[Supermancho]

> It's a little unfair to call them dead.

At least start to read the article.

> They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they're not dangerous

It's not "unfair" to not match your definition. The author is making the case about a particular definition of a predatory force in software, at large.

There's perhaps an argument that they are dangerous in a way we haven't yet seen, due to their involvement with the US military and the corruption inherent in that terrible choice.

[chadash]

In a sense, they aren't dangerous because you wouldn't dare to compete with them in some areas. Most notably, every freakin business in the world uses their Office Suite and there's no serious competitor. Think about that... software that everyone from college students to accountants to lawyers to investment bankers uses and there's only a single vendor.

In some of their other businesses, I'd argue that they are very scary. If you work at AWS they are a formidable competitor. If you are in the video game industry, they are a behemoth. But very few startups can really compete in this space, other than for the niches.

[dtrizzle]

They still have a tremendous amount of power and other companies should still fear them. For example, Microsoft Teams versus Slack.

[bumby]

>involvement with the US military and the corruption inherent in that terrible choice.

Can you elaborate?

[vishnugupta]

Perhaps they meant this https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20700698/microsoft-penta... ?