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the myth of the good tech giant
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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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I don't think they would've, they already had the market, and the attitude about privacy was very different back then
This also was before late-stage capital converted to endgame capitalism, back then they wanted to protect the cash cow. They cared about customer loyalty, because they cared about future revenue
Now? Companies are dismantling themselves for one more good quarter
Any example of this?
Intel.
Pretty sure Intel is still alive and their problems are systematic from many years ago when AMD released Bulldozer and Intel decided it can stop innovating. So don't think they fit here.
They’re failing because they hired a string of accountants as CEOs. Undoubtedly they conceded to Wall St pressure to sacrifice research and engineering funding to goose short-term profits. 4 of those and there’s no recovery from that nose dive.
Tomato tomato.
That's an interesting statement. So let's go like 15 years ago. What short-term profits were they pursuing? And how can you call them short-term when those profits lasted for so long?
What do you think laying off your workforce does? These are the people who produce the things that make money
For a clear cut example, Microsoft and gaming. They lay off entire studios the moment they release a hit
It costs like 18 months+ of salary to replace a role like that, and you'll have to pay them more. It'll make you a bit more money next quarter... But in 2-5 years when there's no new game?
Microsoft is doing pretty well so I wouldn't call it "dismantling", it seems to be working for them.
Microsoft is dismantling itself to keep "doing well". That's my point
Their gaming division keeps acquiring and killing game studios. They're killing off consoles, instead they're going to sell prebuilds running windows. They're scaling it all way back and releasing their exclusives, letting steam run the infrastructure, and milking all of their current IP, but not really making more
They've ended support for a ton of different product lines. Azure is a mess. Their desktop market share is falling too.
They're all in on AI at this point, literally every tool they offer has it now. It's not even opt in, it doesn't require an account anymore... They're desperate to inflate the numbers so they can project growth a little longer
What do you think happens when you continuously lay off your workforce and kill projects? When you stop actually doing things, and run a company based on speculation?
Eventually, the bubble pops.
Microsoft for 8 years now is a company that sells Linux and opensource.
Non of their divisions you mentioned were profitable for many years now(especially Windows), just look at their yearly reports. Only logical to get rid of them. Don't agree with your Azure statement, don't mind me, numbers don't agree with it.
I don't get why you wrote so much about gaming, Microsoft never was a gaming company. And frankly nothing important for gamers was lost with them buying those empty shells of game developer companies, then shutting them down.
I can agree on the AI hype especially with recent github news. But those are recent, we'll have to see if that was bad or good decision.
I don't know how else to explain it to you. Microsoft is doing well on paper
These unprofitable divisions? This is the result of the layoffs. This is what happens when you stop doing the thing, and you start living in speculation land
Azure is a mess propped up by AI. The numbers don't account for shuffling money around. It's related to why every Microsoft product has ai shoved into it
And I'm keep bringing up gaming because their gaming division is the most egregious example of what I'm talking about. They're the third largest game publisher, and they've played a huge part killing AAA gaming. And in doing so, they've killed their own revenue stream