They're directly lobbying the government on a massive scale. They're looking for every opportunity to force their software on people buying any computer, like they always have. They're looking for every technical trick to screw the competition, and to extract more from their customers. Where it's possible (i.e. not LibreOffice) they're buying up any company that does threaten to successfully compete with them. They bought half the video game industry for example. They're buying their way into all the schools so kids grow up knowing nothing but the Microsoft life.

I mean what else would they do? It's Microsoft.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 24 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Excel is a wonderful piece of technology, the full capacity of which I don’t even come close to fully utilizing. I can appreciate that as a piece of art, but I can also get everything I need done in libreoffice calc and then I don’t have to support and rely on microsoft.

[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've worked at some banks quite a few years ago and Excel was basically a cheap application space for them. The cells were inputs/outputs, they used VBA, and COM+ which talked to SQL to perform calculations and all that. It was really weird but every iteration that they wrote to replace Excel (they needed to because of banking auditing regulations) had failed simply due to the features they would get from it. It was wild to see at the time.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I did some pretty amazing things with Excel and VBA in the day.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I made a whole CRM in Google sheets once, with appscript and an animated dancing badger Easter egg

[–] CaperGrrl79@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago

Or OnlyOffice, but there are problematic elements. Then again, what doesn't have that these days?

[–] RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works 23 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Chromebooks are taking over Windows PCs in public schools these days. I was only taught how to use Windows PCs when I was a kid in school, though. 90s/00s.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 42 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. Not exactly an improvement, is it.

[–] BigJohnnyHines@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 days ago

Arguably worse. Google does all kinds of sneaky things. Kids end up learning software without file management skills (like at all). This makes it very difficult to leave their apps and if they do it’ll be to to 365, maybe iCloud, not libreoffice.

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Hit them with an anti-trust suit!

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hit them with an anti-trust suit!

Again

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 days ago

Anutha one!

[–] ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 6 points 4 days ago

Speaking of video games. I heard they were closing down ID Software, among other studios.