I think they started on a long slide starting in the late 90s when they tried to couple research more and more tightly to product deliverables, and then as they pivoted to being a services company, including selling off non-mainframe hardware to Lenovo, to coupling r&d to, uh, I guess services revenue, whatever that means. They had some research layoffs in 2008, at the same time that MSR and Google were really blossoming in research spend and perception, and I think they kind of got left behind.

I had a former student go there around 2008 and it seemed like the vibes were starting to sour around then. They maintained some awesome researchers in, e.g., databases, but I think the "make sure you are showing closely how your research directly contributes to services revenue" thing was strong by then and somewhat ruinous for how pleasant a work experience it was for many.

They only sold the consumer and low-end server hardware line. You can still get IBM servers (Power) and mainframes.

Same. My first real job out of college was at IBM 2004 to 2005. I was so proud to be an IBMer. Hated it. Lots of good people, but the bureaucracy, the pace, the whole thing, not fun.

Alphabet is operating and expanding the only fleet of fully autonomous vehicles in the world, to rave reviews.

The first contact with AI most people have is Gemini. And their net income went from $74B to $100B to $132B in 3 years and profit margin from 24% to 32%.

Mediocrity and irrelevant are hardly how I would describe them.