Zune (tee hee). Vista (snort). Bing (BWA HA HA). Windows phone (Stop it! I can’t breathe!).

Laugh all you want. Most of us do. Microsoft’s investors are laughing harder. Over the past two years, the shares have returned 94 per cent, absolutely crushing the results of (where to start?) Google, Apple, SAP, Oracle, IBM and VMware. Its market value has risen by $180bn.

What has happened? In the September quarter call with analysts two years ago, the word “PC” was used 23 times; in the most recent call, 11 times. The word “cloud”, on the other hand, went from 11 instances to 57. This sums it up. The company has gone — at least in the mind of the market — from being tied to a technology in permanent decline to being a company successfully delivering its product over the internet. It makes some sense, then, that the price surge is backed less by an increase in expected earnings than by a butterfly-like change in the valuation. The stock traded at nine times earnings two years ago. Now it goes for 17. The market anticipates sustained growth.