Again, not saying that's the case, I'm not from the US so I don't much care, but it's funny to me that both side accuse each other of the same strategy.

Fair point but I think there are quite a few of those: Baldur's Gate 3 comes to mind. Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II even Cyberpunk, but it's true that nowadays Cyberpunk is a ~20$ title.

But not sure these were on GoG day 1. Or they added them after ~1 year after they got most of their sales on Steam and already the piracy of the games started.

This was my idea but answering 10 comments I left this short and indeed oversimplified version of my thoughts. I have since edited the comment to be clearer.

Fair enough :) That's one way to think about it ^^ If this would have been a debate I would agree. But I don't have time for a debate so I threw an idea out there and expected people to do their own research and figure out if my idea has any teeth or not.

I initially encountered the idea in Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Feel free to dismiss it or research it further. I do not have time to provide statistical evidence :)

Google should allow this free tier where your privacy is invaded and monetized or a paid tier where your privacy is intact but you pay money for that.

I fail to see how my argument was black and white when I say there's a trade off. Can you please tell me how my argument is black and white? Maybe we have different understanding of what a black and white argument means.

So your argument is that Bell Labs should have never happened since it's the result of a monopoly?

My argument is that Monopolies are trade offs. In a world without monopolies you have very little innovation in peace time. Monopolies are bad for consumers but the trade off is that they can afford to innovate and push the world forward. It's not as black and white as people like to think.

Getting rid of all monopolies and having a market in perfect competition will make Bell Labs impossible and all the innovation that came from there. A ballance is required. "There are no solutions only tradeoffs" - TS

Edit: Clarify my question about Bell Labs happening.

But I do agree C#, VS Code and TypeScript are nice Microsoft OSS/Free gifts to the world.

I also fail to see how someone who is annoyed by code that doesn't follow well established standards is somehow not a good fit in the C-suite.

You mentioned the "black little mermaid" and it's hard not to draw a parallel between a mod in a game that allows you to change the skin color of a character and the "woke" media race swapping well known characters like the little mermaid, Triss from the Witcher, Achilles, etc.

But I'm just wondering, is it possible to ignore the form of the message and listen to the content? Looking back the stoics were very good at controlling their own emotions and dealing with insults. Insults would just not get to them, they would bounce right off them. Is this a skill we've lost as a society?

It seems that nowadays we're focusing external, not internal. Instead of developing a thick skin we're focusing on changing the behavior of the people who's insulting us. To me that seems like a pointless endeavor. You can't change someone else behavior if they don't want to cooperate. And without a thick skin, all it takes is one jerk to ruin your day. With thick skin the insults from a jerk bounces off you and your day is still a good day. So, it seems to me that we should focus inwards instead of outwards. Not saying it's easy. Just saying humans were capable of that in the past, nowadays I don't hear anybody talking about it.