Google is mostly about the consumer.
Between Linked-In and O365, they have the ability to target their B2B marketing or facilitate surveillance more than any other organization on the planet. Google knows all sorts of things about me, but Microsoft knows who the government official handling a critical matter is, knows who their secretary is, and knows who the lobbyists, applications or service providers.
Google may be evil, but Microsoft isn't some white knight. They are hard competitors well placed to unseat traditional enterprise players.
... and windows OS, visual studio, sql server, azure, linkedin, github, bing, skype, etc which all collects data on you. Also, I love that you dismissed their office suite as just "spreadsheet software". It's only the world's ubiquitous office suite used everywhere in the world.
The glib terseness of the comment is a metaphor for the relative harmlessness of the business model. Not indicative of the actual product selection or annual revenue.
I think, anyway...?
It’s not so much that Microsoft or Apple’s business model is harmless—I certainly wouldn’t describe them that way—but their business models and their forms of influence are comprehended by most people.
And the idea behind my comment was : They also want to sell you. Bing, linkedin, github, etc aren't selling you software. Also, windows OS has ads now.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-window...
> Because Apple sells you hardware, and Google sells You.
Apple also sells you. They sell you to music, movie, etc industry in order for the industry to support apple's platform.
> The glib terseness of the comment is a metaphor for the relative harmlessness of the business model.
Which I showed was wrong.
It's insane the amount of microsoft and apple support on a tech platform. I guess all the money that microsoft/gates spent on PR truly worked.
> I think, anyway...?
I don't think you thought things through too well... Your argument was basically google sells chromebook/hardware so everything else they do is fine.
By that logic, a shopping mall “sells you” to retail stores. A cinema “sells you” to movie studios. Etc.
Apple is worse than AMC or shopping malls since they have much more identifiable data on you ( even more than google in many respects ) and use that to sell you. Not just your data but recommendations/etc.
Apple sells you in the same way google/facebook/microsoft/etc sells you. Collectively and individually.
In the past shopping malls and cinemas used to sell you collectively to retail stores and movie studios. Now many of them can sell you individually to retail stores and movie studios. Something really has gone wrong when there is support for Apple on a tech forum. Usually apple just preys upon non-tech people who like overpriced shiny things. It's strange the amount of "support" apple and microsoft gets nowadays.
Microsoft wants you to use their spreadsheet software.
Google is a significant gatekeeper to information which influences what we know and the opinions we form. And that information is increasingly first party, e.g. YouTube, the Play Store.