Has Microsoft Earned Your Respect?

[Ausfalcon]

MikeB said:

Many if not most of their business decisions which made them big were illegal and anti-competitive. It's not entirely the offender's fault, but mostly also the US government which should have upheld the law much more strictly. Of course Microsoft funded various governments to a large extend, which would in many countries be illegal due conflicts of interest. But I think if Microsoft was an Iranian company the US would have boycotted them and maybe even find an excuse to bomb the facility...

If Microsoft were an Iranian company from the beginning they never would have had any market share in most Western nations for security reasons in the first place.  And because of that they never would have gotten as large as the Microsoft of reality.  This fantasy Iranian Microsoft would hardly be worth bombing.

Microsoft has a long history now.  They are a huge company.  Can someone list a bunch of instances where they acted in a way that is distasteful to most?  Of course.  To say "many if not most of their business decisions" related to their growth as a firm were illegal is pretty silly in regard to the "most" jab.  We are talking about, at a minimum many thousands of decisions over the years. and "most" were probably illegal?  Please.

The reality is Microsoft became what it is today via a large number of factors.  Some of which include both hard work and luck.  Some of which include them being ruthless businessmen (using the term very loosely) at other times.  Its easy to hate #1, its even easier to gloss over the fact that a lot of large corporations do the same or worse all the time.  Anyone that thinks Steve Jobs is any less ruthless than Steve Ballmer is probably fooling themselves.

What I find more disturbing though is the complacency of the average consumer, both home and corporate.  I agree that Microsoft have slowed technological advance, but where are the masses demanding something truly better?  IT Managers get Exchange because its "safe" as a corporate decision.  The same with Office and Windows.  Sad to say, it takes real balls to wave Sun's whitepaper about switching your firm to open source Open Office.