To be slightly more specific, MSFT had a market cap of $23 billion and had just shipped Windows 3.1. It was so much in the zeitgeist that Doug Copeland would se

To be slightly more specific, MSFT had a market cap of $23 billion and had just shipped Windows 3.1. It was so much in the zeitgeist that Doug Copeland would set a novel there a few years later. In any case, there wasn't any reason not to see microkernels as the only viable way forward, especially given the multitude of competing Unix variants that had grown to unwieldy, multi-mega-SLOC monsters. The future seemed to be with lightweight, microkernel OSes like QNX, the UNICOS update, HURD (seriously, it was a thing back then!) and improved Mach and Chorus versions. The idea of writing a Unix-like as anything other than a toy seemed absurd. History is a very hard thing to predict in advance.