Nothing remotely like it, in terms of power, range, degree of market control, or willingness to be commercially evil. IBM used to be more than twice as big as e

Nothing remotely like it, in terms of power, range, degree of market control, or willingness to be commercially evil. IBM used to be more than twice as big as every other IT company put together, and in some years, made more than 100% of the industry's profit. Even today, after disposing of numerous divisions, it's still a $100bn company, ie still larger than Microsoft. (So you pay IBM more than you pay MS every year, and you always have done.) However, it is true that Microsoft is the IBM of PC software, just as Google is the IBM of the web, Intel is the IBM of processors, Facebook is the IBM of social networking, Cisco is the IBM of routers, Oracle is trying to be the IBM of server software, Apple is the IBM of hipster status symbols... Well, you get the idea. IBM used to be the IBM of everything in IT, and started getting into other areas (telephone switches, copiers, cash machines etc) before the wheels started to come off. Today, Google is a lot more powerful than Microsoft, much scarier, and much more ambitious in IBM-like ways (self-driving cars, robots, superbrains etc).