Finally I asked our own tech guru, Jon Udell, what he thought. On the whole, he thought Microsoft's disappearance would be a good thing, saying, "I hope it would jump start the kind of competitive innovation we haven't seen forever."

What do I think? It is not an accident that Microsoft and its hardball tactics have succeeded all these years. They did not happen accidentally. Like the roots of a plant searching for water, the high-tech industry itself created Microsoft in order to survive.

If Microsoft didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.