Yes, they missed the mobile boat and were late to IaaS/PaaS, but to dismiss them for nearly two decades is perhaps unfair.
IMO their biggest failure was losing their developer base. DevDiv really seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel - or to have been neutralized by the OS group.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...
The biggest years of profitability for most tech companies come after their innovation heyday (when they've already established their market position and no longer reinvest large amounts of cash into new product development), but without continued innovation a tech business eventually fades away into irrelevance.
Not that I’m complaining - the surface line revitalized laptop and stylus tech for windows.
Azure also kind of just plays better with the whole Active Directory / Office 365 / Sharepoint ecosystem and many Azure products are substantially cheaper than AWS.
No. Microsoft didn't IPO until 1986. So after the mid 80s to the early 90s.
> when they were both microscopic compared to anything today?
Well, both apple and microsoft were "microscopic" in the 90s compared to what they are now. But still apple was the star tech company of the 80s and microsoft was the star tech company of the 90s.
> Not really a valid comparison.
It actually is if we are being honest. But that wasn't my point. Was just pointing out that once Apple was the big success compared to microsoft because microsoft became the big success. But you can cherrypick dates to fit whatever narrative you wish.