# Microsoft is no longer actively bad, the way it was under Ballmer.

* * *

Microsoft is no longer actively _bad_ , the way it was under Ballmer. That
doesn’t make it _good_ , though. There’s forty years of dirty tricks that MS
has to make up for just to get back to neutral, and it’ll probably _take_
forty years, for those of us with long memories and a familiarity with
history, to decide that this new direction is something more substantial than
a PR move or a short-lived utopian optimism.

By [John Ohno](https://medium.com/@enkiv2) on [October 31,
2016](https://medium.com/p/bd17c3bf43c6).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/microsoft-is-no-longer-actively-
bad-the-way-it-was-under-ballmer-bd17c3bf43c6)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com) on September 18, 2020.