Microsoft now all about cooperation? Yes, thanks to patents

"When Hernan Cortes landed in Mexico in 1519, he was no less ambitious than Microsoft, but differences between the man and the monopolist were immediately apparent. Cortes, for instance, burned his ships so that no retreat was possible, then marched through the interior of the country on an imperialistic orgy, massacred people in the marketplaces, overthrew an empire, and set himself up as the ruler. And Microsoft.... well, depending on who you ask, Microsoft did basically the same thing.

"But in Burning the Ships, Microsoft's Marshall Phelps and writer David Kline argue that all the imperialistic stuff--the massacres, the hangings, the occupations and conquests--was a hallmark of the Old Microsoft. In the early 2000s, the company had an epiphany: technological progress was simply moving too fast and going on in too many places to control it all in-house."

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