submitted by /u/Appropriate_Rain_770
#why #apple #still #hasnt #cracked

Ever since Donald J.
Trump was re-elected president, we’ve witnessed a disheartening spectacle: big tech companies bending their knees to him, hoping to get him to kill antitrust actions against them and defend them from European Union rules and fines. 
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook have all in one way or another shown or declared support for the president’s agenda, especially his opposition to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.
Notably, all four attended his Jan.
20 inauguration and were front and center during the proceedings. 
Zuckerberg killed DEI efforts at Meta, abandoned attempts to contain misinformation on his services, makes regular pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, and called then-candidate Trump a “badass” after last year’s assassination attempt.
He sounded like nothing so much as Trump himself (while using words of more than one syllable) when he told Joe Rogan on a podcast: “The corporate world is pretty culturally neutered.
A culture that celebrates aggression a bit more has its own merits.
Masculine energy, I think, is good.”
Bezos killed DEI at Amazon.
As the owner of The Washington Post he also squashed the newspaper’s endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris last fall, killed a cartoon of tech leaders and Mickey Mouse bowing down to Trump, and ruled that the paper’s editorial and opinion pages will become right-wing, covering only “personal liberty and free markets,” with no opposing viewpoints allowed.
Pichai killed off DEI efforts at Google and makes regular visits to see Trump in Florida.
Cook is a bit of an outlier — although he attended the inauguration, he didn’t kill DEI at Apple and has made noises about working with Trump on tariff issues.
The four companies haven’t gotten anything (yet) for their efforts; legal action against them begun under Trump’s predecessor are proceeding. Google faces being broken up after a judge ruled it illegally monopolized the advertising tech market. Meta is being prosecuted for illegally monopolizing the social media market by buying Instagram and What’s App and could be broken up as well. Amazon has been charged by the FTC with protecting its online retail monopoly by imposing fees on third-party sellers and favoring its own services over theirs.
Apple has been sued by the Department of Justice for a variety of antitrust actions in protecting and extending its monopoly in the smartphone market.
And while Trump has made statements about EU regulators — the White House last month criticized recent fines against Meta and Apple as a “novel form of economic extortion” — but has done little to get the EU to halt its actions against the companies.
Microsoft takes on Trump
Meanwhile, Microsoft not only won’t valorize Trump, it’s also pushing back against him.
The company has publicly supported its DEI efforts rather than killing them. In December, the company’s Chief Diversity Officer, Lindsay-Rae McIntyr, wrote on LinkedIn that Microsoft’s DEI efforts are vital to the company’s success: “The business case for D&I [diversity and inclusion] is not only a constant, but is stronger than ever, reinforcing our belief that a diverse and inclusive workforce is crucial for innovation and success.”
When worries surfaced that Trump might require American tech companies to suspend their cloud operations in Europe, or turn Europeans’ data over to the federal government as part of a trade war, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith wrote in a blog post that he won’t turn over the data or suspend European cloud operations.
In fact, he said the company is expanding them.
He also said he would sue the Trump administration to protect them, if necessary.  
Two days after that, Microsoft dropped the big law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, which had agreed to give the administration $125 million in free legal work after threats from Trump.
Microsoft hired Jenner & Block to take its place — and Jenner & Block sued the Trump administration instead of giving in to it.
Microsoft becomes the world’s most valuable company
You might expect that after all that, Trump would have publicly attacked Microsoft or used the power of his office to go after the company.
So far, that hasn’t happened.
And unlike Meta, Apple, Google, and Amazon, Microsoft has thrived since Trump took office. 
Its stock price inched up from $434 a share just before Trump’s inauguration past $445 this week, while the share prices of the others have all declined, sometimes significantly.
Along the way, Microsoft became the world’s most valuable company, with a market cap approaching $3.3 trillion. 
Gauging by the company’s most recent quarterly results, even better times may be ahead. The New York Times had this to say about the results: “Overall, Microsoft’s results showed unexpected strength in its business.
Sales surpassed $70 billion, up 13% from the same period a year earlier.
Profit rose to $25.8 billion, up 18%.
The results far exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.
Despite the economic uncertainty, the company predicted more strength ahead, saying revenue would surpass $73 billion in the current quarter.”
Not out of the woods yet
All that said, Microsoft is being investigated by the feds for possible antitrust violations having to do with AI and cloud computing.
That investigation, like the others, wasn’t begun by the Trump administration; it was set in motion during the Biden administration.
So far, Microsoft’s actions don’t appear to have had any effect on the suit — or the company.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has shown that it’s possible for a company to maintain its values under Trump and thrive.
Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta should follow suit.

Source: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3983406/microsoft-hasnt-bowed-to-trump-and-the-company-is-thriving.html">https://www.computerworld.com/article/3983406/microsoft-hasnt-bowed-to-trump-and-the-company-is-thriving.html">https://www.computerworld.com/article/3983406/microsoft-hasnt-bowed-to-trump-and-the-company-is-thriving.html
#microsoft #hasnt #bowed #trump #and #the #company #thriving