A decade ago, Silicon Valley was toasting the misfortune of Microsoft.
"I'm sure there are Champagne corks being popped all over the valley," Gary Rivlin, author of "The Plot to Get Bill Gates," told The (San Francisco) Chronicle on Nov. 5, 1999.
That was the day U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson declared the software giant a monopoly that had hobbled innovation and harmed consumers. The damning findings in the landmark suit convinced many that the company was about to become the next AT&T, broken up into Baby 'Softs.
That didn't happen, but Microsoft is nevertheless a very different company today - and the perception of it throughout the region's technology hotbed has shifted dramatically too.
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