Re:Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO
by zmmmmm on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @12:55AM
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Not sure about Amazon. But I'd definitely say worse than Google. For all of Google's dominance they offer APIs using open standards for the vast majority of their products, their operating systems are all open source, they guarantee to give you your data with takeout. Mostly where they are dominant it is because they've made products people really want and not because they've locked their customers in. I'm sure you can find exceptions but I think overall their track record is substantially better than Microsoft's ever was.
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That's a fair assessment of Google. My views are coloured because of a few really good startups I saw crushed when Google released products for free (specifically Calendar, and Reader IIRC).
I have a long-running joke with friends when we come up with ideas, that we'd better not do it as "Google's going there soon". Thankfully it seems to have slowed down its expansion a bit in the last few years.
Also the power they wield with search and adwords, to make businesses thrive or die - especially if they play the rules (cf RapGenius). Though I don't expect it would be any better if Bing was the dominant search engine.
tl;dr: I don't like semi-monopolies. Small, competing and thriving businesses are the best.