There certainly is. I'm not sure where in my post you're detecting that sense of absolutism you're reading into it. But culture, like everything else in a company, is also shaped by its people. Which means culture can change as well. Any change will be a slow process due to inertia, but it can and will happen if enough people in the company want it to happen.

The question is not whether a company can change, it's whether it will. The values and priorities that a company emphasizes condition employees and managers to think in a certain way. Changing that conditioning over a large population and after many years takes more than a few personnel replacements and a new mission statement. Any new people you add will be significantly outnumbered by existing employees, so how do you get "enough people" to want something they've learned to not see?

> The question is not whether a company can change, it's whether it will.

I think whether a company can change is the right question, because it stands to reason that if a company can change, then given enough time, it will change. How much time is "enough" for any given company is anybody's guess, and as stated in my original post, I'm certainly not claiming that in this case Microsoft has in fact changed for the better. But to rule out that possibility completely because of what they've done in the past strikes me as irrational.