"Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s." It was not only the internet. In some way it was an evil monopoly that did everything to prevent others from innovate and forced usage of it's own crappy software. The citation come's from PG's essay from 2007 "Microsoft is dead" [0].
Just like today's "mean people" essay, PG was likely wrong in that essay as well. Firstly, regarding the "shadow that was cast", let's look at some data rather than rely on what "everyone knows", shall we? Here's a relevant paper that looks at some data (caveat - it only covers events up to 2000, but then that's the period PG talks about as well):
And of course Microsoft is not "dead" or "irrelevant" and does not produce "crappy software", as much as the Silicon Valley hive-mind would like to think so. This is trivially disproved by looking at 1) their revenues and 2) their ranking in the top brands worldwide over the last decade and a half.
You should read Microsoft's reply to the essay [0] which contains your arguments and PG's reply to it [1].
It's interesting to review claims from years ago and I think PG was largely right. Microsoft is not completely irrelevant (yet?) but they definitely lost the cultural war and moves like open sourcing .NET show that they want to join the old opponent's positions.
I'll add that I'm not sure if Microsoft's historical influence was evil. They prevented fragmentation and created a unified environment and probably enabled PC revolution.
Heh, I actually happen to like McDonalds! I think it has the best fast food you can get out there, especially for the price. Imagine that, people have opinions contrary to yours!
Now imagine something harder to believe: the vast majority of people have opinions contrary to yours.
That's the thing about shadows; they can be subtle, and introduced in boring ways, little by little. See John Oliver's explanation of the boringness of the net neutrality debates for an example of how boring, seemingly trivial minutiae can have lasting serious effects. The anti-dual-boot provisions in MS's OEM agreements were a particularly egregious example. Killing Internet progress for years is another.
Yeah, I just don't see it. It takes more than one party to make an OEM agreement and I don't see a problem with Microsoft doing just as they please with their own OS, just as Apple and Google do with their own properties.
I get that people like to blame one party, but let's look at the bigger picture here: every company plays hard-ball with their own properties if they can. In my opinion, Apple and Google have been far more damaging to the software world than Microsoft had ever been. Apple because they popularized the walled-garden approach to everything and Google because they evangelize taking all control away from users by making every app web or cloud driven with zero choice.
Microsoft didn't just "play hardball"; they abused a monopoly position to extinguish competition, and they lost multiple antitrust suits because of it. The fact that other companies are misbehaving now doesn't negate the damage MS did in the 1990s. OEMs couldn't refuse MS agreements because of MS's monopoly. To an extent the computing world has recovered, so if you weren't old enough or not yet into the computing industry you might not have noticed, but the market would be way more interesting without MS's anticompetitive bullying.
He writes about the dangers Microsoft saw in Javascript and generally an open web that escapes Microsoft's lock-in, and that they kept Javascript broken to prevent the escape.
I posted the link mainly because I think that a large portion of Hackernews audience is young and doesn't have a feel of times when Microsoft was casting the shadow on everything... And I think this "Ask HN" is an example of this.
Comments
"Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s." It was not only the internet. In some way it was an evil monopoly that did everything to prevent others from innovate and forced usage of it's own crappy software. The citation come's from PG's essay from 2007 "Microsoft is dead" [0].
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
Just like today's "mean people" essay, PG was likely wrong in that essay as well. Firstly, regarding the "shadow that was cast", let's look at some data rather than rely on what "everyone knows", shall we? Here's a relevant paper that looks at some data (caveat - it only covers events up to 2000, but then that's the period PG talks about as well):
"Did Microsoft Deter Software Innovation?", Josh Lerner, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=269498
Spoiler: It follows Betteridge's Law.
And of course Microsoft is not "dead" or "irrelevant" and does not produce "crappy software", as much as the Silicon Valley hive-mind would like to think so. This is trivially disproved by looking at 1) their revenues and 2) their ranking in the top brands worldwide over the last decade and a half.
You should read Microsoft's reply to the essay [0] which contains your arguments and PG's reply to it [1].
It's interesting to review claims from years ago and I think PG was largely right. Microsoft is not completely irrelevant (yet?) but they definitely lost the cultural war and moves like open sourcing .NET show that they want to join the old opponent's positions.
I'll add that I'm not sure if Microsoft's historical influence was evil. They prevented fragmentation and created a unified environment and probably enabled PC revolution.
[0] http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/04/since... [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html
Enjoy chowing down on McDonalds, because apparently, by your own measure, it's not crappy food.
Heh, I actually happen to like McDonalds! I think it has the best fast food you can get out there, especially for the price. Imagine that, people have opinions contrary to yours!
Now imagine something harder to believe: the vast majority of people have opinions contrary to yours.
How did they do it though? PG's opinion wasn't very detailed in that respect.
- Using secret OEM agreements to prevent preinstallation of alternative operating systems such as BeOS
- Making 3.x versions of Windows crash when run on DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS
- Using undocumented Windows APIs in other MS software that let them do things third parties (like WordPerfect) couldn't do as easily.
- Running FUD campaigns against Linux
- Funding SCO to run FUD campaigns against Linux
- As others mentioned, bundling and integrating IE in a way other browser vendors could not match (e.g. as explorer.exe), then stopping development
- Railroading useless standards like OOXML instead of using and improving the OpenDocument standards.
- Running for years on WMA instead of MP3
- etc.
Some references:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2007021720...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
My favorite is the OS/2 2.0 fiasco.
Seems like a far cry from "cast[ing] a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years..." Is there anything else?
That's the thing about shadows; they can be subtle, and introduced in boring ways, little by little. See John Oliver's explanation of the boringness of the net neutrality debates for an example of how boring, seemingly trivial minutiae can have lasting serious effects. The anti-dual-boot provisions in MS's OEM agreements were a particularly egregious example. Killing Internet progress for years is another.
Yeah, I just don't see it. It takes more than one party to make an OEM agreement and I don't see a problem with Microsoft doing just as they please with their own OS, just as Apple and Google do with their own properties.
I get that people like to blame one party, but let's look at the bigger picture here: every company plays hard-ball with their own properties if they can. In my opinion, Apple and Google have been far more damaging to the software world than Microsoft had ever been. Apple because they popularized the walled-garden approach to everything and Google because they evangelize taking all control away from users by making every app web or cloud driven with zero choice.
Microsoft didn't just "play hardball"; they abused a monopoly position to extinguish competition, and they lost multiple antitrust suits because of it. The fact that other companies are misbehaving now doesn't negate the damage MS did in the 1990s. OEMs couldn't refuse MS agreements because of MS's monopoly. To an extent the computing world has recovered, so if you weren't old enough or not yet into the computing industry you might not have noticed, but the market would be way more interesting without MS's anticompetitive bullying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation#Government...
He writes about the dangers Microsoft saw in Javascript and generally an open web that escapes Microsoft's lock-in, and that they kept Javascript broken to prevent the escape.
I posted the link mainly because I think that a large portion of Hackernews audience is young and doesn't have a feel of times when Microsoft was casting the shadow on everything... And I think this "Ask HN" is an example of this.