the myth of the good tech giant
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Random trivia: The clippy movement is not saying that Microsoft was noble. It’s saying we need to go back to the 90s version is the internet.
new meta: putting "random trivia:" before your contrarian comments
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Microsoft is doing pretty well so I wouldn't call it "dismantling", it seems to be working for them.
Microsoft is dismantling itself to keep "doing well". That's my point
Their gaming division keeps acquiring and killing game studios. They're killing off consoles, instead they're going to sell prebuilds running windows. They're scaling it all way back and releasing their exclusives, letting steam run the infrastructure, and milking all of their current IP, but not really making more
They've ended support for a ton of different product lines. Azure is a mess. Their desktop market share is falling too.
They're all in on AI at this point, literally every tool they offer has it now. It's not even opt in, it doesn't require an account anymore... They're desperate to inflate the numbers so they can project growth a little longer
What do you think happens when you continuously lay off your workforce and kill projects? When you stop actually doing things, and run a company based on speculation?
Eventually, the bubble pops.
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I remember struggling with the idea that all companies care more about the bottom line than anything else. People are good and care about good things. How can companies who are made of people always cause problems? There must be at least one good company out there, right?
It's only after I spent some time in the world that I figured out that money really messes with things. It pressures companies to do whatever they can get away with. It separates the people who run the companies from the bad outcomes that company creates.
And at the end of the day everyone needs to make a choice. Live and participate in a system that causes problems, or die. I chose to live and I don't blame anyone else for choosing to live.
Here's the thing... Once an organization grows to a certain point, it takes on a mind of it's own.
Decision making becomes fragmented. Details are lost between the decision and the decision maker
It's impossible to manage 100, let alone 1000 people directly, so metrics creep in as a way to reward good performance (and maybe punish low performance).
And because we're a hierarchial society, we further group into divisions and teams. The people who get the best metrics out of their teams are more likely to move up, the bad managers are more likely to be towards the bottom. And honestly, good lower management is mostly taking care of your people
So you're more likely to get managers who don't have the integrity to take a firm stand, so maybe when a worker realizes "oh shit, were leaking into the groundwater" it gets watered down to "we found a leak, but it won't impact production" before it gets up to someone who could authorize a shutdown and fix
It's possible for a company to do horrible things without any bad actors, and we do have plenty of bad actors around.
It's possible to fight against this sort of thing through culture or policy, but the natural inclination is always going to maximize the metrics at any cost
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I kinda got sucked into that Clippy thing for a while then took a moment to think about like everyone.
Kinda cringe, to adopt anything coming from microsoft for a pro ownership movement.
I agree 100% with the cause but we could go with any other resistance symbol that could mean actually something.
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new meta: putting "random trivia:" before your contrarian comments
Random Trivia: I gotta start doing this in all my comments
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I kinda got sucked into that Clippy thing for a while then took a moment to think about like everyone.
Kinda cringe, to adopt anything coming from microsoft for a pro ownership movement.
I agree 100% with the cause but we could go with any other resistance symbol that could mean actually something.
Well, to be fair, it’s not utilizing Microsoft as a mascot, but the era of buying and owning and keeping, as opposed to the current era of renting forever.
Back then, you bought a computer and it came with the programs you needed and they were yours until you got rid of the computer. Then they were the property of whomever got the computer next.
That’s what people are calling for. Which is depressing in and of itself because it’s so little to ask for. They’re the hand that’s starving and robbing us. We shouldn’t be asking for them to stop robbing us, we should be taking the hand and using it to distribute to all who need.
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The entire clippy thing baffles me.
Let's use the mascot of Microsoft, a tech giant who invades every inch that they can, to say we don't like tech giants!
I don't think any company that uses AI or scrapes data gives two shits what your avatar is. It's the equivalent of changing your twitter profile to show support for the victims of something, and then carrying on as usual.
Microsoft would kill for Clippy to be remembered as a friend. Because that just sanewashes their history as a company when clippy was a thing. Yes, please ignore the anti-trust busting in Congress. Please ignore how we made computers worse for the end user by restricting what you can do on your purchased computer.
"Clippy was your friend. Clippy didn't want to steal your data. Clippy just wanted to help."
Help infantize the masses with "It looks like you're writing a document, do you want help with that? Yes, or maybe later?"
This entire clippy thing is just basically free whitewashing and advertising for Microsoft, one of the biggest players in the reasons why people use the avatar.
At least invent something new, if it's about protecting artists, instead of copying a jpg from a 90s corporate milquetoast mascot.
The thing is, we have to be reasonable with our expectations. You or I may remember that Microsoft has always been shady and anti consumer, most people don't. They remember a time when you bought things and owned them, and it didn't feel like we were being nickel and dimed quite so hard. We are not going to start an anti Microsoft (or whatever corporation) movement and actually be able to rile the masses to support that cause, but we might at least be able to get them to demand things go back to the quality they were at 30 years ago
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Clippy is a symbol of a decent company, pre-enshittification
wrote last edited by [email protected]Kids these days don't know about the Microsoft anti-monopoly suit sagas, or how the world felt about Bill Gates before he spent several decades and millions of dollars scrubbing his PR. They've always been awful and generally reviled, from the start.
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At least in the US, companies have a legal fiduciary duty to protect their investors interests above all else.
wrote last edited by [email protected]A change made through court cases in the mid-century. Basically the result of a neoliberal ideological campaign that first normalized the feduciary duty concept in the business world before forcing it on board rooms through the justice system. Before that, boards of companies could make decisions on ethical grounds and not just fiscal grounds. Today, that precedent has transformed boardrooms into terrifying financial automatons.
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Microsoft is dismantling itself to keep "doing well". That's my point
Their gaming division keeps acquiring and killing game studios. They're killing off consoles, instead they're going to sell prebuilds running windows. They're scaling it all way back and releasing their exclusives, letting steam run the infrastructure, and milking all of their current IP, but not really making more
They've ended support for a ton of different product lines. Azure is a mess. Their desktop market share is falling too.
They're all in on AI at this point, literally every tool they offer has it now. It's not even opt in, it doesn't require an account anymore... They're desperate to inflate the numbers so they can project growth a little longer
What do you think happens when you continuously lay off your workforce and kill projects? When you stop actually doing things, and run a company based on speculation?
Eventually, the bubble pops.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Microsoft for 8 years now is a company that sells Linux and opensource.
Non of their divisions you mentioned were profitable for many years now(especially Windows), just look at their yearly reports. Only logical to get rid of them. Don't agree with your Azure statement, don't mind me, numbers don't agree with it.
I don't get why you wrote so much about gaming, Microsoft never was a gaming company. And frankly nothing important for gamers was lost with them buying those empty shells of game developer companies, then shutting them down.
I can agree on the AI hype especially with recent github news. But those are recent, we'll have to see if that was bad or good decision.
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And we, working class traitors that we are, would have helped it.
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Random Trivia: I gotta start doing this in all my comments
Random trivia: you can problematize anything if you're good enough
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Random trivia: there was also a dog
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Microsoft for 8 years now is a company that sells Linux and opensource.
Non of their divisions you mentioned were profitable for many years now(especially Windows), just look at their yearly reports. Only logical to get rid of them. Don't agree with your Azure statement, don't mind me, numbers don't agree with it.
I don't get why you wrote so much about gaming, Microsoft never was a gaming company. And frankly nothing important for gamers was lost with them buying those empty shells of game developer companies, then shutting them down.
I can agree on the AI hype especially with recent github news. But those are recent, we'll have to see if that was bad or good decision.
I don't know how else to explain it to you. Microsoft is doing well on paper
These unprofitable divisions? This is the result of the layoffs. This is what happens when you stop doing the thing, and you start living in speculation land
Azure is a mess propped up by AI. The numbers don't account for shuffling money around. It's related to why every Microsoft product has ai shoved into it
And I'm keep bringing up gaming because their gaming division is the most egregious example of what I'm talking about. They're the third largest game publisher, and they've played a huge part killing AAA gaming. And in doing so, they've killed their own revenue stream
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The entire clippy thing baffles me.
Let's use the mascot of Microsoft, a tech giant who invades every inch that they can, to say we don't like tech giants!
I don't think any company that uses AI or scrapes data gives two shits what your avatar is. It's the equivalent of changing your twitter profile to show support for the victims of something, and then carrying on as usual.
Microsoft would kill for Clippy to be remembered as a friend. Because that just sanewashes their history as a company when clippy was a thing. Yes, please ignore the anti-trust busting in Congress. Please ignore how we made computers worse for the end user by restricting what you can do on your purchased computer.
"Clippy was your friend. Clippy didn't want to steal your data. Clippy just wanted to help."
Help infantize the masses with "It looks like you're writing a document, do you want help with that? Yes, or maybe later?"
This entire clippy thing is just basically free whitewashing and advertising for Microsoft, one of the biggest players in the reasons why people use the avatar.
At least invent something new, if it's about protecting artists, instead of copying a jpg from a 90s corporate milquetoast mascot.
I don't interpret it as "once upon a time, Microsoft was a good company", I interpret it as "this meme-y and goofy character gave the maximum amount of assistance and intrusion I would like in the products I use". I think anyone would agree that Louis is pro-consumers and tend not to think highly of any megacorp.
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Random trivia: there was also a dog
And a wizard, genie, cat, robot and more
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I don't know how else to explain it to you. Microsoft is doing well on paper
These unprofitable divisions? This is the result of the layoffs. This is what happens when you stop doing the thing, and you start living in speculation land
Azure is a mess propped up by AI. The numbers don't account for shuffling money around. It's related to why every Microsoft product has ai shoved into it
And I'm keep bringing up gaming because their gaming division is the most egregious example of what I'm talking about. They're the third largest game publisher, and they've played a huge part killing AAA gaming. And in doing so, they've killed their own revenue stream
You explained it quite well, I just didn't think you were serious.
Let's go back to my original question. A company that's dismantling itself for a quarterly profit. Obviously Microsoft doesn't fit since they are doing it for many years now and are still going strong even if just on paper like you say.
So according to your analysis when will it be dismantled? Will they go down in 3 months as a punishment for the latest quarterly profit? Maybe a year? 5 years? Will it happen in this century?
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You explained it quite well, I just didn't think you were serious.
Let's go back to my original question. A company that's dismantling itself for a quarterly profit. Obviously Microsoft doesn't fit since they are doing it for many years now and are still going strong even if just on paper like you say.
So according to your analysis when will it be dismantled? Will they go down in 3 months as a punishment for the latest quarterly profit? Maybe a year? 5 years? Will it happen in this century?
It's going to come to head in the next 5 years. Before 2030 for sure. Maybe even next year. Depends on how quickly the collapse happens - my bet is on painfully slow. Just an inevitable reality, slowly playing out year over year
We're in a bubble. Obviously. Pay attention. The speculation doesn't line up with reality. Eventually, it will reconcile with reality
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You used to be able to tell what every process was doing on your computer. Nowadays there are so many processes running and they all have tons of child processes that you can't tell what is doing what.
This is why I use Linux
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It's going to come to head in the next 5 years. Before 2030 for sure. Maybe even next year. Depends on how quickly the collapse happens - my bet is on painfully slow. Just an inevitable reality, slowly playing out year over year
We're in a bubble. Obviously. Pay attention. The speculation doesn't line up with reality. Eventually, it will reconcile with reality
That's great news. Will be waiting for it.
