Sure, Watson+Jeopardy was good PR for IBM, as was DeepBlue, but even if the definition of success (vs disaster) is only PR-success, I'm not sure how lasting tha

Sure, Watson+Jeopardy was good PR for IBM, as was DeepBlue, but even if the definition of success (vs disaster) is only PR-success, I'm not sure how lasting that is/was for IBM. Certainly from a technical POV Watson was just marketing hype - a common label applied to a grab-bag of unrelated unremarkable products. If you polled people on the street today about which companies they associate with AI, I doubt IBM would come out anywhere near the top. In fact, I'm not sure if you surveyed the under-20 crowd they could even tell you what IBM does, assuming they've even heard of them, other than perhaps being in the computer business in some vague way.