IBM died in exactly the same way. They became a niche player in the market they had a hand in creating... all the way down to the actual hardware (desktop then laptop). They finally sold their interest in the personal computer market that they said would go nowhere. Now, Microsoft, with the same attitude towards open source and open standards is suffering the same climb towards obscurity. Google embraced open standards (POP, SMTP, HTTP, AJAX, Jabber, etc) and actually extended such to amazing utility (check out their stock market tools) and somehow free... the concept that undoes Microsoft. Microsoft crushed the browser market with "Free" IE and Google is crushing Microsoft with free computing. Do you need MS Vista? Heck no, just XP with a decent browser (Firefox) and most people are good to go. Microsoft creates the new terminals of the millennia and Google is the new mainframe. The king is dead, long live the king.