Having come from Microsoft not too long ago, I really think that "warring city-states" is a much better description of how Microsoft internal politics works than the typical Microsoft-as-monolith metaphors.
Do you think it's more a "warring city-states" structure than most other very large corporations?
As Microsoft is the only very large corporation I've worked for so far, I'm afraid I can't really make a comparison.
A bit off topic, but [Warring States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_states) happens to be the golden age of Chinese philosophy, akin to Europe's Age of Enlightenment. The intellectual output grew out of necessities of competition.