> a bit late, if you ask me

That's because they wanted to milk the last few $$ they might get by spamming people in hotmail with "Your space is low!! Pay now to get more space!!!" mails.



If you'll notice, MS's stock has kinda evened out, but they need excuses for people to be interested in them financially. Normally a company doesn't last longer than 50 years, and 25 years is considered the high point of most companies. There's an aweful lot of time until Longhorn comes out, MS needs to make some $$ in the meantime somehow. Investors only get excited about investing in a company when there is a lot of money to be made (and MS's recent decision to pay out dividends aren't enough). If MS doesn't keep going up up then investors will lose interest and MS will start to go down.

This is also why MS is expanding into new markets recently (X-Box, Mobile Phones, Tablet PCs, Media PCs, in-car computers, media formats + media players). MS has effectively sold their software to anyone who wants it, and they've already locked in loyal customers into Licensing 6.0 (which was another initiative to get investors excited by having companies pay up front for their MS software upgrades for the next few years, giving MS a short burst of money), so they have no additional revenue for a while. Right now MS is betting everything on Longhorn, their last big chance to build up a lot of revenue.

Until then, they're going to milk their current customers for money.