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Comment by elforce002 | Hacker News Reader

While we're at it, we need to break Microsoft and Amazon asap. I don't know how Microsoft is not up for discussion when it's a behemoth (GitHub, LinkedIn, Azure, Windows, Office, etc.). The same applies for Amazon.

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> I don't know how Microsoft is not up for discussion when it's a behemoth

Because we think interfering with the free market is necessary when a company misuses market power, not solely when it is a behemoth.

Public companies exist to enrich shareholders. If you are in a position to abuse your market power, you're sorta obligated to.

But doing so increases risk from regulators

I think if you can get as big as Google, Apple, or Microsoft without being broken up, companies haven't much to worry about.

Agreed. Free markets is such a massive misnomer.

The only thing that matters is competitive markets.

“Free markets” is typically associated with regulatory capture, buying out your competitors, and abusing your monopoly status to thwart others.

Governments should care about competition, not that abusive corporations stay at the top.

That’s not my understanding

The Gilded Age Trusts were brought down regardless as to whether they misused their power. It wasn’t just oil.

Monopolies are like a positive feedback loop which causes the market to diverge into a barely functional state

It doesn’t matter if they abused their market position, monopolies are to be corrected, mens rea present or not

Let’s be real: Windows is practically a monopoly. They use it to push their online services in ridiculous ways. I doubt >10% of the current Edge userbase is through conscious decision. Teams obviously cannot compete on its own terms with any competitors, its prevalence only comes from being part of Microsoft’s all in one office suite package that no individual company can compete with.

I don't think it's true that Windows is a monopoly anymore. You could always get a mac. Most people I know use macs, in fact. I still use Windows but I'm in the minority. I tried going to Linux earlier but I still feel Windows has smoother performance.

Windows is 60-70% of US PC usage. Mac is 20-25%.

Globally, it's even more lopsided with Windows at about 75% and Mac at about 15%.

Hard to say Windows isn't a monopoly.

The usage percentage doesn't really matter so much as how they got to that % percentage.

But Microsoft has misused their market power plenty of times, such as when they bundled Microsoft Teams with their enterprise contract at zero cost, destroying Slack's market value overnight.

Not just bundled, but force-installed Teams on every Windows computer.

Or how about the fact that basically no one uses Windows by choice, they use it because they need to for some app, and because of that Microsoft makes the entire OS constantly harass everyone to try and trick them into signing up for Microsoft services.

Regularly I get an OS update that walks me through "setting up" my "new" PC I've had for 3 years, and it involves dodging dark pattern UIs to not sign up for Office or Xbox Game Pass or set Edge as my default browser. And even if I succeed, they'll probably have taught my computer a new way to try to sell me something.

One update they added their horrible Copilot chatbot as an app to my taskbar, which I promptly unpinned. Then the next update they removed my "show desktop" button - which has been a consistent part of Windows for 15 years - and replaced it with ANOTHER COPILOT BUTTON. I had to look up online how to restore a basic navigation button that was replaced with an ad for their terrible new AI product.

"Basically no one uses Windows by choice"

Uhh not really, I use it by choice, because it provides functionality that other brands don't.

That operating system provides functionality, compatibility and services that other manufacturers don't.

No idea what functions or services Windows has that doesn't exist on other platforms in an equal or superior way. PowerShell maybe?

"Compatibility" is exactly what I'm referring to as being the issue. I use Windows because it has compatibility with my Steam library. But if I could play those games hassle-free on another platform then I'd love to never boot up that dark-pattern-riddled adware dumpster fire excuse for an OS again.

But the fact that you have all of that compatibility is partly why the OS has its flaws

Aside from any adware…

Speak for yourself. "We" didn't agree to anything.

They tried to do this in 2000/2001, but it didn't result in a breakup.

GitHub isn't making me use Azure, Azure isn't making me use Office, Teams isn't making me use Bing.

See the point here? All of Google pieces are a giant machine to collude in the same direction: their ad engine.

How does Google Cloud (I mean GCP, not Workspace) fit in to that idea?

It's not particularly bundled to the ad engine.

Bad counter example. Have you tried using Google ads or analytics without using BigQuery? What about server containers (not the type of containers in the docker sense you’re thinking of)? The data exfil costs for anything else tie you to gcp.

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