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873 points helsinkiandrew | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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politelemon ◴[] No.45374648[source]
I am seeing several kneejerk "Microsoft bad" reactions here, which HNers don't do for many other companies. I encourage many of you to read what is written.

They listened to their internal staff and stakeholders and public pressure, and did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down.

That is a good thing.

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BrenBarn ◴[] No.45376783[source]
The problem is that if you're very very bad, you can do a good thing and still be very bad.
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hashim ◴[] No.45376811[source]
What other reasons are Microsoft very very bad? Genuinely curious about what your definition of "very, very bad" is and whether it aligns with mine.
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1. BrenBarn ◴[] No.45382371{3}[source]
In other comments replying to another user you dismissed "criticisms from the 90s", but I think that's not entirely justified. If the bad things they did in the 90s are still having bad effects today, and they built their success on those bad things, then it's not really enough just to stop doing them; they would need to actively try to right those past wrongs.

However, even in the present, the increasing intrusiveness of their update schemes, forcing people to have a Microsoft account even to install Windows, shoving AI into people's faces at every opportunity, etc., would all count as reasons I think they are bad. Also I tend to think in general that simply existing as a giant corporation with large market share is bad.

To be clear, I also think that Apple, Google, Amazon, etc., are also very very bad. I think I'd agree that these days Microsoft is on the lower end of badness among these megacorps. However, that's partly just because it's become somewhat weaker than it was at the height of its badness. You could argue that this isn't "badness" but something like "ability to implement badness" but I see those as pretty closely tied. Basically the bigger a corporation becomes, the harder it has to work to avoid being bad.