
An oral history of the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit - danso
https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/5/18/17362452/microsoft-antitrust-lawsuit-netscape-internet-explorer-20-years
======
aaron-lebo
No matter what shine Microsoft or Gates have since put on their actions, this
should never be forgotten. This was a person and company so greedy that
billions upon billions weren't enough, complete control was necessary.

Has Gates ever come out and acknowledged that his actions at that time were
wrong?

In retrospect it's kind of amazing that the government even took the actions
they did there. It's hard to imagine today. The article touches on it, but the
big companies seem to have wizened up to it. They don't need or want complete
control, they just want control of their customers. Every once in awhile
they'll send off a 1984-ish salvo against each other, but actually outright
winning is too costly. It's way too productive to just screw over customers,
and they all do it, because they can.

The discussion about Google and others at the end is interesting:

 _He understood completely what Microsoft was doing, and, as I like to say,
there are only about eight plays in the monopolist’s playbook. He saw all of
them. So that when he got market power [as the CEO of Google], he could
execute those same kinds of exclusionary plays and he knew exactly what to do.
He knew what worked for Microsoft and what didn’t. It’s a very, very parallel
situation. … There are no coincidences here._

Unfortunately with government as it is in the US, it's probably not going to
save us. It's going to take new, better companies to beat the current giants.
Hopefully some of you are trying.

As an aside, this video of the Windows 95 launch is great. Ballmer is
naturally acting like an idiot, but there's Gates in the background, so
seemingly mild, but whom was in fact one of the most cutthroat businessmen in
the world

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAkuJXGldrM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAkuJXGldrM).

~~~
blueside
Like clockwork, this kind of anti-MS comment get downvoted on HN. I've been
fascinated by this, what am I missing?

Gates is highly celebrated now, but it seems like he was the furthest thing
from a fair and honest competitor. If Gates and Ballmer had their way, I don't
want to even imagine what the internet would look like today.

~~~
dang
Most anti-Microsoft comments don't get downvoted. Out of curiosity, I looked
through
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=microsoft&sort=byDate&dateRang...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=microsoft&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)
for recent negative comments about Microsoft, and 3 out of 4 were upvoted. For
example,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162203)
was heavily upvoted.

Most things people say about HN comments aren't true in general, but only of
the subset of comments that the person happens to notice. And we notice the
things we dislike way more than we notice everything else.

------
netinmate
I was an insider at Netscape, not "name" person but I was there for all the
important moments. I wish I could tell all my stories, but then it would be
easy to identify me and I'm content not being identified.

Having watched the game from a front row seat, there was no honor in what he
did, not just to Netscape, but to everyone that crossed his path. I was
embarrassed for him on numerous occasions. The usual yardstick by which we
measure success is monetary, and by that measure Gates is one of the best, as
a person he left more than a lot to be desired. He is currently doing good
work, but he still leaves a lot to be desired as a humanitarian, it's more
self serving than it should be, but than again, Gates just wants to let us all
know that it's his world and we are just living in it.

It takes a certain personality type to step on the throat of a tiny competitor
just because you want an extra dollar or two of profit, I'm not referring to
Netscape in this example. Of course I can't imagine how Larry Ellison would
have acted had he Microsoft's monopoly, that thought really makes me shudder,
and I got to see Larry up close and personal as well.

Gates did what the government allowed him to do, he was able to exploit IBM's
former monopoly and create a new monopoly.

~~~
Ntrails
> He is currently doing good work, but he still leaves a lot to be desired as
> a humanitarian, it's more self serving than it should be, but than again,
> Gates just wants to let us all know that it's his world and we are just
> living in it.

I can rarely discern my own motives for an action with any great certainty,
impressive that you're so accurately able to assess his.

------
brudgers
The thing about oral histories is that they are oral histories. The oral
history of Microsoft v. Netscape is only interesting because it elides the
story of Netscape. Andreesen was able to found Andreesen Horowitz only because
by scholarly historical accounts Netscape was a tremendously successful
startup by the standard startup metrics: Netscape's founders found themselves
incredibly wealthy and initial investors like Kleiner Perkins achieved good
internal rates of return (IRR) and anyone in the general public who bought and
held Netscape shares near the closing price on the day of the IPO did well
when Netscape sold to AOL for $10 billion a few years later. If there's a
villain in Netscape's trajectory it's AOL. Or hubris: Netscape's engineers
decided to rewrite it from the ground up.

Like all oral histories, this one has its tribal roots. One of the distinct
features of Microsoft is that Silicon Valley venture capital wasn't involved.
In part because Microsoft isn't a Silicon Valley company and hence not a
Silicon Valley success story. In fact it is the worst kind of not-a-Silicon-
Valley success story. It made 10,000 ordinary employees millionaire or better
rich, the founders even richer, and Silicon Valley venture capital standing
outside, noses pressed against the glass.

The laissez-faire/libratarian/randian Silicon Valley business culture
celebrating Microsoft's anti-trust as a morality play is perfectly titrated
irony. Or sour grapes.

~~~
mistrial9
"It made 10,000 ordinary employees millionaire or better rich, the founders
even richer"

soft-pedalling here much? The founder became THE RICHEST man in THE WORLD for
TWENTY+ straight years. Any other large sources of income, in say, the entire
world?

M$FT under the shark-like junior managers became close to a Mafia, using
threats, law-suits and marketing soft-money bribery to run roughshod over an
industry. Buying and killing companies by the dozen, or simply crushing them
for bragging rights at the golf course well after monopoly power was in
effect.

The defense of 10,000 engineers got rich has a bad smell to it, considering
there are now 2.5 million programmers in the US alone and who-knows-how-many
worldwide. Look at the leadership and the actions, as well as the booty.

~~~
xapata
In a sense, Gates is still the wealthiest, if including the amount he's
spent/given.

Sure there was some degree of villainy, but nothing compared to the kind
perpetrated by less famous companies that pollute and/or murder. Microsoft's
evil was the kind of first-world problem that we love to get distracted by.
Conversely, Gates' charity mostly affects people the "developed" countries
like to ignore/exploit.

------
ncmncm
I will never understand how MS execs didn't go to jail for contempt of court
when their fraudulent video was exposed.

Nor how David Boies went from there to representing SCO. Or how SCO counsel
and execs alike avoided contempt of court, with their own shenanigans. Getting
caught lying to a jury is one thing, lying to the judge...

~~~
yuhong
My favorite is the OS/2 2.0 debacle BTW.

------
skookumchuck
The trouble with poor Netscape was their browser crashed constantly, and IE
crashed much less often. People preferred IE. Netscape simply shipped a much
crappier browser.

I had both installed for a while, and finally deleted the Netscape one. Nobody
coerced me.

------
oautholaf
One thing that happened after the finding of fact (in early 2000) is that the
Microsoft stock price fell in half and stayed roughly at that value for the
next ~15 years. So even if the actual government anti-trust actions didn't
seem that dramatic, there was definitely a measurable effect.

As someone who was at Microsoft during this era and down in Silicon Valley in
the 2000's, I'm very much glad that it did happen. Although I did make money
while I was at Microsoft, it's difficult for me to imagine how the things I
worked on after I left (such as an early consumer smartphone) would have been
possible with Microsoft at full strength.

------
yuhong
My favorite is Browsium:
[https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/925794295675731968](https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/925794295675731968)

