They'll run Linux or a future version of android that works well with a mouse and keyboard.  You do realize MS has competitors right?  

By no means do I want them to fail, but they continue to make alienating decisions that make me question if someone could do it better...

Remeber when I say "MS goes away," I don't mean that they are completely gone.  I mean it gets to the point that they are basically almost completely out of money and it is a bad idea to buy their stuff due to better things from competitors.  It would take 20 years to completely be gone I mean look gateway still exists lol!

WIndow 7/8 will be supported for atleast another 5-10 years, and windows 9 another 10 years from when it is released.  At the very least your copy of Windows x will always work ;)

From this day forward this man is my hero and I will worship him forever.

Microsoft has already become a background, no one cares company. You pay your money for Windows and Office and maybe an Xbox and you get on with it; very few people are excited about them.

Facebook is getting there as well. It's a background tool for life, not front and centre.

I think complete irrelevance is a much more likely fate than vanishing.

If M$ were to go down in the next decade or so, I don't think Android would replace it. Google has it's Chrome OS, and they would push that as an alternate. Chrome, Linux, and Apple would all gain marketshare with Chrome leading the way, and Apple in 2nd. 

I can see how facebook might die but not Microsoft.

the next IBM? Well, IBM still has a market cap of over $200 Billion, so that worst case scenario is still 'aging titan', instead of 'dead' like the post's estimation. But MS innovated more than people realize, and their year over year profits are still growing at a very healthy pace.

As for someone coming out with a better OS - not only is it unlikely, it is irrelevent. Even if someone spends the BILLIONS necessary to build something better than windows, what good is an OS without software? You could come up with the best OS ever, and it's not going to make businesses give up everything they have to switch to something without software. It's not going to be enterprise viable for an additional decade. And gamers aren't going to give up their games. At best this OS would go the apple route - have some superiod niche products and get college students because it's cool. Meanwhile, windows continues along with over 90% of the global marketshare.

Also, MS has was more than just OSs. A few years from now, Azure is going to be one of their biggest profit centers - it's amazing.

The problem is, he's defining "disappear" in a stupid way.

However, I'll accept his definition of disappear to be "lose a decent fraction of their marketshare"

Will it happen to MS in 5-10 years? In certain markets, sure. Internet explorer will have lost a lot of marketshare in 5-10 years, surface will likely be dead long before.

Windows will probably have lost a minuscule amount of market share in the desktop market, gone from 94% to 92% or something, and in laptops from 90% to 87%. Vista did little to effect this, the mess that is 8 did little to effect this, and that is simply because Apple is not ready for a huge marketshare, and neither is Linux. Apple does not make cheap, low spec, low build quality computers to match something made by Acer etc. So many people buy these cheap computers.

Linux is still not useable by the majority of people, unfortunately. I used it for a while, and even I had to get help at times, someone who just refers to the shortcut to any web browser as "The internet" will not cope.

Windows phone has never been a giant, but I think it's here to stay.

As for facebook, they've shown time and time again that they won't be myspaced out. Myspace was kicked out because a new, better competitor has arrived. Facebook has ALREADY had better competitors arrive, done nothing about it, and won. The way facebook is leaving this market is through their falling $/user figures. But it takes a lot more than 3 years for that to happen as long as the company manages their finances decently well.

Doesn't this refer to most software though? Who gets excited for the new android updates? The majority of owners just update to get rid of the stupid notification in the corner.

Couldn't agree more, M$ isn't Windows.  M$ is hundreds of things and they also make windows.  Win8 may have been a failure in the media, but not in reality that much.  Most of the reasons that Win8 hasn't exploded in sales is related to the basic market changes to tablets/smartphones.  Over the next 18-36 months, most of the PC's will be running on a version of Win8 by default through new system purchases and such.  But, to answer the OP, FB will be another 10 years atleast and M$ will be Dozens of years if at all.  Look, if Sony is still around, anyone can make it.  Just a decade ago, Sony was the default electronics manufacturer.  Today, they make dozens of products and they also sell TV's.