Linux

Embrace, extend, extinguish

Microsoft is definitely the corpoest of them all.

Probably not the worst corpo, likely even, but out of the corpos, they are the most corpo corpo of any corpo.

1. They own LinkedIn, and I could just stop this list here.
2. They're the founding fathers of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.
3. They are the vanguard of videogame studio consolidation, after buying Activision and Bethesda.
4. AI
5. Everything they do is soggy bread: you can eat it, it's probably mostly healthy, I think, but if a product is not the minimum viable product then it will be; take the Halo franchise as a reference for blandness, Windows for end user tolerance - both are controversial yet functional and popular software that people complain (and do nothing) about. Halo took quite a hit in popularity, but still...
6. Remember when a software company got in trouble for monopolistic practices? That was a thing that happened at some point, and it was Microsoft. Not that it will ever happen again, nowadays all the cool kids have some slice of the tech landscape on a chokehold.

They tried to destroy linux and free/libre software, and when that didn't work, they started cornering the market and pushing for a move from "Free" to "Open Source." They also support SaaS model, and have made it next to impossible to get a new computer without their mediocre OS. On top of that, their OS is full of spyware, and is starting to become adware too.

But that all pales in comparison to the fact that you do not own your own OS: you can run Microsoft's OS, but you can't modify it or share it.

Oh, and this falls more in the realm of personal preference, but the deliberate lack of customizability is a real pain in the ass.

4/10 OS, only slightly better at disguising its capitalist greed than Apple.

pretty much.

If you need a point for developers: all public code repositories hosted on GitHub are harvested, at least in 2021, and used to train copilot regardless of their license. Furthermore, GitHub is OWNED by Microsoft now.

my favorite bit was how no one at microsoft actually understood their own licensing pricing. for decades, you could call microsoft for pricing and get different answer from people in cubicles next to each other or even from your own rep.

it was as if they were making it up as needed.

Microsoft has been building the O365 platform to lock out competitors and locking users into an ecosystem that is difficult to leave. They systematically eliminate competition and have pushed to create laws that make competition harder. In embrace extend extinguish, they are in phase 3, which is a massive red flag. They also started putting out spyware and malware into their software and have proven they can't maintain security; making them a bad actor in a position of power. Scale is debatable, but Microsoft is undeniably evil in 2024.

How bad is Microsoft?

Yes

Windows is the worst thing that ever happened to computer science.

And I don't exaclly mean the product itself, but the mindset and habits that came with it.

Microsoft abuses their de facto monopoly to engage in gross invasion of their users' privacy, and continues to try to wrest their users' control of their system from them by altering system settings after updates, and making some settings nearly impossible to change. And that's to say nothing of MS's attempts to turn their operating system into and advertising platform.

How bad is Microsoft?

Bad enough to be stay away from

Maybe I'm going crazy but I feel like I've been seeing this post or an identical one for many days, maybe even a week, yet the age is still one day.

Still, fuck MS and all.

Why did you link to the Microsoft website?

They coined the term Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and they haven't stopped enforcing it. I haz not much faith on WSL and similar.

Microsoft is about as bad as any other proprietary software company. They do some good things for the open source economy, but they also mistreat their users.

I think it's a mistake to look at the free software movement as being a reaction against Microsoft or Google. It's against the proprietary software world in general.

First they tried to destroy FOSS, then they realized that they can make money and gain control using open source software, so now they pretend to support it. Microsoft is a monopolistic piece of garbage that I'm staying away from at all costs.

Yes. During the entire history of MSDOS, Windows and Internet Explorer, there are so many things you can pick why Microsoft is bad. Now they even integrate Recall into Windows. I want to say that I always disconnected Xbox from Microsoft; and I'm not entirely sure why.

The question of this post is a bit misleading, because it implies that someone could answer with "no". Better question (in my opinion) is "How bad is Microsoft?".

As a shareholder (which I'm not), it's absolutely amazing.

As a human being though... it's simple to look at the history of the company, from its inception based on nepotism and locking-down was hitherto the common good, to going from one place of monopoly (OS, app, cloud) to another (extending to whatever is trendy at the moment e.g XR with HoloLens, AI with OpenAI, etc).

It's IMHO one of the very worst thing that could have happened to humanity in terms of cognitive empowerment. Apple is not far behind but in terms of locking up an entire ecosystem but Microsoft, sadly, is doing it better.

To clarify what I mean is that Microsoft is the business embodiment of learned helplessness. Most people would shrug at the quality of software they provide, the price, etc ONLY because they are convinced, wrongfully so, that they are is no legitimate alternative. If users were actually able to chose, not being coerced into but properly chose, by experiencing alternatives, the World would be totally different. Instead of having computer users who feel an adversarial relationship to their devices, we would have a much stronger relation of "this is MY device" the same way a lot (not all) of people have a repair toolbox at home. They know they can try to fix something in THEIR home, even improve it. Most people understand it won't be easy, they might mess it up, but it's possible to try. Not in software, and that's entirely Microsoft "success". Maybe in an alternative reality others, like Apple, would have made that happen to, but in our reality I blame Microsoft, Bill Gates upbringing from his legal mindset father and well connected mother.

We could have a world were users own their devices, have a challenging yet empowering relationship to technology, starting with software, and instead we have exploitative learning helplnessness. So yes, Microsoft is that bad.

Working there is apparently pretty nice. Microsoft on the inside is not Microsoft on the outside.

But regardless, terrible company with terrible products. Even if they didn't do anything shady, they still aren't great.

I think overall they are not better or worse than other tech giants. They try to be the platform for blank and thus to push competitors out of the marked, or lock it down so they can't enter. They try to extract as much money from their customers as they can, even if it makes the user experience worse. They push the boundaries of what the can legally do. They charge you, but you don't own anything.

What really grinds my gears is how they try to force stuff on me that I don't fucking want. I feel like they are completely different in that regard than for example Google. I use Google Maps because I want to. I don't use Chrome because I don't want to. It's that easy. They don't ask me to reconsider, they don't make it super complicated to switch, nothing. I can disable any Google App and forget about it.

To stick with the Google comparison, I also feel like Google informs me better and gives me more control regarding my data. This feels much more hidden on convoluted in MS products in general. For example I had no idea Office is basically spyware before reading about it elsewhere. In Google-land, they seem much more upfront about what they use and what I can opt out from (or in to).

I don't think about Microsoft at all mostly. I supported their stuff professionally in the past and friends/family but otherwise total avoidance. They own some big game studios so I probably use some of their products like Minecraft but I haven't used their operating systems or applications for decades and I dislike and distrust cloud services and theirs is no exception. All big companies tend to be the same. Try not to depend on any of them.

No offence, but have you been living under a Microsoft shaped rock for the past 30 years?

IMO the title of "worst computer tech company" is essentially a tie between MS and Google right now, with the two constantly one-upping the other back and forth on stupid ideas and corporate practices.

Is this the circlejerk community of lemmy?

Undoubtedly

Microsoft has basically taken almost all businesses in the world hostage.
Once your staff is trained on MS products and your own stuff is fully connected to Azure, you're trapped and they can adjust prices to just below what you can bear.

Microsoft doesn't need a monopoly in the dying consumer desktop market anymore. That's why they're the top contributor to the Linux kernel, integrated a Linux layer into their OS, offer to save documents in an open format in Office, and host articles on how to install Linux in their documentation.

The year of the Linux desktop has finally come. Everyone who doesn't still run Windows 7, now has a Unix system installed on their PCs (and all other devices). It's just one that's distributed by Google, Microsoft or Apple.

There is a lot out there on why from a lot of sources, so definitely not hard to do research on this. Definitely research the history of this company regarding anti-competition, Bill Gate's letter to hobbyists regarding intellectual property and markets (which touches on the whole proprietary vs FOSS suff). You can also just use their products for a while and see for yourself, note what you like and what you don't like (for me the latter is more likely), and make your own judgement.

does it matter how bad it is? does it matter how much shit is in a shit sandwich?

I'm not having it however little there is.