>>The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's done. Everything they've done of late is in markets where someone has already done very well in

But that is what Microsoft has done historically.

The old solution was to use profits from already owned market segments to invest much more in other market segments, until they own those too.

I don't know either why it stopped working.

Could the problem be a lack of a monopoly leverage? They can't threaten hardware/software makers anymore?

Or maybe the problem is just leadership, as others wrote?

Or maybe they have just screwed over too many people (to paraphrase an old Netscape executive, too many people has woken up with a bloody computer monitors in bed)?