Also, lock-in tactic [1] is so much last century, but MS is still quite slow on dropping it. With general decline of Windows domination they'll drop lock-in approach even more, but that's still in the future.
Only in markets with poor competition. I.e. in unhealthy markets.
MS is used to such situation, because for a long time they were in a very sick market, where they dominated heavily. Lock-in was used to preserve that domination. Now the situation has changed, and them sticking to lock-in actually harms their position more than helping them to preserve their grip on the market. They slowly realize that, but they could do it faster. Moving slowly has become their habit, exactly because of the above.
Competition does wonders. Remember the times of heavy IE lock-in tactics? They are gone because of the competition.
This is blatantly and obviously false. Mobile has lots of competition, and lots of lock in. Apple's App Store, Google Play Services on Android, DRM on Kindles, DRM everywhere. I can watch Amazon Video on iOS and a Kindle Fire but not on an Android Tablet. I can get a gmail app on iOS and Android but not Kindle Fire. It's lock in everywhere. On Apple's ecosystem, on Google's, on Microsoft's and even on Amazon's.
Not enough really. Current situation of two heavily dominant participants is not called a lot of competition.
Other competitors are too much behind, barely making any traction in the market. And it shows. For example getting native drivers from hardware manufacturers is close to impossible, unless they are requested for existing incumbents. That's a perfect example of implicit lock-in caused by the lack of competition in the mobile space.
Another example are mobile browsers which are dominated by these incumbents. Again, not enough competition there.
Now you're just devolving your argument into a No True Scotsman fallacy. Mobile has a ton of competition, Samsung just lost the top spots in China and India. If anything it's lock in that's preventing it from being more competitive if anything.
Why is it off-topic to mention last century practices which are still used by MS? It's pretty much within the broader scope of what this article touches on. No matter what variety it is, MS has to adjust to the new reality, that competition will happen on merit, and not on crooked market capture methodology.
I guess downvoters are just upset about MS criticism, rather than consider this being off-topic, since it isn't.
As a Microsoft employee, I assure you that the problem here is not that Microsoft criticism is unpopular on HN. That is just hilarious. I can't even think of a thing that's more popular to bash on HN than Microsoft.
As I said, it contributes to the discussion to actually comment, rather than cast votes.
I.e. if you disagree with some statement - say so, and explain why. That would be meaningful.
> the problem here is not that Microsoft criticism is unpopular on HN
That depends. According to my observation, a lot of times downvotes happen because of disagreement, even though they supposedly should indicate something else.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft#Vendor_...