Let's not forget, Bill Gates hasn't always been the good guy | Hacker News Reader

Let's not forget, Bill Gates hasn't always been the good guy

theguardian.com

23 pointscf100clunk22 comments

Microsoft's evil tactics seem childish in comparison to Google's. Where Microsoft bundled a browser with their OS, Google did that with Android, and created an entire separate OS running on their browser, and paid devs to include their browser as opt-out installation in tons of unrelated freeware, and leveraged their control of the most performance-hungry sites on the internet to make those sites run noticeably smoother on their browser compared to their competitors.

Despite coming with Windows, being the default web standard, and being the proscribed browser for government computers with a market share of 95% in 2004, IE immediately lost a third of that when something better, Firefox, came along. Google would never in a million years let another browser become a threat to their dominance. They'd either get bought out the moment they began picking up steam or Google would crush them with ads, exclusive site functions, and search page warnings.

The only real difference is market share. The Google/Apple duopoly enables behavior a hundred times more egregious than anything Microsoft ever did.

Yep, imagine Microsoft banning developers from every Windows operating system because you made a Microsoft Word document complaining about Microsoft prices

The world we live in makes Microsoft look innocent, and they basically owned the entire OS market

The easier computing devices get the less technical the users have to be to use them, and the more vulnerable they are to being taken advantage of.

Microsoft was already evil long before browsers and the web.

Jesus. Someone should write history book about this so that people don't forget. Their OEM contracts, stealing products killing startups in legal battles. MS was fully monopolistic for a long time.

IE6 was so painful because it was performant (great for end users), but closed source and full of bugs that the developers had to work around to not look stupid from the non-tech world (instead MS fixing them over time). This was happening for a long time (10-15 years), which was very frustrating.

I don't think Google Chrome is that bad for the world.

Well it's a good thing the author didn't claim those things equivalent then. Or he might have seemed silly.

Gates did some bad stuff in relation to MS, and now he is doing some good stuff in relation to philanthropy, shock and horror, people are not always saints.

This is the very foundations of `cancel` culture, find something in someone's past and criticism them on, no matter how they have grown as a person or to whatever level they have changed, you should always judge them on their actions of the past.

I am not saying that you should not take a person as the sum of their actions, but we shouldn't just them on a slither of their actions. I would not say that Gates is a good person either. Hey welcome to people being people.

what is the purpose of this article? is this relevant to something other than the current "Bill Gates invented coronavirus" conspiracy nonsense?

What is the purpose of an article about monopolistic business practices?

Very recently, Apple became a two trillion dollar company and a single man's net worth is 10% of that. Meanwhile, over a million in his country have recently filed for unemployment.

I really don't understand the leap from the article to ridiculous conspiracies (and derailing the discussion).

>the current "Bill Gates invented coronavirus" conspiracy nonsense

I haven't heard that particular conspiracy yet. This editorial does however add additional context to the fawning coverage that Gates has gotten recently as a supposed selfless, benevolent philanthropist and opinion leader during the pandemic.

See the "Opinion" link near the top left of the article? And just to its right is the linked name "John Naughton" with a photo? When I click the link with Naughton's name it takes me here:

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johnnaughton

Apparently Naughton writes about technology in the Guardian. I think it's fair to his theme is something like "public watchdog on the tech industry."

This piece was a throwback to 25 years ago so I can only assume that it was a slow "tech crimes against humanity" week for Naughton.

One thing that the media seem to have totally missed is that Gates was fairly late to recognise the role of face masks in helping to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Initially in Feb he was all about vaccines [1], then in a revealing interview on the Ellen show in mid April he mentions them in passing [2], next in late April he suggests a role for them in easing the lockdown [3], and finally in June (in a somewhat revisionist interview) he castigates the american public for not wanting to wear them [4]

[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/How-to-respond-to-COVID-19

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oEcxMfwJnw

[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/26/business/bill-gates-coron...

[4] https://www.fastcompany.com/90520896/how-do-we-beat-coronavi...

Contrast this with a number of medical experts in Asia whose simple advice back in January basically nailed it, including the need for mask wearing, eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbJdRb6mds

It's a cautionary tale that even the richest philanthropists with the best advisers can fall considerably short, and may not even be aware of it...

If could be due to videos of him that show him saying how a 20:1 return on vaccines are a good investment (& presumably how his personal wealth almost doubled since ms days), as well as several citations of where he (& his wife) point the finger at over population as a problem, stating how a 10% reduction of global population would help.

His father was a known supporter of eugenics, apparently.

There are several memes out there highlighting the obvious: He's not a medical doctor.

I'd recommend watching the series on him by the Corbett Report [0] who always carefully cite original sources for the information presented.

[0] https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/

Since this is probably a worthless thread: imagine doing as much as Gates did, and then suddenly becoming the bogeyman of the dumbest conspiracy thinkers. How the hell does that even happen.

Well he is indirectly responsible for all the malware that propagated through Windows because of the well-known fact that Windows is a closed source, and therefore vulnerable system. Windows 10 has better mitigation against such threats, but is not bulletproof by any means. This man has contributed to the recent wave of ransomware attacks that have plagued IT departments.

So all viruses on closed-source software are the fault of the developer of that software for not opening it up?

“Why weren’t there more stories on the small businesses Sam Walton put out of business with Wal-Mart? Most success is driven that way. In its heyday, IBM was never loved.” — Bill Gates (Fortune, 28 December 1992)

“Any government action that would derail or delay Windows 98 would hurt the American economy and would cost American jobs.” — Bill Gates (5 May 1998)

“I want to get as much mileage as possible out of our browser and Java relationship here. In other words a real advantage against Sun and Netscape. Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine Sun?” — Bill Gates (8 April 1997)

let's not forget, distilling anyone into "good" or "bad" is a trait of a weak mind.

OP here. I was fascinated by the author's take on the juxtaposition of Bill Gates' malevolent legacy of old, to wit:

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2007021720...

with the "new" Bill Gates model of what seems to be benevolence and global amity. Personally, I struggle with my sourness towards his past behaviour in light of what I see as admirable conduct in the present.

This too applies to me. I disliked his effect on the industry at large, and software licencing, and pace of development. His work outside of the computing industry has been humane, and focussed on matters often at odds with the US republican christian-right wing: women's reproductive health, contraception and vaccination. For that, I applaud him.

I agreed until you said "weak mind". It's normal and human to try to categorize people and see them as a consistent actor.

It's also something we're socialized to do (to see people as good or evil) by religion, movies, comics, the justice system, and political leaders. It's not easy to escape from all that conditioning.

Despite his cut-throat approach to business, Bill Gates has a more net positive impact on the world that most people who have ever lived.

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