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A comment on Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Cannibalistic Culture Th... by berntb on Wednesday July 04, 2012 @09:51AM (#4199396)
What was innovative? Copying other's stuff and integrating a browser into the OS?
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Re:Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Cannibalistic Culture Th... by dredmorbius on Thursday July 05, 2012 @01:09AM (#4201816)
Microsoft's business model was innovative, even where their software wasn't.

Per-unit licensing, bundling, including the browser for free (which, BTW, screwed Spyglass out of any browser-related royalties).

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Re:Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Cannibalistic Culture Th... by berntb on Thursday July 05, 2012 @06:23AM (#4202455)
Doesn't the illegal use of monopoly powers seem new here, because it was in a newer field?

(Thanks for reminding me of Spyglass, shudder.)

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Re:Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Cannibalistic Culture Th... by dredmorbius on Thursday July 05, 2012 @03:44PM (#4204632)
Even that's arguable. IBM, Xerox, and AT&T all certainly exploited monopolies for some time in tech.

I suspect the real complaint was that Microsoft wasn't terribly innovative. Few things in tech are. The key is to steal from the best, and implement well. While it's arguable that Microsoft's technical implementations weren't all they could have been, the combined reach of their tech + business model worked very well, from the PoV of business success and spreading their "ecosystem" to borrow a more recent term, for most of 2-3 decades.

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