Microsoft CEO's Take on Tech's Clout: 'Big by Itself Is Not Bad' (bloomberg.com) 39
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said social-media services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube need clearer laws and rules to govern whether controversial accounts, like former U.S. President Donald Trump's, have a place on their services, rather than being asked to make free-speech decisions themselves. From a report: "Unilateral action by individual companies in democracies like ours is just not long-term stable -- we do need to be able to have a framework of laws and norms," Nadella said in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg Television's Emily Chang. "Depending on any one individual CEO in any one of these companies to make calls that are going to really help us maintain something as sacred and as important as our democracy in the long run is just no way that at least I, as a citizen, would advocate for."
[...] In the past several years, antitrust regulators have ramped up investigations into the market power of large technology companies, just as Microsoft fell under government scrutiny and faced a U.S. antitrust lawsuit more than two decades ago, when Nadella was a rising manager. It's better for the younger technology companies to face robust competition and handle negative consequences of growing too big ahead of time, rather than waiting until their size leads to problems for consumers and rivals, the CEO said. "Big by itself is not bad, but competition is good," he said. "And more importantly, you need to have a business model that really is aligned with the world doing well. There are certain categories of products where the unintended consequences of the growth on that category or lack of competition creates issues." The need for competition includes rivalry from China, Nadella said, although national security concerns must be reckoned with by each government, Nadella said. "There is no God-given right for U.S. tech companies to take for granted that there cannot be other tech powers," he said. "All of us in the West Coast of the United States need to be more grounded, because sometimes I think we celebrate our own advances far too much." Instead, companies should look at what's happening in the world and how relevant their technology is, he said.
[...] In the past several years, antitrust regulators have ramped up investigations into the market power of large technology companies, just as Microsoft fell under government scrutiny and faced a U.S. antitrust lawsuit more than two decades ago, when Nadella was a rising manager. It's better for the younger technology companies to face robust competition and handle negative consequences of growing too big ahead of time, rather than waiting until their size leads to problems for consumers and rivals, the CEO said. "Big by itself is not bad, but competition is good," he said. "And more importantly, you need to have a business model that really is aligned with the world doing well. There are certain categories of products where the unintended consequences of the growth on that category or lack of competition creates issues." The need for competition includes rivalry from China, Nadella said, although national security concerns must be reckoned with by each government, Nadella said. "There is no God-given right for U.S. tech companies to take for granted that there cannot be other tech powers," he said. "All of us in the West Coast of the United States need to be more grounded, because sometimes I think we celebrate our own advances far too much." Instead, companies should look at what's happening in the world and how relevant their technology is, he said.
'Big by Itself Is Not Bad' (Score:3)
For years, I have said, Microsoft is a Marketing and Sales company not a tech company. Tech is just the vehicle that gets them to their goals.
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For years, I have said, Microsoft is a Marketing and Sales company not a tech company. Tech is just the vehicle that gets them to their goals.
I don't disagree with you. However, I'm wondering if the same can't be said of any company. At least any company that remains profitable.
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> However, I'm wondering if the same can't be said of any company.
I've been saying it for years... if it wasn't for all the advertisements and commercials I would have stopped using electricity long ago. But those dang electricity marketing companies are good. Too good.
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Let people say what they want, with no censorship.
If the speech they are saying is not illegal, then let them say it without removal or censorship.
Easy Peasy.
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If the speech they are saying is not illegal, then let them say it without removal or censorship.
That is an option under the current law. But it's only an option. And for good reason:
Suppose that you run a site in which middle school students are able to collaborate with one another on school projects. Your customer is a school (let's say a private school, to simplify the analysis) and they pay to provide each of their students with logins.
One of the students starts using the site to spread horrifyingly racist literature. There's nothing illegal about that; the First Amendment protects it. To furth
Large part motivated by "where's my payola" (Score:1)
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Marketing organizations are different. Their service/product packaging, pricing structures, Licensing, move to subscriptions, cloud services, no repair, planned obsolesce, heck being booted off platforms just because you disagree, etc lead to situations where customer/users are trapped by the company. If you don't pay your platform/business functionality/data/songs/movi
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Then you get into the question of ‘what is marketing?’ Is it marketing for a project manager to maintain a relationship with his clients to make sure they are satisfied? Is it marketing to do a good job so a customer wants to do repeat business?
I would still call Microsoft a technology company. Maybe not a very good one, but it is tech at their core. They are however much too big for a healthy market, and should either be broken up or do it themselves (mostly horizontal divisions to eliminat
Re:'Big by Itself Is Not Bad' (Score:4, Insightful)
In practice, 'big' is used when people really mean 'lack of viable competition in the segment'. So when he says ""Big by itself is not bad, but competition is good", he's not technically wrong, but so far I haven't seen proof of having healthy competition in a market segment with a 'big' participant...
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Hmm, "Big by Itself Is Not Bad".
Well, one of the main things most California residents brag about is "it's the fifth largest economy in the world"*. Obviously they think that's a good thing. It's about as big as India or Mexico. That must be good - it's what they brag about, the fact that the California economy is similar to the economy of Mexico or India.
* The more accurate statement is it would be:
It would be 5th largest if it were a separate economy and for some reason the US couldn't trade with Asia,
Re:'Big by Itself Is Not Bad' (Score:4, Informative)
It's about as big as India or Mexico. That must be good - it's what they brag about, the fact that the California economy is similar to the economy of Mexico or India.
Not sure what Californians bragging about their economy has to do with anything, but California's GDP is almost 2.5 times that of Mexico, while having less than a third of the population. Don't know where you're getting your information, but I'd consider switching to another source if I were you.
It's not relevant. I took a cheap shot (Score:2)
You're right, my comment has nothing to do with the topic.
I took a cheap shot and I shouldn't have. Mea culpa.
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Hey, everybody makes mistakes.
But if you're going to take shots at California, I'd aim for something other than its economy. There are other more vulnerable targets.
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This one WAS funny, I think:
My co-worker from California is visiting Texas.
He said he wants to go to gun range because he wants to "sit something that is illegal in California". I told him if he wants to shoot a weapon that's illegal in California, I have the perfect thing for him.
I sent him a picture of a kid shooting spitballs from a PLASTIC STRAW. :)
I may send him back with a box of 100 illegal weapons.
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Re:'Big by Itself Is Not Bad' (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that describes Google a hell of a lot more than Microsoft. Sure, MS makes some money off ad revenue, but it's not the primary driver like it is for Google. I think they just stick adverts here and there since they see it as bonus revenue.
But what exactly does Microsoft Azure have to do with advertising? That makes a lot of money all on its own. How about Office? Again, a big money maker for them, and little or nothing to do with ads. What do their development tools have to do with advertising, which all have free versions, or are even open source? Again, nothing at all unless you squint really, really hard to try to make your argument.
There's plenty legitimately wrong with Microsoft, but sorry, I just don't see this argument. It's just a petty insult, and not based on reality.
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I was already in tech working with computers when MS DOS came out and lived the whole beginning.
Microsoft got to be where they are today by destroying their competition with monopoly and market power and the government looked the other way.
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I think that describes Google a hell of a lot more than Microsoft. Sure, MS makes some money off ad revenue, but it's not the primary driver like it is for Google. I think they just stick adverts here and there since they see it as bonus revenue.
Most of Microsoft's ads in their products are just for their own services like OneDrive and Edge, Apple do exactly the same thing in their OS with ads for Apple Music and Apple Arcade free trials in their iOS settings app.
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Wrong! Big Tech is at it's core advertising and marketing
I think you've actually got that backwards. Google, at least (where I work) is at heart 50% software company and 50% data center company, all wrapped in a layer of advertising and marketing. The ads generate the revenue, but only a small part of the company -- maybe 5%, maybe less? -- is involved in advertising, and the other 95% spend almost none of their time thinking about anything related to ads.
If the world's governments were to completely ban online advertising, Google would have to scramble a bit
He's wrong. (Score:2)
Big is, in and of itself, bad. It does have it's uses, but this doesn't avoid the inherent problem Big, in and of itself, implies poor communication with the end users. It implies unresponsiveness. It implies the feeling that "we don't have to care".
Note that none of this implies that big may not sometimes be necessary. But don't whitewash the blasted thing. Especially not with blatantly obvious lies.
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I would argue big is fundamentally bad. It might not be malicious but it is malignant.
To Big to Fail in our vocabulary for a reason. Single entities of to great a size become a vulnerability to our society. It might be the only supplier in a critical market fails due some externalized issue. The financial crisis pushed big autos into bankruptcy they were the major customers for all those down stream suppliers, who with the prospect of those big 3 ceasing operations faced catastrophe themselves. The financi
Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
It's better for the younger technology companies to face robust competition
That sounds exactly like the corporate culture at the young Microsoft. They were well known for being open to robust competition and for embracing the opportunities to innovate and compete their way to the top. Really such models of that attitude!.
No way they'd ever do anything sociopathic like try to destroy HTML and by extension the public WWW and the software ecosystem surrounding it by poisoning it with their own ridiculous extensions that only worked with their own software.
Disingenuous (Score:2)
Why would he say anything else? (Score:1)
Big company says big companies are good. Small company says small companies are good. Bitcoin CEO says cryptocurrencies are good. Comcast says Comcast is good. Boeing says bolting oversized engines onto a small jet is good (fancy software will compensate). Kansas City Chiefs said they were confident they'd win the Superbowl. The Superbowl streaker says steaking is good*. It would only be news if they said otherwise.
* It was better than that lame game.
Big is bad because quality doesn't scale. (Score:4, Interesting)
Quality doesn't scale because complex systems inherently operate in degraded mode and complex businesses accumulate (deliberately or otherwise) LOW QUALITY MANAGEMENT who do fun stuff like ruining Boeing's reputation over mods whose cost compared to not doing it right the first time. High quality personnel are rare and easily sabotaged by low quality management.
That quality doesn't scale has been understood for thousands of years (Praetorian Guard vs. ordinary soldiery is one example, SOCOM vs. regular Army a modern one.)
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Indeed. Well said.
It pretty much is (Score:2)
But "big" comes with advanced lying techniques (well, as "advanced" as anything with eternally backwards and 2nd rate MS ever is) and hence the big ones like to claim they are not bad. They are. No exceptions.
Big by itself can be bad (Score:2)
If you fall, it will hurt a lot!
This seems backwards (Score:2)
So instead of individual websites deciding who to ban from social media, the government should decide? I'm really not sure that's preferable...
Indeed, Nadella (Score:2)
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Indeed.
My counter-thought was "Dictatorships by themselves aren't bad"
They can become bad when the power is abused, but I'm sure it's only a coincidence that the power has historically *always* been abused.
Regulatory Capture (Score:2)
Giant mega-corps will greatly aid in writing the legislation that may be added to the Federal Code. If this happens, you can bet that the law will be written to play to their strengths, e.g. money and legal departments, and will marginally damage competitors, and would-be but now won't be competitors, to a much greater extent, who have far less resources, or even at first, close to none. Such rules will also play to the political bias' of those corporations who often write the legislation themselves. The dy
Said the bear to the rabbit (Score:2)
No, Mr. Nadella, you do not need anything clearer. (Score:2)
In the US, the First Amendment says the government doesn't get to make those decisions. At most (and this is not even certain), it could require you to serve all those controversial accounts. So no, we do not need a framework; if it is your network it is both your decision and your responsibility when you boot someone else, no pretending your hand was forced by some government framework. You are the censor.
Maybe... (Score:1)
Big by itself is not bad (Score:1)
Yes, but it is never by itself.