“The company that helped fuel the personal computer boom is now
working feverishly to assert its relevance in the Internet era, in
which PCs are just one of many devices people will use to work and
play. And it is fighting tooth and nail to convince the federal
courts that it is not a scofflaw monopoly and should be spared
being broken in two as a judge ordered in June.”
“Microsoft has always had challenges in the past but I don’t
think they’ve been challenged on as many fronts as they are right
now,” said Meta Group analyst Steve Kleynhans. “A lot of things
they’ve always been able to look at to buoy employees up are just
not there right now,” Kleynhans said. “Today they can’t even look
at the stock price.”
“Many analysts say they are encouraged by the .NET talk
coming out of Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters, yet
they caution that it is still too early to tell what products the
strategy will yield, or if people will pay money for them.
“It’s obviously the big bet. That’s the big kahuna,” Scott McAdams,
president of Seattle-based brokerage McAdams Wright Ragen, said of
.NET.”