<
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/03/why-a-67bn-takeover-could-make-microsoft-a-gaming-behemoth>
"Microsoft is the forgotten tech giant. Despite being the world’s
second-largest public company by market capitalisation, it got left out of the
snappy acronym for the big five – FAANG – alongside Facebook, Amazon, Apple and
Google, in favour of Netflix, a company seven percent its size. Even when you
add them to the equation (and GAFAM seems the most popular ordering, though
given Google and Facebook’s rebrands to Alphabet and Meta, it should really be
MAMAA), Microsoft has avoided the scrutiny its peers have been subjected to.
Part of that is to do with where the companies make their profits. Microsoft’s
consumer brands are large and popular, but don’t feel like unstoppable
behemoths compared to the rest of the MAMAAs. Amazon towers over e-commerce;
Meta owns social networking; Alphabet dominates web browsers, email, and
search; while Apple practically prints money with a phone that can credibly be
called the most successful consumer product ever released. Microsoft, though,
makes its money through enterprise sales and cloud computing, and its unbroken
power over desktop operating systems seems like a relic of the past rather than
a meaningful focus of attention in the present.
The company has been making the most of that state of affairs. Its president,
Brad Smith, the second most powerful person at the company after chief
executive Satya Nadella, has gained a reputation for being the leader of the
pro-regulation forces of the tech industry. When we met in the hazy past of
2019, he warned that the sector would soon feel the backlash of years of acting
like “if it’s legal, it’s acceptable” and, a few months later, he targeted
Apple for taking a cut of up to 30% of all economic activity on the iPhone.
The same strategy sees Microsoft lean in to the markets where it trails the
competition, endorsing policies and practices that cost it little but its
competitors lots. In February 2021, Smith endorsed an Australian proposal
requiring payments for news content, accepting a small cost for Microsoft’s
Bing to support a massive one for Google. Two months after that, the company
put pressure on Apple and its massive App Store profits by abolishing its own
Windows app store fees."
Via Doug Senko.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
