I've been drinking the Microsoft Kool aid for too long now and I can't think of many modern day things that make it a bad company. Someone please save me @_@

So in your personal opinion you couldn't come up with something bad that Microsoft has done in its new era and you feel guilty you are straying from the mainstream so you ask others here to come force you back into the mainstream?

sounds reasonable mate... go for it

Just because there are now worse offenders out there doesn't mean they got better. You just got used to awful things.

I recently watched a techalter youtube video in which he said Microsoft was often known to destroy big companies by first being nice to them, giving them a platform to grow, and then launching a similar product or some other act that would leave them no choice but to quickly launch their shields.

So maybe its Microsoft is being because bigger evil is coming?

Maybe that's its integrated within one (or more) of worlds biggest (ran by the NSA) mass surveillance programs ever created?

I mean, I wouldn't ever consider that a good thing...

@Jilano That's true. I have a hard time determining if a lot of the developments that some of the larger companies are making are bad or not now. For example I use Google Maps, easily the best map on the market. But they wouldn't have that status with terabytes of my data and your data.

An interesting question is where do you draw the line at evil intent or data misuse?
Are you OK with Google having your location data and travel history of it is ONLY used to improve your maps experience?

The distinction between what's ok and not ok for a company to do with your data is a very grey area that I don't think has a good solution today.

@TitanLannister
That's an interesting thought. I heard Amazon was doing that with their Alexa ecosystem. Offering good benefits for new companies/devices to grow on their platform so that they can gather analytics to create a product that will undersell all other competition on the market. I saw a documentary YouTube video on an Alexa smart microwave startup that went through that.

As for if Microsoft has been doing that in the past few years, I don't know. I imagine they probably are, intentionally, or unintentionally. In a bunch of markets. I just can't think of any specific instances in the past few years.

@MrCSharp Having worked a few gigs and internships for them, my perspective is rather positive for them.

So I'm really interested in hearing others opinions that may go against my own perspective, just to learn more about other aspects of Microsoft I don't get to see as much. And to hear some perspectives I don't really get many opportunities to hear.

@linuxxx Do you know of any specifics on this? I do believe that companies have a lot that they can contribute to society and our governments. It gets really hard to support though when it becomes political and used to either take more control of the citizens or their rights.

An example of where tech could contribute to our current society is in voting machines. Having been to this past summers DEFCON I've learned that our current system is horribly insecure. Using modern advancements and some of the great talent that a lot of these companies absorb could be used to build a much more robust system that could help fix a lot of the systemic voting problems we have today.
The fear is, can we trust a company with that task, and can we keep politics out of such an arrangement?

@andpeterson Companies shouldn't be able to use nor sell anyone's data as long as one has not EXPLICITLY accepted. That goes of course for Facebook and the likes that build an entire "shadow" profile even if you don't have an account.

@Jilano True. I've been irritated as of late that on haveibeenpwned that some of my worst data leaks have been from companies that purchase my data from other companies. Aka I have no relation with them.

I'd like to know where my data is and have full control over it. I'd be totally fine with storing all my data in the cloud if I was guaranteed that they wouldn't be selling it or moving it elsewhere.

That's why I'd be willing to say pay for an email service if I was sure that they protected my data

Found the documentary i was talking about : https://youtu.be/6ClOsqIXv_0 (also its from the same guy who made the amazon microwave documentary) they used to deploy the "embrace extend and extinguish strategy" : using an open source technology into one of their proprietary product, and then making the product so good that it wipes off all the other competitive products.

I feel (maybe i am wrong but) google did something similar with Android. It was supposed to be an open source product and harness different use cases. But google Contributed into it so aggressively that it ended up being the only mobile os left in market.
Who knows their might be private forks of the android repo which could have been in development to be the next mobile os (or beyond) , but got abandoned in between since Google's Advertisment hyped up android so much

@TitanLannister Adding it to watch later. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Thanks!