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Excellent article on the surprising decline and increasing irrelevance of Microsoft. excerpt: All of this has diminished the biggest number of all: After reaching a peak market capitalization of $642 billion in September 2000, Microsoft's worth has been sliced in half. These reversals have occurred even as Microsoft has spent astronomic sums on research and development--$8.7 billion in the last year alone. Microsoft has also lost ground in key areas in which the Redmond giant had viable contenders well before the competition. Microsoft saw the potential of television in the mid-1990s with WebTV, years before companies like Apple and Google took up the battle for the living room. In short, changing appetites of the marketplace, technological evolution and questionable decision-making inside Microsoft itself have combined to accomplish what antitrust regulators never did: rolling back the company's dominance and opening the terrain for newer, nimbler entrants.