I would agree that that's the perception, and certainly the case with some of their products (I'm thinking of IE and Vista, among others), but Windows 7, Xbox L

I would agree that that's the perception, and certainly the case with some of their products (I'm thinking of IE and Vista, among others), but Windows 7, Xbox Live, Zune music software, and the ZuneHD/Windows 7 Phone Series are all pretty darn good products. Oh, and Bing. Bing is actually great. That's not to say they're going to be successful, but they've definitely been innovating in recent years. They've simply been eclipsed by both Apple and Google in the media. And I have a hard time agreeing the horizon is bleak when they still have like 80-90% marketshare in desktop OSs, Office Suite, and Exchange. I work with Dynamics AX at work, something no one's ever heard of, and it makes them like a billion dollars a year in revenue. It does look bleak on the mobile and tablet horizons, which are certainly the growth markets, but I'm not ready to write off Microsoft there yet. Perhaps Windows 7 Phone Series will bomb and perhaps not, but they started off in the hole on desktop OSs and word processing and spreadsheets as well. And they succeeded there with inferior products for the most part. Personally, I'm cheering for the Google model over the MSFT and Apple models. But none of them seem to be facing an early 90's Apple-style crash anytime soon. Should be fun to watch any way it turns out, though.