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Comment by keeganpoppen | Hacker News Reader

oh, ^please^... not "every dominant giant company ever" has been found by U.S. federal court to have engaged in monopolistic / anti-competitive behavior. legality aside, that's to say nothing of all their no-walter-its-not-illegal-youre-just-an-asshole shenanigans contemporaneous with, and preceding, the lawsuit.

playing dumb and conflating what Microsoft did with "every dominant giant company ever" only serves to whitewash a (well-deserved) reputation that they themselves have had to work to disavow (both in word, publically, and in deed) for years. incidentally, this feels quite similar to how the Bill Gates Foundation whitewashes its eponymous benefactor's legacy having been the driving force behind said ruthlessness.*

* please don't make me put in a disclaimer about how people / companies can change, etc.-- we all know-- this is about preserving the past, not casting aspersions on these entities in the present

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> not "every dominant giant company ever" has been found by U.S. federal court

That's only because as times changed so did the US mostly lost interest in punishing or even investigating its own companies (that's subjectively understandable, nobody wants to hit their own). Voices say they're trying to change this, we'll just have to wait and see.

On the other hand I'm sure you agree that "U.S. federal court" is not the global standard in justice. And since the EU has no "home player" bias their courts did not shy away from investigating and fining big-tech monopolies like Google or Facebook.

"Playing dumb" and conflating Microsoft with exclusivity in the abuse of market position doesn't do this discussion any service. Your comment is strongly undermined by this clear bias.

it's been long enough you may not even see this, but i appreciated the fair, well-reasoned response so i figured i would respond (paragraph-by-paragraph correspondence to your comment above):

- fair enough point, i agree that it is debatable whether Microsoft was "particularly deserving" of this reputation because of the limited scope and interest of the justice dept., etc., though on balance i still _personally_ find it most likely that they stood out in their bad-actor-ness in some way

- wtf is a "global standard in justice"? the existence of that is news to me. unless it is rather just "whatever court makes the kinds of judgments i agree with"? if the EU judicial process (to determine whether the EU should fine some exogenous bag of money an enormous amount of money) is so impartial, then why was their biggest upshot to put Margrethe Vestager, a maximally-ambitious politician, on the map? i know you're just trying to suggest an alternate judicial authority, but come on: you picked one that is even less likely to have been a "global standard in justice", whatever that is. and that all is to apparently exonerate Microsoft because a couple other companies, that grew up in Microsoft's shadow, used the same playbook later on?

- though i appreciate the argumentative tone / parallelism thing going on here, i think it's a biit of a stretch in this case-- i don't really feel like i'm conflating them at all. the valence of my comment is definitely that "Microsoft deserves to stand out here", not that they are uniquely guilty of this by any measure.

and, re bias: ultimately, insofar as i am "biased" (an affliction that actually affects everyone, regardless of opinion :^) it is because they (Microsoft) hurt my feelings by doing a bunch of mean things to technologically-related stuff that i loved during my techno-formative years. so, yeah--their abuses of market power stood out more to me than they may have to others, and are clearly grounded in a personal, subjective value judgment. the world still revolved then, and still continues to revolve-- there are more important abuses of power to be truly exercised about in the world, etc., etc.

What Microsoft did with Internet Explorer maybe looked dirty back in the day but ironically enough United States v. Microsoft Corp. suit started in 1998, the same year when Google was founded and quickly after conquered the internet with its search engine and internet browser. Innovations will always displace dominant products and the cycle goes on and on.

There’s a strong argument to be made that putting MS on the defensive about antitrust in the late 90’s is the reason so many other dominant tech companies were able to get a foothold in the 5-10 years following.

Which also points to why we are in today’s predicament, having abandoned antitrust entirely.

> founded and quickly after conquered the internet with its search engine and internet browser

Google didn't release the first version of Chrome until 2008, 10 years later.

That is nowhere close to how ruthlessly they crushed competitors well before that. Microsoft are why you've probably never heard of Supercalc, Lotus/123 and WordPerfect. All superior products in the 80s and 90s, all crushed by MS strong-arm tactics of forcing PC manufacturers to sell machines with Windows and Office pre-installed.

They even destroyed companies they weren't even competing with, but thought they _might_ want to later! All MS needed to do was issue a vague press release that they were working on a competitor to [some successful software product] and all the customers would hold off on purchases until the original (successful) company went bankrupt. Many times MS never ever released anything, leaving everyone worse off.

So yeah. They seem nicer now, but they climbed over a lot of dead companies to get here.

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