[tus88]

> It is sad in many ways to see what happened to DEC (probably more so than AltaVista). It was such an innovative company back in the 60s and 70s,

They should have merged with a PC make obviously.

> but unlike IBM weren't able to reinvent themselves in first the new 80s world of PCs and then later internet.

Ironically IBM did fail to reinvent itself despite inventing the PC and it's cake was stolen from it.

[sradman]

> They should have merged with a PC make obviously.

DEC was acquired by Compaq [1]:

> In 1998, Compaq acquired Digital Equipment Corporation for a then-industry record of US$9 billion. The merger made Compaq, at the time, the world's second largest computer maker in the world in terms of revenue behind IBM.

Maybe you were being sarcastic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq#Acquisitions

[blihp]

I took it to be sarcastic. It was a spectacular fail as within about a year of the acquisition everything good they were doing had completely disappeared from view never to be seen again. That's not to say that DEC could have done any better on their own: with the absolute market dominance of Wintel at the time, they were flaming out as so many other mini and workstation companies did as their markets evaporated.