Steve Ballmer & Bill Gates of Microsoft
- 1996 - Gilbert Amelio replaces Michael Spindler as Apple CEO
- Apple buys NeXT Inc.
- Steve Jobs returns to Apple
- 1997 - Microsoft Internet Explorer passes Netscape Communicator in browser market share
- Steve Jobs takes control of Apple as interim CEO
- 1998 - Apple releases the iMac
- Compaq buys Digital Equipment Corporation
- U.S. Justice Department and the attorneys general of some twenty states file an antitrust suit against Microsoft
- Netscape makes the source code to its browser freely available
- America Online buys Netscape in a $4.2 billion stock swap
- Linux becomes the second-fastest-growing operating system
- 1999 - IBM CEO Lou Gerstner announces "the PC era is over," in terms of PCs driving customer buying decisions and being the primary platform for application development
- In response to market pressure from Intel, National Semiconductor bows out of the microchip business