Don't agree at all. Microsoft originally hoped that other vendors office type offerings would be good enough, they weren't (lotus notes) so Microsoft did it themselves.

Bill gates also understood the value great programmers. The whole business revolved around this premise. this was different from other software companies at the time. Read the likes of Gabe Newell and Joel spolsky said about their time there. It was in a league of it's own.

There are a lot of great things we got from Microsoft, a zero fee platform to target, a platform that would run on what ever cobbled together pc parts you threw at it. An unbelievable attention to backwards compatibility. Compare that to what we have now in the app store and play store.