> Where we can have discussions, and probably for a long and fun if not necessarily fruitful time, is whether it's "good" or "bad" from market's, or consumer's perspective for companies to go bad. I personally think not.

Generally where my head was at. The other two points were better scoped. I personally think it's good that companies go bad, as it moves control over productive assets from one group to another. This is good for society for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is enabling new ideas to be tried. Can a long lived company try new ideas? sure, but the degree to which they avoid risks (if they live a long time they necessarily avoid undo risk) puts on upper bound on how ambitious they are with new things.