&gt; I really dislike this line of thinking. It assumes things can&#x27;t change.<p>I never said that things can&#x27;t change. I&#x27;ve seen <i>many</i> companies change over the years. However, Microsoft&#x27;s anti-competitive and underhanded practices have been <i>extremely</i> profitable for them and have -all things considered- resulted in <i>very</i> few negative consequences.<p>&gt;  It&#x27;s clear [that MSFT is changing] from the people that I&#x27;ve talked to that work there. It&#x27;s clear from the messaging by senior management.<p>Both Plus and Hangouts were supposed to be bold new directions for Google. At the time, it was <i>abundantly</i> clear from talking to most people who worked there <i>and</i> senior management that <i>everyone</i> was <i>totally</i> stoked about these new platforms and that <i>this</i> was the direction that the company was going to go for the foreseeable future.<p>But here we are -four years later- and Hangouts is -all things considered- a steaming pile and everyone in the company knows it, Google is slowly but steadily disentangling itself from Plus (and Plus from its services), and Vivek Gundotra -the former head of Plus- quietly &quot;left the company&quot; <i>several</i> years past.<p>As you say, companies change.<p>&gt; It&#x27;s clear that MSFT is changing.<p>This isn&#x27;t the first time that it has been &quot;clear&quot; that Microsoft was changing. In the past it turned out to be a temporary change in order to gain reputation, or new users for their platforms or... Like I said before, &quot;Playing the nice guy&quot; has -historically- been just a small -and fleeting- phase of Microsoft&#x27;s dirty market domination strategies.<p>Given the enormous amount of harm Microsoft has done to the industry over the past several <i>decades</i>, (and given Microsoft&#x27;s historical propensity for lock-in and intentionally high switching costs) I&#x27;m going to wait for a <i>very</i> long time before seriously entertaining the claims that Microsoft has <i>actually</i> changed.