The point when it became clear to me that Microsoft had lost their way was when they decided to get into the search business. [This was PG's view in the article]

In retrospect, this seems to be a wrong conclusion. I know Bing is far far away from Google; But I think that Bing investment was well worth it for Microsoft. If you have followed Build 2017 conference, it is obvious how Microsoft is leveraging AI/ML in several of their products; and of course, they have a good offering of cognitive service cloud APIs. Without their heavy investment in Bing, Microsoft perhaps would have found it hard to make such quick jump onto the AI/ML bandwagon.

As a side note, is Microsoft still considered a company on its way to oblivion? I personally think they reinvented themselves in the new era. Am I mistaken in my view?