and the government doesn't step in, they are basically granting you a fief over that area.

Monopolies don't happen unless the government grants one (either explicitly or implicitly through regulatory capture). A monopoly is not just a giant company with a dominant marketshare. It's easy to compete with those.

Airlines are great. Southwest, Alaska, and JetBlue offer good service at extremely low prices. Aviation travel prices in the US have gone down dramatically over the past several decades. Just don't fly United.

Utilities get special status because it doesn’t make sense to dig up the roads and lay n parallel competing power cables, sewers, water mains, etc. TV companies because the EM spectrum is limited. That makes it an apples-to-oranges comparison with banks, automakers and so on.

> These days you don't even own the software anymore, it's just a subscription or SaaS.

Only if you choose to use that type of "software". Literally none of the software I use is subscription or SaaS, because I make it a point to avoid those things.

Facebook is also a great example. That shit is so absolutely awful, and it's destroying people psychologically. People will eventually learn and get out of it. We will find a healthier alternative and adopt it organically.

But chances are the government will force Facebook to be just slightly less destructive, so that people never abandon it en mass, and never find a healthier alternative.

Facebook will kill itself if left to its own design. They are clearly committed to that path.

Facebook (as in, a social network) is already dead, it's just that nobody pulled the plug yet.

They have no people to expand to, no new opportunities to monetize the platform. All they can do is squeeze out every last penny they can from the existing user base.

What was the last memorable feature that was added? Stories in like 2015? Facebook (the company) has moved on (to Instagram and WhatsApp), users are less engaged, the content is slowly moving away. Nobody creates a new product and thinks "we gotta have a Facebook presence" anymore.

Features on the web site are largely irrelevant, though.

What was the last Google Search feature? These companies grow not by improving product, but by expanding their reach and squashing competitors.

> Nobody creates a new product and thinks "we gotta have a Facebook presence" anymore.

That's largely because Facebook brings little value unless you're a paying customer.

I‘m not so sure about this. Is there any indication or prior example from business history for that claim?

The Apple App Store seems good enough for most normal people. They will even defend having no alternative means of installing software on their iPhones with „Security“.

I'm highly technical -- 30 years in dev -- and I prefer the curated, controlled environment of iOS for my phone because I have zero interest in sysadmining my telephone.

You put scare quotes around security, but Apple's approach really does result in a more stable and secure platform.

You are cherry picking. It might be more secure from drive by hackers but if any of Apples partners (NSA etc) want in you are carrying a big backdoor that by definition is devoid of security.

That's an "if", while Android is literally sponsored by a company that makes money on consumer surveillance, and apparently has a vibrant malware culture, so who's cherry picking again?

I'm not defending Android. I'm just pointing out the platform you consider more stable and secure is likely only so if you are concerned with certain threat vectors more than others.

The threat vector you ascribe to Apple here exists for Google and Android as well, though, so it's not really an advantage of Android's model over Apple's.

>the world would have switched to free software. It was inevitable

The world was in no way thinking about switching, that's just a libertarian pipe-dream.

As to why: the costs of the MS browser monopoly didn't hit either MS or the user, it accrued at website developers and MS's competitors. They had to jump through burning hoops to make their sites work both in IE and any other browser.

In fact, the easiest and cheapest way to develop a site was to go with MS's proprietary tech and essentially lock out Firefox, or any Linux (or Mac) browser. Opportunity costs were minimal as Windows enjoyed a >90% market share.

At the time the hammer came down on MS, things had in fact improved a bit due to web 2.0 and other browsers (ie. Firefox) leapfrogging MS. But it is extremely dishonest to claim the ruling somehow prevented OSS to gain market share, that flies right into the face of facts.

Let's get one thing straight: My comment was not "extremely dishonest."

It's opinionated, sure. It's my judgement of the situation.

Second: In my opinion, IE was becoming non-viable for end users for security reasons, and baking it into Windows was making the entire system non-viable. If you can't surf the Internet without contracting multiple virii, it's just not a viable product anymore. Especially for businesses and individuals who have bank accounts, credit cards, etc.