The tech industry is feeling the pain of an unprecedented backlash over its business practices and broad impact on society, but original tech giant Microsoft has managed to stay mostly above the fray.
It’s remarkably puzzling how nobody is really talking about Microsoft. The company is one of the largest companies in the world, incredibly powerful, and still has its tentacles all over the industry, and thus, all over society. They are just as (potentially) dangerous as any of the others.
“I’d better make sure that a lot of the world succeeds, because that’s the only way for Microsoft to succeed.”
— Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
adkilla,
I’m waiting for the day when stories come out, but for now, Satya seems to be the less cynical CEO compared to Tim Cook.
Microsoft’s only foray into the socials, so far, seems to be LinkedIn, and there are good reasons for people not to post obscene rants there. To the extent that “Techlash” is a thing, it’s mostly a thing about business models of publishers with poor editorial policies and mechanisms (i.e., almost none). I expect that those businesses will eventually figure out how to mechanical-Turk their way into more editorial control that is more reasonable to most people and the problem will subside.
areilly,
You could argue Github is a social platform, and the way they’re about to handle the 996icu issue is going to tell us what they’re about.
It will tell us what some small group in Microsoft is about. Then they’ll report out, “we did this.” It’s only people like us who take scraps from the table and attempt to turn them into meaningful statements.
I think it comes down to simple marketing.
Microsoft sell me products. Google and Apple sell me a philosophy. “do no evil” or “think different”
Because google (and others) try to paint themselves as saints and moral advocates, when the mask slips it’s a news story. And people feel betrayed
Because, for better or worse, Microsoft nowadays is focusing on their clouds, cross-platform Word, LinkedIn, and AR stuff nowadays.
Their forays into trying to make walled gardens and collecting a ton of data have been failures, and they have been forced to align to open standards and solutions in recent years, instead of the other way around.
Nobody talks about Microsoft, because they are not needed anymore. Ubuntu at work, Ubuntu at home, Android phone, all Google services. Good times.
For you and 2% of home users.
You forgot Apple. There are also a lot of people who don’t even own a PC anymore.
Microsoft went through various government and social ringers in ways the other big current players have not had to deal with at this point. Microsoft is the conservative big tech company, for better and worse. They have divisions that are allowed to explore and play for expanding current and future markets, but they also know where their bread is buttered.
When they do something flashy that goes bad, then everyone who’s following the flashy news will take notice and scream for a while. Then, like a herd of sheep, when they notice something else, they will go there and scream for a while, placating themselves that they are accomplishing something when in actuality, they are simply tickling their own fancies. MS is a huge company. They’re big enough that we should talk about them in a granular manner like IBM. There is no “one” Microsoft evil empire that threatens to take away our freedoms and stuff.