It's always been controversial whether a company should be allowed to invest in new fields. Over the last 100 years a few people have even made the argument tha

It's always been controversial whether a company should be allowed to invest in new fields. Over the last 100 years a few people have even made the argument that it is illegal for a company to invest in a new fields. There were some lawsuits about this in the 20th Century, though the courts always sided with the corporations. Still, the argument is interesting to consider. Suppose it is 1995 and Microsoft it at the peak of its power, so you invest in Microsoft stock. Then 14 years go by. Now it is 2009. Google is rising in power. You want to get your money out of Microsoft, so you can invest it in Google. Does Microsoft have a legal obligation to give you all that it can? Or can Microsoft create Bing? Microsoft then creates Bing and loses more than $1 billion on it. You feel frustrated. Microsoft could have given that money to its shareholders, so you would have more money to invest in Google. But instead the money was wasted on Bing. On the more general level, the question is, when one industry is in decline, and another industry is rising, who is responsible for shifting capital from the dying industry to the growing industry? Should individual investors do it, or should corporations do it? You could argue that IBM is following the philosophy that all money should be given to the shareholders, so that the shareholders can reinvest the money wherever they feel best.