How the hell did we get here? Were Microsoft and oracle and all these super rich tech giants asleep when Google was eating their lunch? Facebook too. It’s nuts
Then of course when sales went down, you can always threat and extort your current customers: https://archive.is/Tbvw0
Microsoft just wanted to protect their windows thingy and pretend the internet didn't exists. They couldn't so they tried to embugger it. Once they had dominating market share with IE6, they simply said they weren't making money on IE and weren't going to update it any more. So they left it bug ridden for 5 years until the next release.
Google shows up, with all their bondage and evil intentions carefully wrapped in satin and free beer on tap. But now the beer is finished and the satin is worn out. Everybody is hungover and tied up. The sounds coming from the next room is like something is being strapped on.
For all I know, they do have better search engines than Google right now. But also, fuck those guys.
Steve Ballmer (then CEO of Microsoft) swore he'd kill Google and bury Eric Schmidt - this is 2005 or earlier. Google's sales for 2004 for reference were $3.18 billion (for Alphabet now it's $282 billion).
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2005/09/1106/
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/court-docs-ballmer-v...