[kgelner]

This new quote from Gruber underlies exactly where the decline really matters most:

"It’s not that they need those customers, but that they used to drive the industry’s technical agenda, but now they don’t."

Where is Microsoft really driving anything at this point? It's not on the desktop. It's not in the mobile space. It's not even really in the enterprise.

The whole video tag argument in HTML 4 for example, is really between Apple and Mozilla. Microsoft is not really even a consideration.

If Microsoft is not really driving anything anymore, then they are just another company trying to comply with standards - and that means the inevitable (although slow) end of dominance they once enjoyed. For the computer industry, this is a good thing...