[HN Gopher] Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T's advanced advertising bu...
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Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T's advanced advertising business
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-12-29 16:40 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fiercevideo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fiercevideo.com)
| jefftk wrote:
| If you don't recognize Xandr, AppNexus is its largest component
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| The tech big companies are getting too big for their own good.
| Their core business is not large enough to satisfy the growth
| demands so they have to branch out into other sectors. Give it a
| few years and Apple, MS, Google and others will basically offer
| the same products and services. I really wish they would get
| broken up so one division doesn't have to do shady things to
| satisfy the needs of other divisions.
| [deleted]
| pm90 wrote:
| They kinda already do at this point. It's inevitable that they
| would do this considering that they're business is powered by
| the same fuel: software developers.
|
| Honestly I think this is a good way to create more competition
| in the advertising space which is currently dominated by Google
| and Facebook.
|
| At some point some "smart" executives are going to decide it's
| better to cooperate rather than compete... that's when
| consumers get exploited. Which is why the threat of regulation
| is important.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > They kinda already do at this point.
|
| Their sources of profit are from very different products and
| services though.
|
| Microsoft and Alphabet and Amazon have cloud computing.
|
| Alphabet and Meta earn money from ads.
|
| Apple is the only one making money on selling hardware.
|
| Microsoft sells software, with the bedrock being Excel.
|
| Amazon is selling logistics, physically via warehousing and
| delivery and virtually via a website others can sell on.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Microsoft is on to the same old dirty tricks, except, for a new
| generation this is all new and they're still in disbelief.
| dabfiend19 wrote:
| As someone who worked for appnexus/xandr for years, this move
| makes sense. MSFT was already xandr's largest customer, and
| handled most of their MSN and Xbox supply. I'm happy for Everyone
| still there. this is a much better home than AT&T.
| franczesko wrote:
| Why Microsoft is pushing for its weakest link - the advertising
| business?
|
| They missed the mobile train, hardly anyone uses Bing (even
| DuckDuckGo, which is based on their API, seems to be stagnant in
| terms of the daily query growth).
|
| I find it difficult to connect the dots here.
| garciasn wrote:
| Am I misunderstanding your comment regarding DDG's daily query
| growth? According to https://duckduckgo.com/traffic they're
| continuing to grow.
| franczesko wrote:
| Looking at the whole 2021, both the daily avg. and total
| monthly queries seem to be flat. Only October and November
| were positive outliers.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Read this as MS buying XRandr lol
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Me too, and I was /almost/ able to make it make sense somehow!
| endisneigh wrote:
| Fundamentally it's just difficult to maintain the modern internet
| without advertising. You have content creators busting their
| backs with millions of hours of video and content for free, and
| hosted for free. Obviously there needs to be a way for all of
| that to be paid for.
|
| Whether due to income equality, laziness, greed or something
| else, the vast majority of people aren't going to engage in micro
| transactions.
| johncena33 wrote:
| Interesting how when MS is on ad market justifications like
| this pop up all the time on HN. Meanwhile, quarter of HN is
| nothing but a jihad against Google for its advertising
| business.
| hakfoo wrote:
| The answer isn't microtransactions. Even if you solve the
| payment problem, Microtransactions involves huge amounts of new
| friction and creating an entirely new selling process and
| method.
|
| I think the answer is in federation and mutually owned
| infrastructure.
|
| People are comfortable paying Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll $10-15
| per month. They don't have to worry about "do I want to watch
| this episode enough to spend 45 cents for it?" or "do I need to
| make and manage a whole new account just to watch a different
| show?" The fact the money eventually gets divvied up to content
| creators is handwaved away behind the scenes.
|
| Federation gives other creators the opportunity to sell a
| similar one-stop-shopping experience you that. I could imagine,
| say, a subscription where I'd get through the paywall not just
| on my local newspaper, but the dozens of other papers that
| might print one or two articles a month that I care about. Or a
| Patreon-style service where you unlocked everyone for a flat
| fee, and they use analytics to determine how much of the fee
| goes to each creator each month.
|
| The problem is that most of the content is living on third-
| party platforms. An OnlyFans or YouTube, for example, could
| offer a subscription around that model, but they'd just vaccuum
| up most of the revenue generated for themselves. The creators
| have to own the platform themselves to prevent that sort of
| diversion.
| j-bos wrote:
| This sounds like what Nebula is attempting to do. A streaming
| service owned and run by the content creators.
| https://nebula.app/ No affiliation
| endisneigh wrote:
| How is federation the solution? Federation isn't free to
| setup or manage and so now you're back to square one.
|
| It's funny that you use Netflix as an example because that's
| what they originally tried to do and it didn't work.
| hakfoo wrote:
| It solves the "how do we make non-ad-supported content
| palatable for consumers." Federation ensures that there's a
| big enough pool of content that you won't say "I don't know
| if this is worth $20 per month" or "I'll subscribe for one
| month and binge-consume everything, then cancel."
|
| Yes, it involves customized billing and account
| infrastructure, but if you set things up properly, the cost
| of the infrastructure should be less than the revenue it
| provides. If the federated content creators, in turn, fund
| a "captive" development and maintenance team to supply
| things at cost, it may well be cheaper than leasing off-
| the-shelf solutions.
| endisneigh wrote:
| My point is that only large content producers would even
| entertain such a thing to begin with, and among those the
| largest will just spin-off and do their own thing.
|
| If you're a YouTuber why would you even deal with any of
| that vs. just continuing to upload on YouTube?
| blinkingled wrote:
| Why? Windows 11 as an advertising business wasn't nasty enough
| for Microsoft?
|
| I installed it on one of my sparingly used machines and it's as
| blatant as it gets. The Edge push, all the installed crapware,
| the telemetry and God knows what else - either way it didn't feel
| like I was running my own OS - instead it felt like I was running
| a rented one at a Kinkos.
| dabfiend19 wrote:
| MSFT was already xandr's biggest customer. they ran dedicated
| hardware just for MSFT, and already handled most of their ads
| for msn and Xbox. they were already deeply linked companies.
| rapind wrote:
| This is part of their Linux marketing plan. Make windows worse
| (challenging work!), and push people to Linux. End goal being
| irrelevance.
|
| Very noble!
| throwawayninja wrote:
| The telemetry is an interesting reminder; I wonder how
| difficult it would be to modify/reverse-engineer W11 to spit
| out garbage telemetry? Gigabytes and gigabytes of the stuff,
| just give MS the same garbage they give us.
| coolso wrote:
| > The Edge push
|
| This is one area I give MS a pass. Google engaged in aggressive
| Chrome pushing for years, people seem to forget now that it's
| so ubiquitous they don't really need to anymore. It's good
| someone is fighting back. Especially since, while I much prefer
| Firefox, Edge is actually decent.
| mgh2 wrote:
| I still remember their ads:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCgQDjiotG0
|
| But Chrome had a clear advantage those days compared to other
| solutions
|
| Microsoft's value proposition? PDF users and memory
| consumption?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Microsoft 's value proposition??_"
|
| https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2021/05/21/preview-
| micro...
|
| " _[...] To help these students on their learning journey,
| we are excited to announce that Microsoft Math Solver will
| be available as a preview feature starting with Microsoft
| Edge 91 stable. Microsoft Math Solver allows a student to
| snap a picture of a math problem - be it handwritten or
| printed - and get an instant solution with step-by-step
| instructions to help them learn how to reach the solution
| on their own._ "
|
| Built-in vertical tabs? Tab Collections? If you like Chrome
| as a browser, and don't really care about Google, isn't
| that better to use the built-in one? "It's not IE11" is
| value for anyone using "the browser which comes with
| Windows".
| howdydoo wrote:
| Don't forget one-click payday loans!
|
| https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-edge-buy-now-pay-
| la...
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| The issue with edge is the underlying browser engine is still
| chromium. The only reason I use Firefox over something like
| brave or edge is because I'm trying to advocate against a
| monopoly chromium browser engine.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Worse than Windows 10? That already seemed pretty bad when I
| kept having to uninstall candy crush and somehow it kept coming
| back, and literal ads in the start menu.
|
| How did they make it worse with Windows 11?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I think that might be a great reason why! To make windows a
| unified advertising identifier.
|
| ATT (and verizon tried too) got these ad platforms because they
| wanted to unite their 1st party user device data to an
| advertising graph.
|
| They tried to enable targeting individuals (on harder to 1:1
| target devices too). But they never seemed to actually merge
| the two 'pipes' together that well.
|
| Because google & apple have blocked more targeted advertising
| for everyone but themselves, creating a competing platform that
| doesn't rely on 3p cookies or IDFA etc would be really
| valuable.
|
| FB direct response ads are totally dead for us. Apple & google
| killed it. We use Xandr and they do have some broad demo 1p
| targeting segments, device expansion, but it's nothing like FB.
| Still have to use a 3rd party to load 1:1 lists, at least we
| do.
|
| Google already has a huge login base on the web. In addition,
| AFAIK google includes a uuid in chrome that only google
| properties can read - I have never found info on if they use
| that for ad targeting, or correct my memory if i'm wrong on
| that?
|
| Microsoft could create something like that. They would probably
| have to expand IE use or do something shady in between chrome
| and the web.
|
| Maybe if they want to get into streaming too - blurg.
|
| OR a better idea imho would be a microsoft smart tv, MSFT SSP +
| exclusive to xandr inventory included. There is some gaming
| advertising too that could be thought out and expanded. Maybe
| bundle xbox inside a tv, sell it at a loss to stream ads.
| ssklash wrote:
| > Microsoft's shared vision of empowering a free and open web and
| championing an open industry alternative via a global advertising
| marketplace makes it a great fit for Xandr.
|
| > Microsoft can accelerate the delivery of its digital
| advertising and retail media solutions, shaping tomorrow's
| digital ad marketplace into one that respects consumer privacy
| preferences, understands publishers' relationships with consumers
| and helps advertisers meet their goals.
|
| How do they write crap like this with a straight face?
| krono wrote:
| I suppose they don't really have anything about this
| acquisition that they want to share with us, but it'd be weird
| to say nothing at all.
| decafninja wrote:
| I turned down a job offer from AppNexus a few years ago.
|
| To think that if I had accepted, I would be a future Microsoft
| employee.
| indymike wrote:
| All big tech companies have a problem: once you are on top,
| growth is hard to do by innovating and having a superior, more
| useful product. It's easier to acquire other businesses and find
| ways to leverage your existing customer base. MS has been great
| for the last couple of years because they were doing the hard
| thing and innovating (playing nice with open source, VS Code,
| etc...). Eventually, though it's easier, and lower risk to just
| leverage the customer base.
| manigandham wrote:
| Adtech veteran here. This is week old news, and was expected by
| the industry for awhile ever since ATT failed to integrate
| Appnexus properly.
|
| Not sure why this thread has turned into so many off-topic
| complaints about Microsoft but this acquisition itself makes
| perfect sense. The duopoly of Google and Facebook has weakened
| with the changing landscape of mobile devices, tracking
| protection, and data regulation. Amazon is quickly building their
| ad business along with Apple and this gives Microsoft a solid
| leap forward to leverage their growing media inventory and
| onboard existing clients with a fully functioning demand and
| supply-side platform.
| fartcannon wrote:
| People are complaining because they don't want adtech in
| everything. It has nothing to do with it being old news - it's
| news until the industry is leashed. Microsoft joining in isn't
| things getting better, it's things getting worse because it
| confirms a lot of suspicions people have.
| manigandham wrote:
| > " _adtech in everything_ "
|
| What's that mean? This is technology to deliver advertising.
| _Where_ that advertising appears has nothing to do with this
| story, and hasn 't changed because of it.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Microsoft's evolution into adtech is the natural evolution of
| industrial capitalism.
|
| In the 19th century, mercantile giants evolved into banks,
| because after expanding to the limits of their trading turf,
| that's how they'd get secure, predictable Return On Capital
| (ROC).
|
| In the 20th century, industrial giants evolved into fintech
| services, because after expanding to the limits of their
| markets that's how they'd get ROC.
|
| In the 21st century, the largest software companies seek to
| evolve into adtech for the same reason.
| manigandham wrote:
| Some of the largest software companies have always been
| adtech companies. Google getting into cloud computing is
| similar to Microsoft expanding into advertising.
| Software/hardware/internet services all collide into similar
| end offerings for these megacaps.
| [deleted]
| Bud wrote:
| This is a great fit. Both companies are known for their
| impressively-offensive and egregious advertising tactics.
| S_A_P wrote:
| Microsoft is on an interesting trajectory of late, but it also
| seems like there is some bifurcation as to what they're doing. On
| one hand they are trying to embrace Linux and pushing development
| tools forward, but on the other they are just making every slimy
| big tech type decision they can. I have my own personal axe to
| grind with them as they tricked my completely non tech savvy
| mother in law to upgrade her Surface to windows 11 and guess
| what? The freaking network driver doesn't work so it is now
| effectively bricked for her use case. She didnt want windows 11
| and Im guessing just clicked all the highlighted options to "keep
| her computer up to date and safe". I found out the issue when we
| were in a location that only had slow satellite internet so she
| cant use her computer until she gets back to civilization and I
| can reload windows 10. Microsoft has created a tech support
| nightmare for me.
|
| Seriously if any MS folks are reading this- you really have
| pretty much erased any goodwill I had towards you, but I suppose
| the ad revenue means you dont care.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Microsoft is giving the Linux heads a job in porting Linux
| environments to windows to deincentivize using Linux desktop
| and servers. It's in direct competition with redhat. Absorb and
| destroy.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| "Some bifurcation" is quite an understatement!
|
| Unless you're trying to partition all actions into "good" and
| "bad", it's more like octofurcation or dodecafurcation.
| Microsoft is not a homogenous monolith...what does it even mean
| to split something that's already split apart?
|
| Here's an old org chart which shows Microsoft trifurcated:
|
| https://i.insider.com/4e0b340dcadcbbdd35120000
|
| But realistically, each of 5 divisions - Windows, Office,
| Server & Tools, Online Services, and Entertainment & Devices
| (the above chart may have been made before the latter two
| existed) - has a president that's trying to make their division
| successful, even at the expense of goodwill earned by other
| divisions. Yes, Server & Tools has been knocking it out of the
| park for you and I recently with regards to developer
| enthusiasm, but they're a long ways away from Entertainment &
| Devices. Each of those divisions actually has another ~25 VPs
| and hundreds of Directors each trying to climb the ladder
| faster than the others.
|
| To put it bluntly, Windows is jealous of all the post-sale
| revenue that Entertainment & Devices gets, and all the
| telemetry that online services gets, and has shoved as much as
| possible of both into Windows 11.
| mlazos wrote:
| I currently work at Microsoft, and all I can say is that I
| actually have so much respect for CEOs lately. It takes a
| huge amount of foresight and understanding of human nature to
| move a company this size in the right direction, because
| you're trying to incentivize all these divisions to behave
| the way you intend. As I've become more experienced I've
| learned that company culture is way more important than I
| thought when I first graduated college.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I must admit Windows just doesn't know what they are supposed
| to do.
|
| UWP, .NET Native and C++/CX just tanked due to their
| mismanagement, and having burned the few believers with what
| are now about 5 rewrites since Windows 8 was introduced plus
| having dropped the .NET Native and C++/CX toolchains.
|
| Forget about.WinUI 3.0, it is so messed up that Windows 11
| still needs to rely on UWP and WinUI 2.x, despite being
| "deprecated".
|
| Then we have tons of GUI tooling PMs, each selling their own
| stack, and every couple of months the faces on community
| calls keep changing.
|
| There are surely some big fires happening in. Redmond and
| they keep carrying water buckets hoping to make it right.
|
| Specially since it appears the lack of love between WinDev
| and DevDiv never went away.
|
| The forces that won over Longhorn have managed to completely
| mess up WinRT and aren't doing any better with the Project
| Reunion endeavours.
|
| Anyone that is bored during the season festivities can browse
| the GitHub issues for WinUI, AppSDK, cppwinrt and a bunch of
| other ones connected to them.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It makes me think of the disaster of the Linux desktop and
| X Windows.
|
| The first thing you notice about Linux is all the different
| widget sets that clash with each other such as Motif,
| Lesstif, tk, gtk, qt, fltk, wxWidgets and many more. They
| all seem to be in a competition to look worse than all of
| the competitors. They also seem to share the belief that
| "font metrics don't matter" and be completely indifferent
| if labels burst out of their space.
|
| Microsoft has gone through almost as many widget sets for
| Windows. Muggles don't notice, but if you are a dev or
| learn to be observant you might realize that you are using
| 8 different widget sets in a given day. Microsoft has so
| often seemed to be 90 or 180 degrees behind phase with the
| rest of the world: I remember that awful time in the early
| 00's that theming widget sets was a fad and the program
| that ran your scanner was in a competition with similar
| programs to look uglier than the others, such as
|
| https://mercy-evs.com/back-orifice-2000-78/
|
| Then they came out with WPF which had wonderful support for
| theming but everybody was burned out from theming and
| nobody used it.
|
| At least in Windows Vista Microsoft made the transition to
| the GPU first WDDM rendering model. In linux every decade
| is going to be the decade of Wayland but it will never
| actually happen, which is sad.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I have to agree, despite my occasional pro-Windows
| comments.
|
| Here are two more nice pieces, despite VS being a WPF
| application, the team that owns the installer decided it
| was a great idea to rewrite it in Electron.
|
| And C++/WinRT tooling is so back to the 90's that even
| using MFC feels more fun. Apparently no one in WinDev can
| afford C++ Builder or Qt licenses to get how pre-historic
| they live.
|
| So we get Forms, WPF, WinUI/UWP and WinUI/Win32, MAUI and
| then Blazor not happy with WebAssembly also tries to sell
| itself as Electron replacement on top of all those stacks
| via WebWidgets.
|
| Clearly the cat has left the house and the mice don't
| know what to do.
| criddell wrote:
| > And C++/WinRT tooling is so back to the 90's that even
| using MFC feels more fun.
|
| I work on a large MFC project and it's still a
| surprisingly nice way to develop desktop applications.
| It's fast, old, and stable.
|
| Using some of the newer Windows APIs in MFC can be
| painful though (e.g. XAML Islands).
| pjmlp wrote:
| For anyone starting on C++/WinRT today without major
| Windows background, I would just recommend them to read a
| book on ATL from early 2000, most of the tooling is the
| same, this is how "modern" it feels like.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That said I think Windows is still the market leader and
| better than the others. I don't know much about the story
| of MacOS but I doubt it's that different. I have a mac
| right next to me, my wife uses it to read her email, I
| use it to test web sites on Safari, and I can't say it is
| any better than the Windows machine I use.
|
| The finder is OK but many of the built-in apps like
| iTunes are "absolute p00p" and seem to drive away good
| competitive software.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| For the last twenty years Cocoa has been the UI framework
| for macOS with a transition to SwiftUI starting a couple
| of years ago.
|
| Apple has definitely been more consistent on this front.
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is the thing, it is the lesser evil on desktop
| tooling, however WinDev is trying really hard to make it
| no longer be the case.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| At least some sanity prevailed and the VS installer is
| now a WPF app.
|
| Blazor on the desktop is a bit of a head scratcher.
| pjmlp wrote:
| > At least some sanity prevailed and the VS installer is
| now a WPF app.
|
| It is an Electron app, check its use of nodejs when
| running it.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Whic makes me think if Microsoft can't be bothered with
| their own frameworks why should I.
| darknavi wrote:
| FYI Gaming is it's own Org from the top now :)
|
| I really respect the decisions lately within Gaming but there
| have been some really disappointing changes in other spaces
| like Windows.
| S_A_P wrote:
| This is a great point- I dramatically oversimplified what is
| going on. I do wonder how this is discussed internally. Since
| I started working as a dev back in the late 90s I feel like a
| lot of the optimism I had from tech improving our lives has
| largely been erased. Its probably just me getting old and
| pessimistic though :).
| jraph wrote:
| > a lot of the optimism I had from tech improving our lives
| has largely been erased
|
| It can do both, and we should strive to both prevent it
| from degrading our lives, and make it improve them. That's
| the original purpose of our computers. This should drive
| us. It drives me. I'd say this is critically important.
|
| Please try to do the right things, whoever reads this.
| Computer scientists are powerful and impactful. Please
| reflect on how and what you (and whoever pays you) spend
| your time on, how it impacts society and human beings (and
| beyond) and make sure your are at ease with what you come
| up with, whatever the scale of the impact is. Don't lie to
| yourself. This paragraph should not be painful to read.
| mathattack wrote:
| My experience has been their right arm doesn't talk to the
| left. Still mostly good people inside. Except for some
| enterprise sales.
| cbsks wrote:
| My wife's surface book 3 auto-updated to windows 11. She
| complained to me that games were running slowly and it turned
| out that the nvidia driver wasn't installed anymore so she was
| stuck using the intel graphics card.
|
| It was an easy fix for me, but it would have been nearly
| impossible for a non-tech-savvy person to figure out. You would
| think that Microsoft would do a better job of testing their own
| OS on their own hardware.
| vel0city wrote:
| Which Surface does she have? I've upgraded a few Surface
| tablets to 11 and have yet to experience the network drivers
| fail to work afterwards. Maybe it could also be that I waited a
| few months after it was out to upgrade and they already had a
| fix for that issue.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I dont recall offhand, it was purchased in 2020 I believe,
| but could be 2019. Its a midrange model.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I feel it's strange that this kind of hyperbolic response to a
| network adapter driver bug is considered normal discourse.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I dont know that its hyperbolic to be irritated that MS
| couldnt get an upgrade right on their own hardware,
| especially when it was installed by the use of dark patterns.
| 13of40 wrote:
| The hyperbolic part is assuming that each of their 100K
| employees, and just as many vendors, are complicit in and
| guilty for whatever bug has allegedly affected OP's mom's
| computer.
|
| "Seriously if any MS folks are reading this- you really
| have pretty much erased any goodwill I had towards you"
| reaperducer wrote:
| Doesn't seem much different than when people rail against
| "the government" or "the media" or any other large
| collection of human beings.
| Guest42 wrote:
| I had a computer become bricked from w10 updates taking too
| much space, luckily I was able to switch to linux
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| Something similar happened with my father. He upgraded his
| laptop to w11 and now his microphone is incredibly finicky and
| will only capture his voice making if he's sitting exactly in
| front of the middle of the computer. This makes the mic useless
| for my father's base use case : have video calls where both he
| and my mother speak on the same computer. They now have to turn
| the computer around to fact the person who's speaking. The same
| computer with the same mic worked perfectly fine with w10.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Honestly I have found that the iPad is great for older folks
| for this reason. Not to be an Apple shill, but I've found that
| things like bricked devices after an update don't happen
| basically ever.
| russh wrote:
| I wish Apple would spend more time working on this use case.
| I'd really like a stripped-down, somewhat locked-down
| interface that could be remotely managed. It would be the
| greatest thing for elderly people with dementia. My Dad loved
| his iPad but was frequently frustrated when he strayed off
| into some screen, configuration setting, or mode he didn't
| understand.
| netr0ute wrote:
| Every day since Windows 11's release, Microsoft is alienating
| people and indirectly making desktop Linux the better option.
| ctrager wrote:
| I use Linux Mint. I don't think there's much if anything that
| makes Linux mint harder for a non-tech user. I think it's
| already the better option.
|
| But for non-tech users, I think buying a device with one OS and
| then wiping it to install a different OS is scary. Or doing
| anything that sounds risky to their daily laptop. So, where is
| the non-scary option for them to start with Linux? The laptops
| with Linux pre-installed, they aren't well known (or cheap).
|
| Does a Chromebook count as desktop linux?
| antattack wrote:
| Microsoft is also embracing Linux and Open Source. The endgame
| is Tivoization.
| syshum wrote:
| Do they though really...
|
| Microsoft Linux contribution is almost completely around
| making run better on azure or wsl not making Linux itself
| better.
|
| For open source they are attempting to control the mind share
| with dotnet, vscode, GitHub aka embrace phase
|
| We have started seeing signs of the extended phase in all 3
| projects
|
| We all know what phase 3 of eee is
| pjmlp wrote:
| Android and ChromeOS, Google got there first.
|
| Azure Sphere OS is also based on Linux kernel, not only
| cloud stuff.
|
| Another non Windows OS is Azure RTOS.
| jahnu wrote:
| I'm a software engineer and have many software engineering
| friends and acquaintances and still even in this group of
| people who are almost all at least comfortable with Linux
| hardly any use it for anything except work or learning.
|
| It's roughly a 50/50 split for the rest between Windows and
| macOS.
|
| So how can it be remotely plausible that Linux will become a
| mainstream desktop/laptop OS?
|
| Non IT workers also seem to favour a combo of phones and
| tablets too only using laptops for work not caring what it
| runs.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I have switched to Linux completely for my own stuff but I
| honestly would be reluctant to recommend this to non-tech
| users. There are a lot of problems when you run Linux on a
| laptop like battery life , suspend/wake problems and others.
| A lot of consumer software isn't available on Linux either.
| With Apple you get pretty nice integration between phone and
| desktop/laptop. Sort of possible on Linux but requires tech
| skills and hard work.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| Desktop Linux is great for Grandma who only needs a web
| browser and it's great for greybeards who remember what
| config file to edit, but anyone in between is going to be
| doing a LOT of pasting incantations they don't understand
| into terminal windows.
| syshum wrote:
| Ironically modern Linux is trying to alienate the grey
| beards with uneditable config files, breaking decades of
| convention, etc.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Only those that never used UNIX commercial clones, which
| have deviated from System V long time ago.
| teh_matt wrote:
| As someone who doesn't own a Windows machine and only uses
| Macs for work, this feels like an outdated perspective.
| It's been many years since using desktop Linux has required
| magical terminal incantations (for me at least). If it says
| Nvidia, don't touch it. Otherwise, everything seems to just
| work, and things at least don't get broken arbitrarily by
| companies whose goals don't match mine. Even all the games
| I've tried have run solidly with Steam's Proton support.
|
| Maybe I've become numb to them, but I just don't see these
| painful interactions that get referenced, and don't see why
| their bogeyman would be worth giving up your freedom to use
| your machine.
| indymike wrote:
| > but anyone in between is going to be doing a LOT of
| pasting incantations they don't understand into terminal
| windows.
|
| This thinking is really obsolete and couching everything as
| grandma or graybeards is really ageist, anyway. Last I
| looked, you have to do this on Mac more often than I'd
| like. On Windows, it's open up CMD as administrator and
| paste this command or download and install this little app
| and run it (that does God knows what as administrator).
| ctrager wrote:
| I'm a retired software developer. I have my computer and my
| non-techie wife's computer running Linux Mint. For me,
| doing some hobby coding, yes, I paste some incantations,
| but for her, I don't have to do anything. A clean install
| just works fine as is.
| capableweb wrote:
| > So how can it be remotely plausible that Linux will become
| a mainstream desktop/laptop OS?
|
| Because of time and inevitable changes happening to
| everything over time.
|
| Remember when Windows was nothing and everyone was using
| something else? Remember when macOS was nothing and everyone
| was using something else? Same thing can happen with Linux,
| or some other operating system. Sure, might take 10, 50, 100
| years, but eventually, Windows and macOS (and probably Linux)
| will be relics of the past.
| zeusk wrote:
| I think platforms have gotten to a complexity where
| starting from a clean state isn't as easy anymore. Just
| look at fuschia, I know it's been in "early" development
| since at least 2013 and there's not much to show for it.
|
| Things get A LOT more complicated when you add
| localisation, accessibility, UI and all the other things we
| take for granted.
| philjohn wrote:
| It's still a long way off - have a look at the recent Linus
| Tech Tips challenge where he and Luke had to daily drive
| Linux for a month.
|
| They're technical people, and yes, LTT is hammed up a bit
| (I call it the Top Gear of Tech), but the number of issues
| they ran into that you just don't on Windows (in most
| cases) was illuminating.
|
| I have no troubles running a Linux home server, but I don't
| have time to fiddle around so my gaming desktop is Windows,
| and for work it's MacOS.
| silisili wrote:
| I agree, but I've found it's more people doing what everyone
| else is doing, vs any real downside. I was screen sharing
| with someone recently who said 'thats cool, but I thought you
| used linux..'. They just thought linux was a terminal black
| screen I guess. Anyhow I showed them how I get around, work,
| some cool features, and they were sold enough to dual boot
| it.
|
| I guess Desktop Linux's biggest hurdle is that most people
| have no idea it even exists, and there's zero advertising.
| shmerl wrote:
| Simple. You need wider pre-install base. That's the only
| barrier.
| howdydoo wrote:
| So you're saying 2022 is the year of the linux desktop?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the benefits are for executive management and their investors,
| not users. Users's ad impressions and profiles are a product
| for management; more so for Teams.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Xandr seems to be one of those worthless businesses that gets
| passed around like a football between larger businesses just
| to make the balance sheets of the larger businesses
| incomprehensible. Right up there with Pivotal.
| Animats wrote:
| Does this give Microsoft access to AT&T call data?
| echelon wrote:
| Damn it all to hell.
|
| I swore that since Nadella took over the helm that Microsoft was
| becoming a good force for the industry. There were so many
| positive moves. Linux, open source, Github improvements. Now I
| can see that it's all still classic "evil Microsoft" under the
| hood.
|
| They're taking over our industry with Github/VSCode in the cloud.
| Microsoft payments injection in Edge taxes web commerce, and with
| their default browser shenanigans they're generally treating the
| web as something they own. They're monitoring and recording your
| Windows files and secrets and uploading them for analysis. Github
| Co-pilot is training on GPL code and aims to eventually replace
| us. Xbox has the worst DRM that requires always-online to play
| games you own. LinkedIn - there's never been much good to say
| here.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Wait what's this about monitoring and record By files and
| secrets?
|
| Also I think you might be mistaken about the Xbox DRM, they
| mentioned they'd be requiring always online prior to the launch
| of the Xbox one but as far as I know they never followed
| through after all the backlash they received.
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