Sure, and it's arguably happening right now to some of the companies I mentioned (Dell, Yahoo) but if/when they recover it will likely happen again. Apple will likely face bad times at some point in the future.
Don't tell anyone, but I think it's happening to Google right now. It's just early stages (like MS in 1995), and Google still has more good products than bad, so it isn't exceptionally noticeable.
But the recent, high-profile launch disasters, the clutter that's slowly creeping into the result pages, and stuff like the search page background goofiness...they sure feel like early MS-style mistakes.....
MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember that they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being too big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and WinXP (arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product matured into its familiar form.
I'd say Microsoft started going downhill after 2002, when they disbanded the IE team and embarked on the disaster that was Vista. But I remember that when I started college in 2001, I hated Microsoft and yet virtually all the software on my computer was by them. It's a sign of market dominance when your customers hate you and yet use your products anyway. ;-)
"MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember that they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being too big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and WinXP (arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product matured into its familiar form."
Eh. We also got WindowsME in 2000, which was arguably the worst version ever. And to be fair, Office has been mostly re-arranging the furniture and re-painting the walls since Office95. And...let's not forget Bob. Bob was Microsoft's Buzz, circa 1995.
That said, sure, it's not like MS got to their current state on January 1, 1996. And there's no way I'd argue that they (or Google) are going away soon. My point is only that Google is starting to show signs of lumbering corporate giant-hood, and that it has happened pretty quickly, in comparison to MS.
Google is probably past an inflection point, they've still got plenty of upward momentum and almost certainly won't peak for many, many years. However, Google seems to have empire-itis just like any other big company. Eventually they'll start believing their own BS more than they will external truths, they'll become process bound and bureaucracy bound, they'll start to saddle themselves with more and more strategy taxes until they become increasingly like any other big company.
There's still time for that not to happen, but all the signs are pointing that way.
