Microsoft  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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1. figurative a company whose products are ubiquitous
   • 2001, Daniel Charles, Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food (ISBN 0738202916), page 110:

     Similarly, said Fraley, farmers were going to demand Bt cotton or Roundup-resistant soybean plants no matter where they went shopping for seeds. Monsanto would be the Microsoft of agriculture.

   • 2005, Merrill Goozner, The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs (ISBN 0520246705), page 64:

     The company wanted to turn Celera into the Microsoft of the gene-hunting world, selling its version of the human genome to private or public gene hunters through a proprietary computer program.

   • 2006, Andrew Beaujon, Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock (ISBN 0306814579), page 232:

     Shepherding is more or less gone (though there’s an interesting move back toward discipleship in today’s church especially among those influenced by Rick Warren’s blockbuster book The Purpose-Driven Life), but Integrity remains as sort of the Microsoft of worship music.