The company was literally founded on the principal of “thanks for all the free software I learned on, from this point forward, everyone needs to pay (me) for everything and sharing is bad”. Sort of paraphrased from Bill Gates email to the hobbyists. Then it got big by selling vapourware based on nepotism and then nearly stealing a product to fill the order. Then they got their fingers into legislators and it got worse for everyone.
Comment on Did Microsoft do anything right in 2025? Wins, fails, and WTF moments
imsufferableninja@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Do they ever?
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Moving from a shitty proprietary web renderer to participate in Chromium development was an improvement.
nyan@lemmy.cafe 2 months ago
I disagree. Doing so reduced the amount of diversity in rendering engines and reinforced the idea that lazy site owners don’t have to test against more than one browser. That’s a loss for the Web as a whole.
shalafi@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Microsoft: Kills crappy, insecure browser no one used and everyone hated.
Lemmy: BAD!
Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
And now they moved to another crappy engine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what changed? Nothing much, except that they are locked in with Google’s bs.
Jesus_666@lemmy.world 2 months ago
At the time people welcomed it; Trident really was terrible. However, since then Gecko’s marketshare has fallen into the single digits on account of Mozilla’s terrible governance. WebKit isn’t exactly a big alternative, either (and is often regarded as the new Trident in terms of web standard adherence). Opera used to have Presto but nope, that’s also Chromium now.
That means we’re now stuck in a situation where an advertising company controls how the web works for 75% of all users. And they’re happily abusing that power.
I’m rooting for Servo and Ladybird as new entrants into the market but both are small projects trying to challenge a multi-billion dollar industry titan who wants the web to be as complex as possible so that only they and their token competitors can exist.
We might actually have been better off with Microsoft trying to keep Trident relevant.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It killed the last proprietary engine. It made the web more free.
You’re wrong.
Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I mean the choice between only two browser engines isn’t what I would call “free” though, especially since Firefox is also pulling more and more bullshit.
He made a good overall point. Just saying he is wrong doesn’t actually make him wrong.
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Tried that browser on Linux. It crashes when you save a file. It doesn’t let you click on the URL bar to edit it (only keyboard works). “If it compiles, it ships, no testing needed”