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A comment on Time for Gates to go, some top Microsoft investors tell board. Parent comment

Re:Time for Gates to go, some top Microsoft investors tell b... by r00fus on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @01:38AM (#6480851)
> The whole industry pulled one over on Microsoft cause Gates and Ballmer defended their monopoly from the DOJ long past when it became irrelevant... Which was exactly when The iPhone was released.

This is a bit of historical revisionism. Without the DOJ settlement, I think Microsoft wouldn't have played ball by licensing ActiveSync to Apple (and later, Google).

This single event (2008, I think) drove many people to the iPhone from Blackberry and sealed RIM's fate. iPhone+Exchange wasn't better than Blackberry+BES+(exchange/domino/groupwise), but it sure was cheaper and easier to maintain.

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Re:Time for Gates to go, some top Microsoft investors tell b... by marshray on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @02:32AM (#6481012)
IBM came under a similar consent decree (European, late 80's IIRC) requiring them to document all their mainframe protocols to enable with 3rd party vendors to produce interoperable peripherials. I think it ultimately saved their business.
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