[qubex]

I never liked Bill Gates when I was a power user in the nineties and early 2000s but it really is amazing that one could offset his contribution to disease eradication and his philanthropy generally with some aggravation about his business’ tactics and nebulous what-ifs about what might have happened if he had not been on the scene or had behaved differently. (Moore’s Law would did it’s thing anyway, whether he was there or not, and even with him there, Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway.) Do you really think the annoyance of a free browser warrants indicting his post-business career?

[dTal]

>Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway

Hardly. Market share is still roughly 85% Windows, 15% Mac, and fuck-all % Linux, which is reflected in the level of support provided for applications, games, hardware etc. Even disregarding compatibility, MacOS is not a straightforward alternative as it only runs on Apple hardware, which is very expensive and only offers a narrow range of opinionated designs.

[johansch]

You're very naive if you think that Microsoft's market abuses was limited to web browsers.

This is way too non-inclusive, but at least it's something:

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/302767/9-companies-microsoft-d...

In the 80s Microsoft under Bill Gates was extremely fierce. Silicon Valley software companies lived in constant fear.

There was a bunch of well-documented market abuse using the control of the OS (MS-DOS).

Further reading:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41611.Hard_Drive

[johansch]

Just noting that this comment first only talked about the browser bundling antitrust thing, and then, after I commented, completely morphed into something else.

[qubex]

I’m not really sure what you are referring to because I have not edited any of my comments, but this one probably closely resembles another one I made further up and therefore might give you the impression that there had been some ’morphing’ involved.