Microsoft poised to overtake Apple as most valuable company::As Microsoft stock rises and Apple’s falls over analysts expectation of slowing iPhone demand, the two firms are once more within $100 billion of each other — the smallest gap in over two years.

  • the_weez@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Let’s break up both of their monopolies!

    Both of these companies played dirty to get on top, both hide money in tax havens. They both stiffle innovation.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They can be monopolies in their respective industries. They are not directly competing in hardware or services in their most profitable products.

      Duopolies are also an issue

      • PorkSoda@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They offer multiple products and services. Each of which can have a respective monopoly.

        • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          OK but what monopoly do they have? I can’t even think of one, let alone two.

          Windows, for example, is about 29% of web traffic, putting them in second place behind Android… and Apple is also bigger than Windows if you don’t split the fruit companies operating system up based on wether or not it has a touch screen (seems like a silly distinction to me).

          There are clearly three players with about a third of the market each in the OS space. What’s the other one? Microsoft Office? Isn’t that like 20% of the market?

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Are you seriously comparing PCs to Android phones and pretending they’re the same market? Lol

            You may as well be saying Luxottica can’t possibly have a monopoly on manufacturing glasses as there are plenty of manufacturers of binoculars.

            “They’re both used for seeing things! I don’t see the monopoly!”

  • Untitled4774@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Microsoft is a wonderful success story that being one of the first, and being parasitic, anti-competitive and anti-consumer, all while failing upwards by having some of the buggiest production releases out there on increasingly bloated software, is all that really counts to Wall Street.

    And most of the world is too afraid to split off from it because it’s what they know.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And most of the world is too afraid to split off from it because it’s what they know.

      It doesn’t help that superior choices to Microsoft product keep getting bought by even worse competitors making Microsoft, once again, look not as as it might. Such events like:

      • IBM buying Red Hat and enacting the death of Centos
      • Broadcom buying VMware
      • Avid Amoeba
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        1 year ago

        It’s almost as if there might be a common driver behind both phenomena.

      • ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Meh, I think it’s a stretch to blame IBM for the Centos thing. Red Hat did that on their own and themselves deserve whatever criticism is warranted. It’s a wholly owned but independent subsidiary, so not like IBM is in the middle management chain at all.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s the exact opposite.

      Microsoft was arguably the most powerful company in the world when they were hit with the antitrust lawsuit which absolutely crushed the company. It was never going to destroy Microsoft, but it knocked them way down and things were looking pretty grim.

      They cleaned up their act, have been making great decisions for the last 20 years and are now a far bigger and better company than they ever were in the old days. I think that’s proof that being “parasitic, anti-competitive and anti-consumer” was a bad strategy.

      • Untitled4774@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        They’ve learned forgotten more lessons than they’ll ever remember.

        In the last 10 years we still see these behaviours by way of:

        • changing over to a subscription model for office then dropping support for older versions to basically force people to move to their new model, locking many prior VLSC or on-premises exchange features behind very high subscriptions
        • after releasing the new version of the edge browser are now using their integration in their software suite to disregard the user’s default browser choice and open in edge anyway. Having to now go through an extra menu set to tell their software to respect the default browser set in the OS
        • lying about Win 10 being the final version of windows only to turn around and add a TPM requirement which automatically disqualifies a significant amount of hardware from being able to upgrade

        This is just three examples off the top of my head, respectively. We could talk about ads in a paid OS, constant nags to please pretty please use their browser, breaking prior software to integrate “new” versions that don’t add any user improvements but do add significant upgrades to telemetry and usage data, and so on.

    • Louisoix@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      When they’re both doing it, there is some kind of a fucked-up competition at least.

      • Plopp@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As a Windows 10 user aiming to switch to Linux, I will miss out on that value. How will I ever survive? 😢

        • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Windows 10 has the same ads as 11 so you’re not missing out on anything.

          I have no idea why people suddenly love Windows 10 now that there’s something newer to hate on, despite them being the same bullshit just a slightly different skin.

          • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
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            1 year ago

            Windows 10 works with little to no intervention needed from the user and there is a metric fuckton of available software. The only time I ever had to chase a driver down was for an audio to USB recording interface that the last driver written was for Win 7, and 10 runs it in legacy mode flawlessly. Did I mention the metric fuckton of available software. 10 has never given us anything to hate but how often it updates, but 11 tries like hell to bully it’s way onto computers it wasn’t invited to. And if you do get stuck with it, none of the shit is where you expect it to be. The UI is ugly and clumsy. And you can’t revert. And what box did you check that Win 10 is advertising at you?

      • hagelslager@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        Just wondering: what ads?

        I’ve seen some stuff about ads when installing Windows (about personalisation of ads), but other than suggested apps after a fresh install (certain games and apps). I’ve never seen any ads in windows itself.

        Granted, I do offline installs without Microsoft accounts and do use stuff like ShutUp10 and Windows debloater.

    • erwan@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      That’s the market capitalization so the definition is pretty clear

    • OpenStars@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      “Parasitically creating a strangle-hold on our entire society and much of its economy, heavily stifling choice and daily making people struggle, even those who don’t purchase any of their products, all for their own greed.”

      Oh wait no, I read from the wrong page, but you are right, it’s: “create wealth for their shareholders”, yeah that’s the ticket. :-D

      Bonus points for getting many middle-class people to be complicit, by adding a layer of indirection so that they don’t even know where their stock is located, only that it performs AT ANY COST (or else is sold & others that DO are purchased in their stead). That way the younger generations do not have to care for the elderly, b/c the stock market is doing that for them. Yay capitalism!:-)