John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

> because of state backing and state objectives

MS is a state backed company. Very natural that China went the same path.

No it isn't

Technically you are correct but the commenter you’re responding to means that with the amount of Western Governments spend on MS products and services, the are a d facto (if not de jure) state backed enterprise.

Yes, but the power play seams to be more like MS backes several states.

MS has deep ties into the state department and intelligence apparatus that few other companies do. Just as deep as the defense contractors who have a near monopoly-monopsony relationship with the federal government. You can argue about how exclusive they are in particular qualities but the scale and depth they operate at makes their relationship approximate the relationship Huawei does with the Chinese government. They're just what state-backed enterprises look like under liberal-ish capitalism.

US government spending is (for now) easy to track, and you can get totals for spending by corporate entity.

In total across the entire US federal government, $518.8 million was paid to Microsoft for products and services in 2024. That is approximately 0.21% of their total annual revenue.

I assert that the threshold for "state sponsored" is well in excess of 0.21% of annual revenue.

Federal Spending: https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/dd77b7c3-663e-cb91-229...

Microsoft Annual Revenue: https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar24/index.html

If you look at Ford and Intel you would find similar numbers - but they are clearly quasi state entities.

How much money have states and local governments spent on Microsoft products and services? How much money has Microsoft collected from companies that are providing products and services to US governmental agencies?

Government spending is not easy to track. This doesn't even begin to touch on non-monetary benefits Microsoft receives with government influence.

I don't think you know what state backed enterprise means. You or anybody who spouts this.

Exactly

Now you are really starting to bend over backwards. The claim was that MS was a state enterprise. It's still not even close.

I'm mostly adding context to the statistic that Microsoft makes 0.21% of its revenue from the federal government, and arguing against the sub-claim that government spending is easy to track.