Hacker News Reader

Comment by pizzapill | Hacker News Reader

As much as I like most of what he does nowadays I always wonder how many years of technological progress we lost due to Microsofts shenanigans.

View on HN

Microsoft had Xenix in 1980 yet their extortion racket compelled OEMs to put MS-DOS in front of consumers through 2001 (until WinXP).

We are loosing more due to Google every year than we ever did with Microsoft.

Why do you think so? Their business model? Google are vicious competitors for sure but they open source a ton of cutting edge stuff like jax & tensorflow. I would say they've did a great job at advancing the state of science & technology in the world.

I always wonder about Google. I know they produce Android but if they disappeared overnight, the world would carry on working, e.g everyone would switch to using another search engine. There would be less tracking (thanks Google Analytics)!

If Microsoft disappeared overnight, how many businesses (not tech businesses but real businesses, like warehouses etc. not running Macs) would need a functioning version of Windows or Win32 software to get by?? I think Microsoft has a larger effect on the world than Google by a very very large stretch.

Even in development, Microsoft's products are used far more widely. How many Google development tools are people using? I've got Android Studio but my daily dev work is Visual Studio on Windows and VS Code on Mac.

You could also argue that due to Microsoft and the past being what it was, there is also way more to lose.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com