You’re confirming @slownews45’s post: that they had leadership changes that were very impactful in day to day operations.

What's weird is Balmer was part of MS from the start, yet he managed it so badly.

Well to be fair he had the toughest act to follow, not just at MS but the whole history of corporate America.

Nobody had to come after Rockefeller at Standard Oil, but at MS there was Ballmer after Gates.

That and also Microsoft was priced for perfection, both financially and socially. Once you ship Windows 95 there not much you can do, there will never be a leap as big and so a natural slowdown in the rate of innovation feels like going backwards

There was no reason to slow down. Microsoft was deeply aware of the opportunity in mobile, long before iOS and Android scooped up that market.

But Ballmer and a "Windows everywhere" mentality held them back, with several massive failures and right offs on the orders of billions of dollars.

There was nothing natural about Microsoft's slow down in the OS market while the computing industry was going through profound form factor and OS changes, and rocketing sales, for a decade or so.

> There was no reason to slow down

There was. The DOJ is the reason. A huge part of the setback was the morale hit inside the company.

Kinda like "what's the purpose of all this work? If we are successful in the way we want to be, they'll break us up"