[sremani]

This is classic demonstration of the fact, you do not have to get most of the things right, but extract maximum value when you are right.

We have the excellent advantage of hindsight but definitely in 2007 the general agreement was Microsoft was losing to Google and Apple, which were the darlings of the stock market while Microsoft remained stagnant.

[SideQuark]

> definitely in 2007 the general agreement was Microsoft was losing to Google and Apple

In 2007, [1]

    MS had market cap 274B (#4), revenue rank 49.

    Apple had market cap 80B(#33), revenue rank 121.

    Google had market cap 143B (#17), revenue rank 241.

MS had, and still has, many billion dollar sub-businesses. Google and Apple have never had as many highly profitable lines as MS does (and did).

I think only pop media sold the story that Microsoft was "losing," and maybe only that in areas MS didn't historically compete in or make much money in. Google had almost all revenue from ads (and still do, a very one trick pony), and Apple had a few lines (iPhones, iTunes, not much else), while MS had Client, Server and Tools, Online Services, Business Division, Entertainment and Devices, each with many billions in revenue (and many of them containing yet more billion+ subdivisions). Even Visual Studio had over a billion in revenue annually.

Apple and Google had very little effect on any of these revenue streams in 2007. At best, Microsoft was late to the areas Apple and Google were in, yet took markets anyways in some areas (Azure vs google?).

[1] https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2007/perf...

[chucke1992]

Well at that time Microsoft really felt like IBM. Though ironically right now Google feels like IBM.