Much as I defend the right of people to use Microsoft based OSs, Microsoft's vision of the future has been clouded with delusions of grandeur from the beginning. Internet Explorer was created long after Mozilla, because they saw gold, MSN added blogs *after* all major services did because they saw gold. Microsoft got into the internet after everyone else because they saw gold. They are not an innovator. MS WIndows was created from Bill Gates vision of Apple OS.
Microsoft has consistently been blind to technology innovation, they concentrated on producing an OS that ran on any OEM hardware, that's there success, I can go out, buy a bunch of pieces of equipment from different manufactures, put it together and run MS Windows on it. OS X will only run if I have certain video cards, certain wifi, certain motherboards, etc. BSD/Linux is better, but far from the universal OS that MS Windows is.
Both users and regulators cried foul when Microsoft tried to do the same thing with Active Desktop and Internet Explorer 4.0 in 1997. Google craps ten year old gold, apparently, and Bill Gates, as per usual, saw the writing on the wall years before everyone else. Yes, Microsoft has done (and continues to do) Bad Things, but you can't knock the company for lack of vision.
Oh, pooh. Let's not forget 1996's JavaOS. Sun knew what they were doing as well. Funny how it took a new generation of consumers to bring it all to light.
