> Steve Ballmer & Bill Gates of Microsoft | 1996 - Gilbert Amelio replaces Michael Spindler as Apple CEO Apple buys NeXT Inc. Steve Jobs returns to Apple 1997 - Microsoft Internet Explorer passes Netscape Communicator in browser market share Steve Jobs takes control of Apple as interim CEO 1998 - Apple releases the iMac Compaq buys Digital Equipment Corporation U.S. Justice Department and the attorneys general of some twenty states file an antitrust suit against Microsoft Netscape makes the source code to its browser freely available America Online buys Netscape in a $4.2 billion stock swap Linux becomes the second-fastest-growing operating system 1999 - IBM CEO Lou Gerstner announces "the PC era is over," in terms of PCs driving customer buying decisions and being the primary platform for application development In response to market pressure from Intel, National Semiconductor bows out of the microchip business