| other companies care about owning the platforms, if they own the platforms they get to squeeze everyone who uses them. Much like everyone wants to be a payment provider because taking a cut on every payment is very, very lucrative Microsoft gave up on trying to create new platforms, the main reasons in my opinion are: 1) Regulations are going to come down hard on platforms 2) User-happiness and developer happiness is reduced if you squeeze, eventually bringing down the platform 3) Dependence, if your platform starts to fail you can't pivot because your business is just completely reliant on owning the platform. You can see how google owning AdSense is screwing them over now 4) Dutch disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease Microsoft seems to have figured out that owning a platform is not a long-term recipe for success. If anything it is like being an oil-rich country, eventually the only thing you can do is exporting oil. Probably because they went through it with Windows and Office So the definition of success depends on what you think success is, Microsoft just changed what success means for big tech companies, providing an alternative route. We will see if they can stick with it or if they will try to build platform-moats again (it is very tempting to do so when you find one) |