Before and after Microsoft!

How many of you have seen this wallpaper before?

Bliss wallpaper

Let me ask again. How many of you know the story of this wallpaper?
Yes, you got it right -- you have seen this once or maybe a few times on your desktop before you changed your wallpaper to something awesome. ;) The name of this image is Bliss and it is the name of a Windows bitmap image included with Microsoft Windows XP, produced from a photograph of a landscape in Sonoma County, California, southeast of Sonoma Valley near the site of the old Clover Stornetta Inc. Dairy. The picture was taken in 1996.

How many have wondered why it is named "Bliss"? It is so named because it contains rolling green hills and a blue sky with stratocumulus and cirrus clouds.

Right. Now, lets fast forward to 2006. Feast your eyes on this image.

Does this scene look familiar?

In November 2006, the scene was re-photographed again -- with the same view and same calibrations that Charles O'rear used in 1996. The initiative was taken by by artist collaboration Goldin+Senneby who visited the site in Sonoma Valley. Inspired by the stark differences, they displayed this work which they called "After Microsoft" for the first time in the exhibition "Paris was Yesterday" at gallery La Vitrine in April 2007 and later exhibited at Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, and 300m3 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Now I ask you. Before Microsoft and After Microsoft. There are two perspectives here. I get it. What I find hard to understand is: Has Microsoft finished? Are they done? Something tells me that they are not.

What do you think?