Steve Ballmer & Bill Gates

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