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Honestly, I think that Microsoft's "slide" (if you can call it that) started under Bill Gates's watch. Remember, he was the guy during the whole antitrust debacle (a debacle made bigger by Microsoft's general reluctance to comply with what they agreed to comply with - publishing APIs, etc.), the guy in charge when what became Vista was started, etc. And, as somebody who is not a huge fan of Microsoft*, I really like the direction that Microsoft is heading in. I just think that the changes that are happening will take a bit more time to be fully realized. Microsoft is successful enough and large enough to sustain a few years of small growth.
I think that WM 7 will be here soon enough, and Microsoft has enough marketing muscle, that it will be a real player in the Mobile market - even if they own the enterprise market and struggle a bit with consumers, that's a heck of a big niche. They really seem to have a great cloud strategy in place; Bing and other search services are really strong right now. Ballmer is great for the company in that he has shoulders big enough to personify taking the heaps of scorn thrown at the company, but I think he's got Microsoft on the right track.
It's funny that this article comes out when Microsoft has just started selling their best version of Windows at a time when the recession appears to be bottoming out, if not coming out of a bottom. There may be a future huge increase in enterprise computer systems sold just as Windows 7 is there to be sold, and enterprises simply aren't ready for a mass adoption of Linux or an expensive switch to OS X.
* what I mean by this is not that I feel that I am not biased against Microsoft just because they are Microsoft, but I tend not to use their products these days.
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