Ethics Matters (Premium)

European regulators are circling U.S. tech giants, looking for any excuse to impose heavy fines and make major changes to business behaviors, and even industry darling Apple isn’t above the fray. Here in the United States, the FTC is poised to levy a historic penalty as part of a settlement with Facebook, and this could serve as a model for future antitrust enforcement.

These cases are all about privacy. Or, more simply, about ethics and this strange new notion that a corporation, which exists solely to advance the fortunes of its shareholders at all costs, must act in a way that benefits themselves and their owners while doing no harm to mankind.

Microsoft is the only U.S. tech giant that does business this way. It should market the hell out this fact.

That we can even have this conversation here in 2019 is rather incredible. For much of its existence, Microsoft was a malignant tumor towering over the industry, and it could destroy entire businesses, and covert or squelch innovative ideas, simply by announcing that it intended to duplicate a product or service.

This behavior stopped, finally, with the software giant’s back-to-back antitrust defeats in the U.S. and Europe in the early 2000s. In the former case, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson openly declared his intent to split Microsoft into multiple mini-Microsofts, undoing Bill Gates’ legacy. That effort failed, but the EU case finally twisted a knife into Microsoft’s back: The European Commission issued then-historic fines against Microsoft and disrupted its business model in ways that, at the time, seemed almost spiteful and pointless.

They were not. As any Microsoft fan can tell you, the combined weight of the U.S. and EU antitrust actions against Microsoft triggered a decade of inaction and indecision. And it allowed companies like Google and a resurgent Apple to push forward in ways that would have been impossible otherwise. It was a comedy of timing for Microsoft, which lost its dominant spot in the industry and fell behind in and then surrendered key markets like Internet search/advertising and mobile.

By the time Microsoft emerged from its post-antitrust funk, it was over. And in its hungover state, the one-time software giant responded to its changing fortunes with a two-pronged assault on common sense that included such products as Windows Phone and Windows 8, the latter of which was made by a madman who refused to collaborate with the makers of the former. The result was a final hobbling of Microsoft with consumers and the start of an exodus from that customer segment that still continues today.

As a long-time Microsoft watcher, I always viewed these events as negative. I’ve even joked, sort of, about me missing the “good old days” when Microsoft could disrupt simply by being a bully. That today’s Microsoft is too passive, too kind-hearted, too open, and too averse to the realities of competition.

But with the passage of time, I’m starting to see the light. Microsoft’s change, which could never have happened without that antitrust intervention, wasn’t just good for the company, it was good for the world. Yes, there were and still are some downsides. There was much cancer and deadwood to root out of the company, a lot of old thinking and old-timers to replace. But in the end, and it did take many years, the Microsoft that emerged on the other side is … better.

Today’s Microsoft is a better company, a better world citizen, a better partner, and a better business in the sense that it is more diversified, open, and feedback-driven. It is the ethical alternative in a world that preaches ethics but is nothing but unethical. Think about Apple’s, Facebook’s, and Google’s public-stated bullshit and compare that to their actual business practices. And then compare that to what Microsoft says and does.

There’s an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times that explains how governments, rather than regulators, can fix some of these unethical firms: Simply tax “targeted ad revenue,” which are ads that violate user privacy. Now consider what it would mean to companies like Facebook and Google, which derive the majority of their revenues from such ads, if this were suddenly an untenable business model.

Also consider how little impact this would have on Microsoft, a company that is currently taking a Google-made browser and removing all Google tracking from it and offering users a way to remove all tracking as well.

Or look at Apple and its abusive app store policies and how this company, thanks to a Spotify complaint to the EU, is steamrolling towards a future of oversight and more open app distribution policies, removing one of its key points of lock-in. Which is Apple’s real strategy: Raking its customers for as much money as possible.

Now compare this to Microsoft, which has opened up its app store, dramatically reduced the percentage it takes from developers on purchases, and is once again pursuing more open ways of distributing apps to its own customers, via a browser, as well.

In a world that is turning against Big Tech, finally, Microsoft stands alone as the one Big Tech firm that can be trusted. One might argue, as I have, that its entire business model is really based on trust. And that this trust is why the Fortune 500 will follow Microsoft and transition themselves from the software giant’s on-premises solutions to the cloud. To Microsoft’s cloud. A big and growing business which many have correctly painted the future.

Microsoft’s ethical approach to business is the new Trustworthy Computing initiative. Except that this time, it means trustworthy more broadly. And it is a winning strategy. It’s not just a good idea. It’s the right idea at the right time, the exact opposite of the Windows Phone/Windows 8 debacles.