[stonogo]

Paul Graham lives in a bubble. This article ignores the entirety of the actual real world because he talked to one person who didn't understand a reference to ancient history. Microsoft's entire business model has changed, but Paul Graham's bubble hasn't.

Every single startup Paul's company funds uses a Microsoft product one way or another. YCombinator is giving out Azure credits to their funded startups. When Sam Altman pivoted OpenAI from non-profit, he did it with Microsoft money. Microsoft is relevant as hell, just as it was in 2007, when it was busily providing productivity software to the entire US federal government without breaking a sweat -- a contract it still holds nearly two decades later.

From Paul Graham's perspective, detached from the actual world people live in, doing as he pleases with his fuck-you money, sure, maybe Microsoft is dead. But the list of people who can get value out of this essay is "Paul Graham."

[gigatexal]

You said it better than I did. I was trying to say just this.