[iimblack]

How do you separate the good from the bad? What do you do when Microsoft changes the good things into bad things?

My take is that Microsoft consistently makes bad things and makes "good" things into "bad" things; so, I don't have much expectation or faith that anything that I currently think is "good" will stay that way.

[graemep]

Services are bad - that is what the first part of the story is about.

However I do not think it is different for any online service. Any American company would have to cut off services to an individual (or organisation) subject to sanctions (the main example given). The same might apply to other countries for various reasons. There are various reasons a service might fail, or cut off a particular customer (lots of reasons, lots of examples in previous HN discussion).

What has changed is that the typical MS customer is a lot more dependent on MS services - MS 365, Python in Excel ONLY works in the cloud, people used hosted email instead of their own Exchange installation...... That means MS cutting off a customer would mean all their IT would cease working. They can just shut down any organisation with that level of dependency if they are ordered to, or decide to, do so.

[mrweasel]

> How do you separate the good from the bad?

Developer tools and enterprise stuff good (mostly). Consumer products bad.

[herbst]

For whom? Microsoft?

I don't know which of their developer tools I would consider good. Or less worse than the competition

[tiahura]

MS office is 30 years ahead of open office.