Pity poor Microsoft's midlife crisis - aka Lawyers Everwhere

Pity poor Microsoft's midlife crisis: "Microsoft has done well for itself in the Allchin era. Turnover grew from $US5.9billion in 1995 (when Microsoft was roughly half the size of Apple) to $US40billion today.

BUT even Forbes notes that the behemoth that for so long dictated our computing environment faces a midlife crisis: it is musclebound and mired in bureaucracy. Perhaps worse, it is overrun with lawyers, who have to approve almost everything it does.

Certainly Microsoft's growth has slowed dramatically. But it now needs to bring in an extra $US4billion a year just to grow at a historically low 10per cent - and $4billion is roughly a Yahoo! or a Google."

Lawyers killed IBM. Lawyers are killing MS. Both companies were under anti-trust scrutiny. IBM's finally off the hook, MS is worse off - they were found guilt.

Gates made one key mistake: He refused to settle with the DOJ and thus lost the anti-trust case. MS was found to be a monopoly that used it's power illegally. Lawyers are screwing the company. Too fraggin' bad.