Re:The End of the Googleverse
by brazzledazzle on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @07:02PM
(#37330258)
I don't think you're wrong but it's also fair to say that Microsoft was actively trying to destroy Linux and open source in general. They were literally funding legal attacks open source software. They were also engaged in a ton of anti-competitive behavior. Gates was a very smart guy and was absolutely a ruthless corporate terminator which is easy to forget given how he acts and spends his time/money today. And the Microsoft of today still engages in questionable or shitty behavior but regulators are even softer now than they were then. So Teams gets bundled for free with 365 after Slack proves there's a market.
Teams does send me back down memory lane with a good old fashioned 2 minutes hate for Microsoft every day.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
Microsoft represented an existential threat to many, many parts of the IT ecosystem every bit as real as dumping toxic waste into salmon breeding grounds.
Microsoft was one of the most ruthless orgs in tech history. They destroyed anyone within eyesight of their goals with wild abandon. To this day I have a hard time trusting/believing anything coming out of that org. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to wake tomorrow to GitHub being accessible only from the most expensive visual studio license available (and required to be running on the most expensive Windows license available).
> Microsoft was one of the most ruthless orgs in tech history.
MS is like a boxer who doesn’t just want to beat you in the ring. He wants to outright kill you too so you will never fight again.
It's a little embarrassing to think about right now when you realize that Microsoft has never poisoned a river or sent thugs with billy clubs to bust a union, and so all of us had bigger fish to fry. But there was never love.