Let me say it once more: Microsoft is history. Yeah, I know, companies with $50 billion in the bank don't just die overnight. But Microsoft will go to its reward nonetheless, a victim of technological Alzheimer's and changing times. Diminished capacity has been taking a heavy toll on the software maker for the last decade, as should be apparent to anyone who uses a Windows-based computer regularly, and somewhere down the road lies decrepitude and, finally, death. It's only a matter of time. Speaking as someone who uses a PC 10-12 hours a day, this is something that I feel strongly in my gut. And although probably not one person in a hundred would agree with me, I am convinced nonetheless that the Redmond behemoth's slide toward oblivion will be complete within six to eight years. It could even happen sooner if some upstart finds a way to offer reasonably good equivalents for Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint as Web-based applications. As many PC users who have had to put up with the gratuitously conceived Vista operating would agree, if it weren't for Microsoft's Office suite, the company would have died long ago. Will it be Google that administers the coup de grace? Possibly. But if so, it will not be any time soon. The firm currently offers a Web-based spread sheet and a decent e-mail client, but unfortunately the applications are not yet sufficiently robust to supplant Excel and Outlook. How about Apple? Well, we can only hope Steve Jobs has chambered a round for the kill shot. Like Alzheimer's But let's not harp on the reasons why Microsoft merely deserves to die, since we've done that before. We won't even discuss Microsoft's failed, desperate bid to acquire Yahoo, which itself has been flailing around, like Microsoft unable to invent
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