The point is the government will not let big companies fail because no politician wants to loose an election because several hundred thousand people lost their Jobs. (excuse the pun :-D) The problem isn't big companies, the problem is politicians without term limits! Sam. Jack Ungerleider wrote: >On Saturday 12 February 2005 09:19 pm, Sam MacDonald wrote: > > >>IBM has over 300,000 employees world wide. I don't know what M$ numbers >>are but it's big. Yes IBM has helped the open source community but, IBM >>helped because it sees profit. Just like it sees profit in M$. >> >>If you look at what almost happened when a big auto maker almost failed >>I think you will see what would happen if M$ starts to falter. >> >> >> > >Sam your missing my point. When the hardware business started to falter so did >IBM until Gerstner turned them into a services company. Apple may be a better >example of a "back from the brink" story. The original article even mentioned >it. What is Apple's primary business today? Digital music. It's iPods and >iTunes. Macs, mini and otherwise are not were Apple is making its big money. >I don't think a comparison to Chrysler is warranted in this case. It will >take a long, very long, slide for MS to be in the position Chrysler was in 25 >years ago. The shareholders would cause a leadership change long before that >happens. > > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.7 - Release Date: 2/10/2005