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Comment by gbog | Hacker News Reader

No, please, we have such hard time moving MS out of the hot field, don't bring them back!

Remember when everyone feared MS? I mean, that was really terriying time for our industry. How forgetful is it to "wish" MS could gain a third of the phone OS market shared... Apple and Google conjugated efforts kept the wolf outside and you want to open the gates?

However, I agree that a domineering Android/Google or Android/Samsumg is harmful for the market. Let us hope some other OSes can grab a piece of it. I have some hope in Cyanogenmod, which could be forking away from Android (just like Linux forked Unix). And, if you look at it, that is just what Chinese companies are doing (xiaomi, etc.): forking Android and gain market shares.

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>just like Linux forked Unix

Darl McBride? Is that you?

Lol! Not sure why anyone would downvote you for that gem!

Huh? Microsoft was terrifying because they dominated the PC market. This comment proposes their having 33% of the smartphone market. How is that "terrifying"?

Microsoft has a long history of not playing fair. If it were to have 33% of the market, it isn’t unthinkable that it will try all possible dirty tricks in the book to gain the upper hand. Right now, Windows Phone’s market share is negligible, Microsoft has zero leverage so it has to play by the book.

Microsoft is also a completely different company now than it was dozens of years ago when this was an issue. They're more safe now, less risky.

“Microsoft executives have proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing.” –Judge Thomas Jackson, 2001, United States v. Microsoft

In the last decade, Microsoft has been investigated and fined by several governments, and investigations by several are still ongoing.

That's a dozen years ago. So while you may think it's relevant now, it's not.

Since then, most of the leadership has changed, and, really because of that lawsuit, Microsoft became more serious, precautious company.

Last year, Microsoft was ordered by the EU to pay Euro 860 million, for breaking promises it made after the 2004 antitrust case. In March of this year, Microsoft was fined another Euro 561 million.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A ruling that is very controversial. The browser ballot was enforced based on the idea that Microsoft had a dominant share of the market, which this very thread goes out of its way to disprove. The EU decision was a cash grab, nothing more. Microsoft has no market dominance, and other more dominant players aren't forced to live by the same rules. If Android has 80% market share, why isn't Google forced to present a choice of default browser at first start up (simply allowing alternative browsers in the ecosystem was not enough for Microsoft in this case)?

Microsoft has been convicted multiple times for abusing its market position. As a repeat offender, different rules apply for it. That’s why Microsoft isn’t allowed to live anywhere near a school or playground.

Apple has been convicted of patent infringement multiple times and was recently convicted of abusing their market position to commit unfair trade practices. Yet no one breathes Apple and anti-trust in the same sentence.

> Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect

Funny, replace Microsoft with Apple in this pull and it would still make sense (but not with the rest of the quote)

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