[ Thanks to GenKabuki
for this link. ]
“Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg recently
took the stage at a joint press conference alongside another large
technology company. He described his partner using a
once-unthinkable designation.“”The thing that makes Microsoft a great partner for us is that
they really are the underdog,” Zuckerberg said. “Because of that,
they’re in a structural position where they’re incentivized to just
go all out and innovate.”“Microsoft as underdog. At the beginning of this decade, this
description would have been ridiculous, like referring to the
Yankees as an unsung, longshot baseball club. From the spread of
personal computing through the dawn of the World Wide Web, its
software governed the desktops of more than nine in ten desktop
computers. Microsoft was so dominant that it became a symbol of
monopoly power run amok, supposedly snuffing out innovation. Its
rivals affixed pejorative labels like “Death Star” and “Evil
Empire,” accusing Microsoft of exploiting its control of the
desktop to smother any and all potential competitors. Antitrust
authorities in Washington and Brussels pursued a veritable crusade
to break Microsoft into bite-sized pieces.”