6 ms·

Conspiracy theory

by jaboutboul 8mo ago

Conspiracy theory

ane 8mo ago
Now it is. In the late 90s/early 00s it wasn’t. MS is quite different today from what it was back then.
- bonesss 8mo ago
  The MS of today is actively reaping the benefits of the EEE & openly shady business years. Their behavioural changes can be framed as an intentional reformation, but also as exhausting high-value targets, losing monopolies, and settling into profitable equilibrium out of necessity. Modern competitors to MS are effectively immune to MS-EEE, in some cases by being way better at every aspect of it (MS IE is now delivered by Google based on forked Apple tech, and Office uses React, for quick examples…). MS pivoted to Azure-entanglements for their entrenched customers, which remains highly profitable, but have also had a marked decrease in engineering clout in certain key areas and still have a fragmented client/GUI ecosystem. I’d contend they haven’t changed, they’re just cornered in ways they never were before so we see different behaviour. If MS controlled iOS or Facebook or WebKit or Search we’d see more classic plays reminding us who owns what.
mcintyre1994 8mo ago
It might be when used now, but it was used by Microsoft internally at the time. First part of that Wikipedia page: > "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used open standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and using the differences to strongly disadvantage its competitors.
rkachowski 8mo ago
Are you speaking on behalf of Microsoft?
- jaboutboul 8mo ago
  i'm speaking on behalf of myself. While yes, this was true back in then day, that is very much not the philosophy nowadays. it's a different company with different leadership than those days.
  - int_19h 8mo ago
    Speaking as an ex-MSFT employee who was there during the "new leadership" transition, the new leadership is not any less sociopathic than the old one. I'll give you that Satya is more charismatic so he can hide it better than Ballmer, but that only makes it worse.
randunel 8mo ago
Are you really claiming the US-DoJ are conspiracy theorists?
nophunphil 8mo ago
You shouldn’t be posting replies like this on a public forum if you’re actually a MS employee.
jaboutboul 8mo ago
i should have added an lol to the end of this

Conspiracy theory

ane 8mo ago

Now it is. In the late 90s/early 00s it wasn’t. MS is quite different today from what it was back then.

bonesss 8mo ago
The MS of today is actively reaping the benefits of the EEE & openly shady business years. Their behavioural changes can be framed as an intentional reformation, but also as exhausting high-value targets, losing monopolies, and settling into profitable equilibrium out of necessity. Modern competitors to MS are effectively immune to MS-EEE, in some cases by being way better at every aspect of it (MS IE is now delivered by Google based on forked Apple tech, and Office uses React, for quick examples…). MS pivoted to Azure-entanglements for their entrenched customers, which remains highly profitable, but have also had a marked decrease in engineering clout in certain key areas and still have a fragmented client/GUI ecosystem. I’d contend they haven’t changed, they’re just cornered in ways they never were before so we see different behaviour. If MS controlled iOS or Facebook or WebKit or Search we’d see more classic plays reminding us who owns what.

mcintyre1994 8mo ago

It might be when used now, but it was used by Microsoft internally at the time. First part of that Wikipedia page: > "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used open standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and using the differences to strongly disadvantage its competitors.

rkachowski 8mo ago

Are you speaking on behalf of Microsoft?

jaboutboul 8mo ago
i'm speaking on behalf of myself. While yes, this was true back in then day, that is very much not the philosophy nowadays. it's a different company with different leadership than those days.
- int_19h 8mo ago
  Speaking as an ex-MSFT employee who was there during the "new leadership" transition, the new leadership is not any less sociopathic than the old one. I'll give you that Satya is more charismatic so he can hide it better than Ballmer, but that only makes it worse.

randunel 8mo ago

Are you really claiming the US-DoJ are conspiracy theorists?

nophunphil 8mo ago

You shouldn’t be posting replies like this on a public forum if you’re actually a MS employee.

jaboutboul 8mo ago

i should have added an lol to the end of this