Comment by AnthonyMouse

> All of the companies I cited are hugely profitable.

You cited them because they are hugely profitable, ignoring the ones that are already defunct. And the entire premise is that a company can simultaneously be posting profits while doing the thing that will ultimately destroy them.

> And your argument for Microsoft is that they are in a death spiral because they only have 70% of market share on the desktop, and are shrinking by 2% per year, so in, uh 15 Years they might only have 50% of the market share!

Platforms have a network effect. They're doing so poorly that the network effect from having 90% market share isn't enough to prevent them from losing market share. But now they only have the network effect from 70% market share, which makes it even easier for customers to switch. That's how you get a death spiral.

> Also, please ignore that they successfully diversified their revenue streams to other markets (Cloud).

Which are in turn dependent on customers using Windows so they need Active Directory etc. See also:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40142351

> And your evidence is that they failed to capture the mobile market. While you also argue that Google is in a death spiral when Google is actually the company that won the mobile market.

It is unquestionably the case that Microsoft lost the mobile market, which is the larger market. Android has the most worldwide market share, but Android is free to use and generates revenue for Google only to the extent that people want their services. If people stop wanting their services and switch to e.g. another search engine, how does it save Google from this even if they're using Android?