Originally Posted by brandonstills

HELLO! Apple stole the GUI concepts from Xerox. And the manner in which they did it was way more unethical than Microsoft. Microsoft gave to the people and opened things up to them. Why do you think they became so successful? Then power went to their head and they started becoming evil. Now look what happened to them. Nobody wants to use their product or develop for it, but they feel they have to so they do. They force their customers to do things they don't want to because they don't have a choice. Same with Apple and developers. Why do you think nobody develops for the Mac? Just look at the iPhone SDK. They have to approve all software that gets written, and they take a huge cut, and there's no way to install software on the phone unless it's authorized first by Apple.

Now look at Google and it's don't be evil philosophy. Give customers what they want. Customer is first, make money is secondary to that. Everyone at Microsoft wanted to work for Google. Customers started using google because they trusted the results. You know the rest of the story.

Being unethical may work for a time but your advantage will quickly disappear. In fact being ethical is a competitive advantage. You will gain customers, employees will want to work for you, and partners will want to work with you.