These alone, were giants of epic proportions. IBM does not get as much press as MS nor is it a Trillion dollar company these days. But it is showing steady growth and stability and remains a $60billion giant, still.
And AT&T in its heyday dwarfed Microsoft.
This is mostly due to economics. How the money flows.
Apple is worth almost as much as MS at over $2 trillion. It holds a much smaller portion on computing. It charges more money for its product.
What is relevant is a matter of control that the company has.
And AT&T in its day, had a near perfect monopoly of the likes MS has only ever had drool drenched dreams about.
Companies like we have today HAVE NEVER EXISTED before. Look at the growth of MS over 13 years. The companies y'all are trying to compare to them are nothing to MS
Companies do not just do one thing anymore. MS has their hands in virtually everything. They literally control large percentages of the media
Honestly kind of sad that is the only things that come to mind with how many businesses MS is in. Kinda different when you consider they are going against other trillion dollar businesses though.
I am not saying they are immune to other epic size businesses. But none of the manufactures that OP mentioned would ever go against MS to such a degree.
Why is it sad? You said MS can literally buy anyone who threatens them. There are examples of the opposite being true. And the same happened to Google and other big tech companies, which is the entire point of this argument: that no company is ever too big to fail (at some point). Another great example is Blockbuster vs Netflix.