[msla]

High-Period Microsoft looked like it was on track to utterly own the desktop and, therefore, consumer and small business computing world to the point it would be able to keep any non-Microsoft-approved software from existing. (Hardware and software, with Winmodems pointing the way to hardware that only works with Microsoft drivers, not to mention BIOS makers basically giving up and turning their code into first-stage bootloaders for MS Windows.) It killed Netscape and turned IE6 into a millstone around the Web's neck, showing what Microsoft could do to anything it didn't deem sufficiently profitable at the moment. Later, in the early 2000s, Palladium (Trusted Computing Platform) was seen by the most pessimistic as the end of the line for non-Microsoft OSes on commodity hardware: The hardware would only boot encrypted OSes, MS would hold the keys, the government would prosecute anyone cracking the code as a terrorist. Good game, scrub.

The Halloween Documents were only the start of Microsoft's attacks on Open Source in general and Linux in specific; it arguably funded SCO during that company's lawsuit against Linux, IBM's support for Linux, and basic common sense, by buying Linux and Unix licenses from SCO and introducing SCO to BayStar Capital. That isn't so much at arm's length as at finger's length. Around the same time, Ballmer said the Linux kernel was Communism, said it infringed Microsoft's intellectual property, and a bit later called Linux cancer. He also used the "viral license" insult, proving that big companies are sufficiently stymied by the GPL to dislike it. You kinda lose plausible deniability when you call something cancer and then give money to the company trying to sue it out of existence.

But that's Ballmer. Gates all by himself was seen, at least by people who didn't just view him as a Funny Rich Nerd, as a sharp operator at the very least who did nasty things to competitors and had no scruples about doing questionably legal things to win. Jobs without the Cult Of Mac, in other words.

[Tijdreiziger]

I commented on this before, but I’m surprised Microsoft screwed up mobile as thoroughly as they did.

They could have dominated, but instead they all but gave away the personal computing space to Apple and Google, and had to pivot the company to cloud computing instead.

[msla]

Microsoft was late to the Internet, too. Gates didn't decide to really jump in with both feet until 1995, which... OK, not hugely late, but not exactly leading the trend, either:

https://lettersofnote.com/2011/07/22/the-internet-tidal-wave...

Of course, it ultimately wouldn't matter that much, with IE6 destroying Netscape and what MSN eventually became turning into an important portal.

I'd love to have some tell-all book about what the heck was happening inside Microsoft which prevented them from doing a good phone OS.

Instead, I found this:

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsofts-terry-myerson-and-...

1. Bad base OS from Windows CE.

2. Industry moved too fast.

3. Damn Android treating carriers and hardware makers better than us.

It's a blatant Microsoft booster site, sure.

Another view is from here:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/10/16452162/windows-phone-h...

Which posits that Google did unto Microsoft what Microsoft did unto Digital Research: Locked it out of important apps, like a YouTube app. Plus, Android already had a more vibrant ecosystem in general. Again, Microsoft was a bit slow, but this time, it cost them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

[Bubble_Pop_22]

> Linux kernel was Communism

Linux IS communism. Excellent developers are humans too, they want a beach mansion in Naples and West Palm Beach, with a 45ft boat and the whole 9.

Linux offers them a mod role in some obscure online forum and a pat on their back. That formula doesn't work regardless of what Ballmer said or the legal actions.

You make it sound like Linux failed to be on 95% of desktops because of what Ballmer said, which is the same as thinking that the USSR/DDR collapsed because Reagan said "Tear down this wall!"

Microsoft signed off incredible amounts of quality of life for the consumer and minted many thoudands of millionaires among its employees, whereas they destroyed the ambitions of many other paper millionaires who should have known better, they should have understood that software is a winner take all business and should have cashed out when they could. Unless you are one of them, then I cannot possibly see how people can see Microsoft and claim that it's cancerous.

Microsoft is the most consumer friendly company ever. They know billions of people are pirating their OS+Office and let them rob them blind while they recoup such lost revenues by increasing the bill on sales to Fortune500 companies and governments. Which is something extremely elegant that goes to mimic the organization of society in the West : free market Capitalism with redistributive features.