Am I going Microsoft in my old age?

I’ LL MAKE A CONFESSION. Until I pressed Delete a few moments ago, the first sentence of this column wasn’t “I’ll make a confession” but “It’s hard to have sympathy for Microsoft”. The column I was going to write would pitch myself on Microsoft’s side of the debate that continues to rumble in our Letters pages about the rights and wrongs of the company’s handling of Windows Updates.

But then something made me stop and ask myself: why is it so hard to have sympathy with a company? At what point do they stop being people – the founders – and start being a megacorp, which we assume is evil?

Consider how companies start. With rare exceptions, they begin with one or two people (in Microsoft’s case, Bill Gates and Paul Allen). They have an amazing idea. The idea takes off. Money rolls in. They hire more people, develop the original idea, have new ideas, and become a sprawling mass that spreads its tendrils across oceans. At that point, they tend to either swallow or be swallowed. Remember Compaq? Digital? ICL? (Skype? LinkedIn? Minecraft?)

I admit it’s hard to have sympathy for such a behemoth of a company, especially one like Microsoft, which hauled in almost $100 billion in revenue last year. So, let me rephrase the question: why do I, and I suspect many others, still have such an odd sense of solidarity with Microsoft?

Having asked myself the question, I’ll admit that it’s more nuanced than that. When people criticise the firm for the way it handles updates, I find myself split in two, in a way that biology teachers would find useful while teaching mitosis. When I hear of a laptop going into update mode just before someone is due to go into a meeting, how can I not feel sympathy for them? “Something must be done!” my parent cell shouts, jumping onto a convenient soap box.

But before it’s made the leap, another cell materialises that’s just as sympathetic and compelling. “Hey,” he says, “don’t you understand that Microsoft is doing its best? It’s got hundreds of millions of boxes running its software, and it doesn’t want to control you like [he’d flick his eyes towards the Apple store that somehow appeared nearby] certain other companies. It’s just trying to keep you safe.”

Because Microsoft could lock us down far more than it does. It could have forced us to stop using old computers many years ago, exerting the power of its effective monopoly to say “you can’t use that any more, use this”. It could also have followed Apple and taken full control of the hardware and software, leaving no room for anyone else.

I’m not naive enough to believe that Microsoft does this in its role of benevolent uncle – money is always king – but surely the end result is ample reward. For example, let’s celebrate the fact that in 2018 a British company such as PC Specialist can create a bespoke computer based on Windows, with no obligation to use anything made by Microsoft other than the operating system ( see p56). That Scan, another proud British company, can customise a laptop to the exact wishes of its customers ( see p57).

Yes, we should criticise Microsoft when it gets things wrong, and, yes, we need some people to get angry so that improvements happen. Just occasionally, though, let’s congratulate a company for making enough right decisions over the past 40 years to give us the amazing technology we take advantage of today.