[wdewind]

> Microsoft's revenues had stopped growing.

This is completely false. Microsoft's revenue has grown every year for the last 10 years except for one. I'm not really sure how to respond to the rest of your comment based on that fact.

[hyp0]

To clarify, I meant stopped growing at its previous rate. I can't find any data further than 10 years old ATM (which is within its mature growth period), but have a look at its stock price. Note the exponential increase before 2000. https://www.google.com/finance/getchart?q=MSFT&x=NASD&p=40Y&... While there was a stockmarket boom and crash then, you can see that MS had been growing madly for a couple of decades previously.

[hyp0]

Why the downvotes? If you look at the stock price over the MAX range, you can see exponential growth until 2000 - then it went sideways. Stock price represents the opinion of investors. It's not just programmers.