[yellowstuff]

I'll admit that this is a charitable reading of the essay, but I think that MS was dead in 2007 and is still dead in 2025, in the sense that Graham was focused on. In the 90s startup founders were scared that if they started a software company MS would copy their idea and crush them. Bill Gates used to talk about how he wanted to "monopolize" software before the lawyers caught up with him. By 2007 MS was mostly irrelevant to startup founders, and with a few exceptions it's mostly irrelevant to them now. They're not in the business of crushing the life out of software startups anymore. Paul's a VC, and that's what he was focused on.

[n4r9]

That's a legit take. But I also think PG conveys his point poorly. He uses terms like "no one" and "dangerous" - and even "dead" - in a non-standard way without clarifying their meaning. Perhaps the meaning was more obvious to members of the startup scene in the 2000s, but then he's tying himself into a subcultures's perspective, which I feel is just as problematic.