Good point. That means the scale of what was to come was likely very similar to 2008. I hope the wind don't blow too hard

You seem to think that estate taxes affect the ultra rich. The ultra rich have financial instruments such as off shore accounts, and family trusts to avoid those things.

Too funny, and not wrong!

One is hyper focused on business software and the enterprise, which likely drives that keep it forever mentality. Businesses like stability and like not having to redo things for no benefit.

Google.. I'm not sure. Makes tons of money on a few wildly successful products and seems to let the organization decide on its own otherwise with incentives for new products far outstripping incentives to be a maintainer.

I think it largely depends what happens with the unquestable cash cow, search. If something occurs to topple that it may send them into a spiral given their Inability to focus

I'm convinced it's their culture. It never grew to match the size of their company and it seems to be what holds them back

Generally when people mention this what they are referring to is the seo industry has largely figured out how to game the google algo to get their content to rank high up. This results in content that might not be what you found as useful up high because it more perfectly matches the algo score. In theory with a perfect algo that seo gamification would result in people making better and more useful pages to win seo. In practice, no algo is perfect and so we get what we get.