At an America Online staff meeting in 1994, then-President Ted Leonsis wheeled out a wooden cutout of a bare-fanged Tyrannosaurus rex meant to symbolize the company's most menacing enemy: Microsoft.
Leonsis' representation was both right and wrong. The software giant indeed presented a major threat at the time--the eve of the launch of its Microsoft Network--but its battle form would come to resemble a multiheaded Hydra more than a prehistoric monster. Rather than full-frontal assaults, Microsoft would attack from many directions simultaneously and regenerate appendages whenever they were severed.
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