>I think MS is much better at watching their back than IBM was.

An interesting comment, what makes you think that???

Intrestingly enough, MS did not have Anti-Trust compliance staff in their legal department. IBM did. Granted, IBM ran into issues, but they were well prepared. It is/was very unusual for a company of MS stature to not have such staff. In fact, it was a primary directive of Bill Gates. He did not want MS to be like IBM - having a lawyer present in all high-level strategic meetings.

I am not sure MS is any better at watching its own back as opposed to IBM.


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That doesn't mean they'll still keep their dominance if/when something better comes along, but they'll probably do a better job at trying instead of ignoring the whole thing until it's too late, like IBM did.
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Tell me, over the past year, which stock would you rather have IBM or MSFT? When it comes to corporate inertia, I think MSFT is just as much of a slug as IBM ever was. And lets not forget, MS did get caught napping when it came to the web. Yes, MS caught up. Still, they did get caught napping.

When it comes to Linux, I think I read something where IBM is one of the biggest Linux development shops in the world.

Alas, everything IBM was - MSFT to a large extent has become...< s >...


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>>They think that they are delivering power and control but they could end up devlivering inflexibilty and complexity.
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>True. They've already done that to some degree. You've probably heard the twist on their "Where to you want to go today?" slogan--"Were do you want us to drag you today?"