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Comment by mythz | Hacker News Reader

So your argument is that because GitHub no longer has a profit motive and they're now releasing features at a much faster pace, that the acquisition has somehow gone bad?

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The Argument is that it's bad for the market, as it makes it hard for competitors which aren't part of such a large company and hence need to make profit.

Isn't this also an argument against every VC-funded startup in existence?

And basically every free product released by large companies which prioritizes mass distribution and user base over direct product cost. It definitely makes it much harder for the few remaining competitors but also benefits the far greater number of users.

They definitely have a competitive advantage where they're able to build and give away features for free to attract larger mind-share, but it's also the playbook of most large companies with freemium or gateway products. Not seeing why Microsoft needs to limit themselves to the same constraints as their less resourceful competitors.

> It definitely makes it much harder for the few remaining competitors but also benefits the far greater number of users.

It only benefits users in the short term. The consequences of monopoly catch up with all of us, eventually.

VC funding has nothing to do with it. It’s an argument against the business practice of leveraging monopoly in one market to subsidize selling at a loss in other markets to kill off competition before it can even emerge. That is what Microsoft appears to be doing with Github, and it is overall a bad thing for everyone except Microsoft. We will get less choice in the markets poisoned by Microsoft, and in the long run we will get less value for a higher cost.

By the way, this is not just about Microsoft. Google, Amazon, and to a lesser degree Apple and Facebook are equally guilty of this.

Well, actually, yes.

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