Digital marked time, and the world moved on. They were doing all the right things with the Alpha through the Nineties, but despite its technical merit it seemed doomed to remain a promising also-ran. Many of its features had found their way into Intel CPUs and the performance gap was narrowing. Maybe in desperation, in 1997 Digital launched a massive lawsuit claiming that patent violations by Intel were crippling their business, but this was always considered unlikely to succeed. But some months after the takeover, Compaq began to realise what a priceless asset the Alpha is, particularly now that Merced is turning into a damp squib, and have started supporting it as if it was their own.
Nobody knows why they do it.
Probably just because that's the way they have always done it. Still, they are the world number one PC maker now, and if anyone can make a long-term success of the Alpha, it's probably Compaq. IBM would have had the financial muscle, but their marketing would have killed it. Let's wait and see. Their main connection with CPUs has been as contract manufacturers for Cyrix.