90's era Microsoft wasn't evil for the sake of being evil; they were evil because they felt that monopolistic practices were the easiest way to increase their share price. They have a responsibility to their shareholders to try and maximize their share price and so it's hardly unsurprising that they did the infamous Embrace Extend Extinguish, and until regulators stepped in, such practices worked pretty well.
Most companies don't get large enough to form any kind of real monopoly, so it's easy to get on a high-horse. It's also easy to act like it was just a product of "those people", but I fundamentally think that it's a natural consequence of a company that has achieved nearly-total market dominance.
I have very little faith that a multi-trillion-dollar company is going to prioritize what's best for the world. Fundamentally, I think that if they feel they can get away with it, they'll revert to monopolistic tendencies and try and increase share price.
I'm not just picking on Microsoft here either; replace them with basically any other near-monopoly in tech and my criticisms still hold.
You are to forgiving. I don't care too much about the why behind the evil in the software business and this is probably why my rants fall under Godwin's law too often. I won't this time.
> They have a responsibility to their shareholders to try and maximize their share price
... but I was damn close.
I agree with your whole point about Microsoft. But I don't think it's the same company anymore, I like some of the recent stuff, and I trust their lack of monopoly on the web. For now.
I think the point is that companies aren't good or evil, they are amoral non-aligned super intelligences that maximise shareholder profits.
If I am intent on killing a million people, but can't, but a company kills a million people via inadvertent faulty products, which is evil?
Some companies try to do the right things too. Bad corporate behavior should not be normalized this much.
I disagree with this larger idea (that others here are implying more indirectly) that companies are all the same, and like some force of nature. They are guided and there are better and worse ones.
Having said all that, I'm still an anti-capitalist to the extent that one can be one ;)
You don't have to have faith. Why would anyone EVER believe that? By definition, a company is just a profit making machine. People believing that making rich people richer will necessarily make the world a better place are living in a koolaid-boosted fantasy world
No doubt the company is cautious about some things now but even in these, it will push the boundaries.
You can't trust Microsoft to act in the interest of open-source projects, transparency in general, or the users of any of the things it buys. Not all of their attempts to harm ecosystems or products work, and this has very little to do with whether they win competitions with other tech giants. In fact, sometimes user distrust stemming from their long history of Embrace Extend Extinguish and other user-hostilities has played into their failures. But like most shambling behemoths of companies, their deep pockets allow them to stay the course through many failures
https://slashdot.org/story/11/03/21/2014244/Microsoft-Contin...
https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/10/01/1936213/Microsoft...