> Can't imagine a world where Microsoft inspired that much fear :) First it's not funny. Many companies including Netscape, Google (and at the moment PaaS comp

> Can't imagine a world where Microsoft inspired that much fear :) First it's not funny. Many companies including Netscape, Google (and at the moment PaaS companies) have/had the fear that Microsoft will crush them. You are either too young, or an employee of MS, otherwise nothing funny about. Maybe you should read pg's essay: "Another big factor was the fear of Microsoft. If anyone at Yahoo considered the idea that they should be a technology company, the next thought would have been that Microsoft would crush them. It's hard for anyone much younger than me to understand the fear Microsoft still inspired in 1995. Imagine a company with several times the power Google has now, but way meaner. It was perfectly reasonable to be afraid of them. Yahoo watched them crush the first hot Internet company, Netscape. It was reasonable to worry that if they tried to be the next Netscape, they'd suffer the same fate. How were they to know that Netscape would turn out to be Microsoft's last victim?"