Honestly I don't give a flying fuck about a company's market cap, I care about what it offers to me and the world.
Markets are a means to an end, not something to fetishize.
Markets are a means to an end, not something to fetishize.
Money is just information about usefulness. If you are useful to other people you've got money. If someone is useful to you, you give money.
To go back to the Microsoft case: They played the market well, that there are no alternatives in some areas and a new owner has hardly a chance to go there.
They should, most cultures express it in the form of an expectation that children take care of their parents in their old age.