[serf]

this was released in 1996.

Microsoft was at one of its' most powerful evil phases it had ever seen during that phase, and to pretend it was some kind of antithesis to 'corporate metric please' is a disservice to history.

I liked comic chat , and I see that your actual point is more just "ai bad" , but 88-99 microsoft was brutally corporate metric pleasing.

see also : Microsoft antitrust history Microsoft FTC investigation 1990 Microsoft DOJ antitrust 1993 Microsoft 1994 consent decree Microsoft anticompetitive licensing Microsoft per-processor licensing Microsoft consent decree Judge Stanley Sporkin Microsoft vaporware antitrust Microsoft market foreclosure 1990s Gary Kildall Microsoft controversy Stac Electronics / DoubleSpace Microsoft Stac Electronics lawsuit Microsoft DoubleSpace patent infringement Microsoft Intuit acquisition antitrust

feels like selling an old bicycle on craigslist with the amount of things you can tag M$ with.

[hedora]

This came out of Microsoft Research, which was a bit of a safe haven from such stuff back then.

MSN Chat was the full corporate bundled with windows program that matches your description of ‘90s Microsoft. A non-monetized chat app targeting decentralized protocols definitely was not.

[Sharlin]

Still, they managed to Embrace&Extend the IRC protocol in a way that was annoying to anyone not using Comic Chat.

[CursedSilicon]

Microsoft was a massive corporation

To imply that every single person there was evil to their core simply by association is utterly ridiculous.

I doubt the guy who created Minesweeper was dreaming of world domination while working there

[johannes1234321]

The fish stinks from the head. And yes, some departments have some freedom and some good people.

But it was in the timeframe where the "browser wars" gained momentum, where Microsoft Network tried to "Microsoftify" the Internet etc.

Even if it was a research project by research focussed people it fit in the bigger strategy and gave a friendly face.