Microsoft in 2007 is where IBM was prior to that. Which, by the way, was once invoked as the prototypical example of the "old guard tech company reinvents itself". Also, the basic thesis of the essay is that new companies don't worry about Microsoft squashing them anymore, the way they once had (and did about IBM before that). That is, I believe, still true.
I don't think that is as true now. Microsoft has made in-roads in a number of markets, which has to concern some competitors. Within the last few years they left slack in the dust by bundling teams. They also bought github just a few years ago. A couple years before that linkedin, which there are still no real competitors to. Their cloud market share has been increasing and they're increasingly pushing the integration of the Microsoft 365 suite and github with azure, which has been pushing more enterprises towards their offerings. Microsoft has also started throwing money around to organizations which they want to work with, such as OpenAI and G42, effectively choosing winners.
