this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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My memory might be weak on this topic but Microsoft has already went through a lawsuit due to not allowing people to use other browsers. And that case made Bill Gates lose money.
Might be this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.?wprov=sfla1
Not really, they have a history of this kind of thing. They just calmed down a little between roughly 2005 and 2015.
The big antitrust case when they killed Netscape was in 1998. Bill Gate's deposition from that case is kind of interesting to watch as a historical document. It's on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90W55zhFBOuZuhgxBsjpgDy0o3ll1PSz
In that lawsuit their "Embrace Extend Extinguish" strategy in which they tried to smother open standards became public too.
They tried with Java and their J++ language too, but failed luckily. And lost a lawsuit against Sun on the way.
Plenty of shady monopolistic things happened under Gates as well. The original Explorer antitrust lawsuit dates from the late 90s, the ACPI debacle, etc.
I mean it's always been the modus operandi at Micro$oft from day one when they fucked over the guy who wrote DOS.
I know. I am a Linux enthusiast myself. After Sadya got in the position, Microsoft suddenly became to get interested in Linux, contributing to projects and even funding them. But to this day, I still do not trust them.
Unfortunately Linux has tons of them nowadays. Google, Amazon, Microsoft are three of them that I know. And not just in kernel, but they also contribute in other projects in the ecosystem.
These lawsuits take a long time and cost a fraction of what it would cost them to not do that.
Na it's a slap in the wrist. by the way there's more lawsuits and several examples that don't have lawsuits
I remember this because Bill Gates was literally the richest person at the time but lost his position due to lawsuits like this.