One could write a similar article for Microsoft, really. I think they screwed the pooch with Windows 8 and Surface. They tried to protect both the Windows and Office monopolies simultaneously in the face of radical change, and lost both.
IBM has been the biggest player in enterprise IT since it was done with typewriters and adding machines. For them to become irrelevant, even if it takes a decade, is a huge deal.
(You might be conflating the startup community with the open source community of the late nineties, members of which did say that Linux was to "soon" overtake Windows in the desktop).
You might be conflating the startup community with the open source community of the late nineties
Considering the large overlap between those two communities, I'm not sure it's an unwarranted conflation. The first tech boom included a bunch of Linux-oriented startups and IPOs, whose successful pitch to VCs involved essentially, "Microsoft is on its way out".
True, although a decent number of the web startups also thought Microsoft was the walking dead, because it had missed the web (which was sort of true, but ended up not killing MS).
How was Office ever a monopoly and if it was, how was it lost exactly? I don't get it. It's not irrelevant and it's being used as before. If not, please provide numbers.
One could write a similar article for Microsoft, really. I think they screwed the pooch with Windows 8 and Surface. They tried to protect both the Windows and Office monopolies simultaneously in the face of radical change, and lost both.
IBM has been the biggest player in enterprise IT since it was done with typewriters and adding machines. For them to become irrelevant, even if it takes a decade, is a huge deal.