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Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

Given how a lot of people don't hold Microsoft accountable for past misdeeds (the 4 last posts about github acquisition are endless arguments about it), there is few reasons to believe it's going to be different with google.

For them, it's always better to benefit from screwing up. If you don't get caught, yay ! If you do, apologize, wait a bit, and send your PR team go their magic. Bim, you are green again.

Why would they do otherwise if they can keep the loot and face little consequences ?

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1. Does Microsoft have written promises that they broke about their past acquisitions? In the case of Skype it's going quite poorly, but as far as I know LinkedIn is running quite independently and is doing well. Nokia again is doing pretty poorly, but Mojang also seems to be doing fine. It's pretty hit an miss, but to be fair, smartphone and communication are pretty hard industries to succeed in.

All the arguments have already been used in the past threads. No use to repeat them here.

As a neutral observer, I've not been on past threads. Most people who don't have particular interest in this haven't. It would be nice to hear both sides of the argument

Go back to the threads on github acquisition. There are at least 4 of them during the past week. They are very long, very rich and very divided, so making a tl;dr would be too much work.

If people are complaining about Microsoft acquiring GitHub then is that not people trying to hold Microsoft accountable?

If Microsoft's sins were truly forgiven or forgotten, people wouldn't be complaining about the acquisition.

You missed the numerous HN comments defending microsoft.

You missed people on reddit or imgur singing glory to microsoft.

They now have a fan base.

A fan base.

That's not something I would have ever imagined in the 90'.

Yes they are a big company with many facets. You can like some parts and dislike others.

They have always had a fan base, even during those dark times (but not as many). But seems like they worked on engaging others and now have a bigger fan base.

Perhaps another good example closer to what google is doing is Cisco providing to China the means to build their great firewall. They got some criticism of it for a bit of time but China's censorship regime has since become the "new normal" and has clawed its way into western media via heavy investment into Hollywood studios by the country.

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