| Welcome to the opinion zone. You mention market caps, but I don't think that is really the reason why certain companies enter the mindshare of people. I think the reason that Netflix became a part of the acronym is because, like its counterparts, all of them are leaders in a big space that others have a hard time competing with, with products that seem innovative (also explains why the giants of FinTech don't have much mindshare). This kind of industry leader at enormous scale results in high compensation for individual emoloyees and it becomes convenient to lump these companies together because everyone is going for it regardless of whether they care about any individual workplace. Netflix essentially bootstrapped and proved the market for streaming. For a really long time, people weren't sold by the idea of streaming their shows instead of getting millions of commercials on cable TV. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft is a great company that operates at a massive scale, winning many enterprise hearts like Microsoft Office (slowly losing relevance), but if I think about it harder, I just don't think there's much for Microsoft to claim as a leader. It has the largest gaming and PC markets, but those markets don't have the same nearly infinitely scalable potential profit that Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, or Google do. They don't quite lead hardware, software, or "platforms". Windows is pretty good, but really more just a data platform at this point and hasn't done much movement compared to macOS. Azure, GitHub, LinkedIn—they exist, for sure, but we tend to talk about them as separate entities than "Microsoff" a lot of the time. I'm sure many people can raise counterpoints, but keep in mind we're already talking about ambiguous notions of "feeling" how a company should be perceived, and why many people would "feel" like Microsoft doesn't lump with the rest. I'm reminded by a quote by Steve Jobs talking about Microsoft's "lack of culture" in the products. https://youtu.be/KSg3fU9XWow |