> Yeah. It's incredible how IBM handed the golden keys to the castle on a plate cut in a solid 100000000 carat diamond to Microsoft. In all fairness, very few

> Yeah. It's incredible how IBM handed the golden keys to the castle on a plate cut in a solid 100000000 carat diamond to Microsoft. In all fairness, very few recognized at the time what that would lead to. IBM had a deep, entrenched culture that had serious dominance over all computer business. There was not an article during that time that didn't characterize the business as "Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs" where IBM was of course Snow White. Everyone else was essentially looking for crumbs. A similar example was illustrated in David Halberstam's The Dead Reckoning where General Motors was so dominant and culturally resistant to any new ideas from the outside that visitors from Japan were allowed to meet with the executives, but no discussions of the auto industry were allowed. So in the eyes of the IBM leadership, this was a tiny, goofy idea that would not amount to much. One leader at IBM scoffed at the PC-DOS O/S calling it a toy. Well, it was a toy that essentially ate your world.