Microsoft is an empire in decline, no question. Their core strengths in the 1990s were their OS monopoly and MS Office; their core strengths today are... their OS monopoly and MS Office, both much the worse for wear. The 360 has been a wonderful subsidy for console owners, but I see no sign Microsoft is capable of being a genuine media company, a la Sony or Nintendo.
Trouble is, both cores are under threat. It's not just Google, Microsoft's entire biz model is going the way of vacuum-tube computing. Computing devices are ubiquitous, cheap, and should be run by open source; MS Office is just one of many platforms. Apple is back and will only grow stronger, while cloud computing, or something like it, is inevitable.
The future of computing is not monopolies. It is open source, cooperation, and strategic licensing. And I do have to blame Microsoft's top managers for not understanding this -- Ballmer & Co. are as clueless about this shift as Disney is about the digital media commons.
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