Friendly Neighborhood Microsoft
Before Bill Gates was a friendly neighborhood grandpa who dedicated to donating 99% of his wealth, he built the Microsft empire by being ruthlessly competitive and facing an iconic anti-trust lawsuit:
Their famous strategy Embrace, Extend & Extinguish to kill off competition:
Their Windows first and Windows only approach didn’t let competing Office softwares open office documents.
The Transformation
1. No Longer Windows First
MS Office and other applications are now available on the web and the majority of popular platforms.
Satya would get up and say, “Microsoft loves Linux.”
The most used operating system on Microsoft Azure would be Linux, not Windows Server.
Most recently, Microsoft will ship a full Linux kernel in Windows 10!
2. Win-win partnerships
Let Alexa come pre-installed on Windows machines.
Microsoft teaming with a rival Sony to fend off far larger gaming threats.
3. Embrace Open Source
Made most of their developer tools cross-platform and open source.
Buying Github and making it free to use.
Who would have ever thought Microsoft would open up its profitable patent portfolio to open-source and Linux developers — for free?
Using the open-source Chromium Engine to build Edge.
Overtaking Google as the largest open-source contributor.
Altruism or Business Reasons?
While keeping Windows closed was profitable for decades, they missed out on all the next tech waves: Smartphones, E-Commerce, Social Media! With the PC market stagnating they started to focus on Enterprise solutions and found a lot of success there. As a full-stack enterprise service provider to other companies, not being a backstabber is kind of a minimum trust level requirement. It’s just more profitable for MS to let Sony run Linux on Azure than Sony not being on Azure at all. As a bonus, being developer friendly and open-source friendly also attracts top developers.
