• Salvo@aussie.zone
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      5 months ago

      The bottom has dropped out of the OEM software licence market. Microsoft have to find a different way of making money. Their loss-leading hardware sales have not borne fruit so they are getting desperate.

      All they have left is services, which means that the only way the can actually make money is selling out their customers private information.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        That describes the business model of basically every internet company that survived the dotcom bubble.

        • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.org
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          5 months ago

          Remember what that landscape looked like. The only major players we know today that existed then are Microsoft and Apple, and Apple had just been bailed out by MS to get in front of antitrust issues. Amazon existed as a bookstore, Google was not around yet, Facebook would still be several years out … MySpace wasn’t yet around. AOL was still a behemoth. Adobe sold perpetual licenses.

          This is a far more recent development.

          • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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            5 months ago

            Google was the first example I thought of, because they were founded in 1998, solidly before the dotcom crash. They survived because they hoarded data.

            My point was that every company going into the bubble thought they had a product they could monetize, but virtually all of them failed in favor of just hoarding everyone’s data. Amazon and eBay were competing for ecomerce supremacy, but now even they are just privacy violators for various reasons (amazon via AWS and Alexa, eBay in the interest of detecting malicious account behaviour).

            MySpace is an example of another unsustainable social media model in the vein of many dotcom era services. They died out as soon as Facebook realized they could hoard everyone’s data.

            All roads lead to privacy nightmares. It’s the fossil fuel of the internet, and enshitification is the climate change.

            • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.org
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              5 months ago

              I could swear Google wasn’t broadly a thing yet. The startup I worked at in 1999 had an elevator pitch for how we “could be the next Yahoo.” Not a great thing to aspire to in retrospect, but Google wasn’t on our radar.

              • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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                5 months ago

                You’re right, they weren’t a “household name” yet. But they were probably more than a little worried about surviving at the time. Turns out they picked the winning strategy.

              • pbjamm@beehaw.org
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                5 months ago

                They were there and they were superior to the alternatives almost out of the gate. I was working for a video game company at the time and me and the rest of the IT dept made the switch almost immediately because the results were clearly superior. Made me an advocate for them for years, probably far beyond where I should have given up. I am not sure which product cancellation finally changed my mind on them. Probably it was around the mess of Google Talk/Chat/Hangouts mess of apps.

    • Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      Every. Single. Post.

      Like every time windows is mentioned the Linux users come out to try to convert people. You guys are so fucking annoying. Just make a post about Linux. We dont want your shit ass OS. We need one which actually runs the software we use. Guess the posts are good to block these annoying Linuxers

        • TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.orgM
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          5 months ago

          Please try not to escalate comment threads that are already tense. Remember to be(e) nice. I think think it is understandable that someone might be frustrated with the regular, low effort responses to practically any mention of Windows or a number of other topics.

            • TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.orgM
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              5 months ago

              No worries. I don’t think anybody in the comments here have crossed any lines yet; I’m just trying to defuse things before they get to that point. I’m finding that !technology is one of the communities where we’re most likely to have to lock threads or remove comments, other than maybe !politics, and I’m trying to be more proactive about reminding folks to deescalate when things get tense.

              • Salvo@aussie.zone
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                5 months ago

                This is one of the things I love about the Lemmy community. No one wants to argue, every one can be passionate about their opinions, but still respect other people’s passion.

      • esaru@beehaw.org
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        5 months ago

        When there’s a post about privacy issues, expect alternatives with more privacy be mentioned. It’s just that there are so many moments that big corporations violate user’s privacy nowadays, so that’s why you see it that often.

      • TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.orgM
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        5 months ago

        Hey, I totally get your frustration here, but in the future please keep in mind the primary ethos on Beehaw and try to be nice in your comments here. I sympathize with how irritating the constant barrage of “just install arch” as if that’s a simple fix for every problem, and I think it would be valuable for users on this forum to think about this before they comment, but let’s try to stay respectful and kind to other users. Thanks!

      • Salvo@aussie.zone
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        5 months ago

        I used Linux back in the 90s as my primary OS. They were simpler times. Since then I have used BeOS, various versions of Windows and (primarily) MacOS.

        I am seriously thinking of going over to Linux as my primary OS because of all the TechBro “AI” bullshit that Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and Google are trying to ram down our throats.