> I don't buy the "MS purposefully let IE die to avoid anti-trust" story
I don't know who you'd buy it from, certainly not me. If that's what you've read into my comment, that is reflective of your perspective, not mine. IE was never that good. It was bundled with the predominant operating system, so had massive market share. As soon as Microsoft had to open the OS more and draw a line between OS and IE, it was pretty much inevitable that there would be other browsers. And too-aggressive positioning of IE would be highly legible to regulators.
I agree that, absent regulatory scrutiny, Microsoft could have flexed muscle here to effect different outcomes in the general internet space. I disagree that such a decision would be a good idea for Microsoft in the climate of the aughts.
Server market share is tougher to find, but it appears that Microsoft captures a large majority of revenue in the server OS space. I know the install base proportion is smaller than the revenue proportion, but it seems to me that they are capturing most of the market willing to pay for a server OS.[0]
As to your 7 major battlefields and Microsoft's major advantages:
1. Operating systems. Most other major OS vendors collapsed or were collapsing in the 90s. It seems naive to expect that there would continue to be no pressure on the OS front. Part of their dominance was circumstantial. Nevertheless, they continued to dominate desktop market share and server market share (both by revenue). Losing install share to OSes that people don't pay for is expected, especially as those options improve.
Apple came over to x86, making MacOS (again, an OS that people don't pay directly for) much more viable, because application developers no longer had to target two ISAs.
And mobile came to the fore. Consumer devices is a separate category, though.
Overall, I'd consider this a win for Microsoft and a continuing area of dominance, in the face of many new entrants and threats: ChromeOS; tablets becoming a viable option; Linux becoming usable for laypeople; and much of computing moving to the browser such that the OS doesn't matter as much, yet Windows still dominates when OS doesn't matter.
2. Search. Google was already positioned for market dominance in the early 2000s. Microsoft began their indexing project in the early 2000s. Other players entered and left the market. Amazon had a search engine, and they are all about the consumer market (especially before AWS). That folded in the mid aughts. Yahoo collapsed. AOL, Excite, Lycos, and many others failed. Yahoo now uses Bing's index. DuckDuckGo uses Bing's index.
Bing is a solid #2 in search, earning $10Bs annually. That is an entire business.
Microsoft started from a disadvantage on search and is #2. #2 is not a loss. Also definitely not an overwhelming victory, but the world is not binary. Writing off a business with $10Bs of revenue as a loss seems absurd ... may we all be so blessed as to lose like this.
3. E-commerce. Amazon was already positioned for dominance and was solely focused on this for the early aughts, and primarily focused on this for the duration of the aughts. Microsoft had no major presence here.
To make significant headway, Microsoft would have had to go against one of the most single-minded and aggressive companies that was out there. (Amazon is less single-minded today). And we know what Amazon's successful strategy is in retail, and that is essentially no profit. Microsoft, both in terms of its corporate culture and in terms of its major shareholders, would never have been able to compete with Amazon in that way.
Microsoft had no major advantage here. This is certainly not a win, but they didn't want a piece of it anyway.
4. Social. Do we count messengers as social media? If yes, then yeah Microsoft had MSN messenger. If we don't count messaging, then they had no specific expertise or advantage here. In fact, many of their attempts at more lighthearted computing were panned: clippy, Microsoft Bob, Comic Sans. Microsoft has always been nerdy and never cool until others made nerds cool.
Regardless, they purchased Skype and LinkedIn and have a combined MAU of ~1.2B, putting them comfortably in the top 10 of social media companies.[1] I'll note that this list includes Teams, but I'm going to count that as enterprise software, because it is included with almost every O365 SKU.
LinkedIn was a Satya purchase, so Ballmer can't get credit there. Nevertheless, I wouldn't argue that Microsoft had a major advantage for social media. I'd agree that they lost in this space.
Arguably you could put github in here, too, but also a Satya acquisition.
5. Consumer devices. Microsoft is a software company to its bones. Windows was a definite advantage here. But Microsoft does not have a strong history of device manufacture to lean on. They tried to acquire for this with Nokia. And yeah, they failed here.
Again, though, they were against one of the most single-minded and aggressive companies out there, this time Apple. And Apple already had the pedigree for prestige consumer devices. Apple was defining hip and cool with regard to technology through the aughts. Again, Microsoft is neither.
Additionally, they were up against another competitor for whom smart phone market share was an existential concern, Google. Google does not have the single-minded focus of Apple, but when it comes to threats to their core business (selling ads), they can execute well enough.
Microsoft does not have the single-minded focus of Apple, nor did they have the fundamental imperative to make something work on mobile that Google had. Still, Microsoft should have done better here, and in fact Windows Phone OS and devices were largely well reviewed. Nevertheless, they couldn't make headway against their rivals.
Microsoft had an advantage here and lost.
6. Enterprise software. Microsoft was the dominant player and remains the dominant player in this space. O365 is undisputed. You will pry Excel from many people's cold, dead hands. Microsoft may not be cool, but no other tech company has a product on ESPN. The Excel championship is something else.
And I will note, specifically, that O365 began under Ballmer.
Microsoft is also a huge player in data platforms. They have specific product wins and losses, but as a whole, they do very well in this space. Data is a specific niche of mine, and I can tell you that there is no other vendor than Microsoft that companies will routinely go all-in on for their data platform. Don't get me wrong, this is not the norm, but I only ever see it happen on Microsoft, never for another vendor's platform all-in.
I covered Windows Server above, but again I will note that they capture a large majority of server OS revenue share (which I argue is the category to measure this in).
Microsoft is a dominant player in this space, and I would count this as a win. It was part of their core business, and that business tripled sales and doubled profit under Ballmer.
7. Cloud. Amazon moved first. Microsoft followed quickly. They are #2 in the market and growing fast. Google is no threat to either Azure or AWS. Alibaba probably will be in the next 10 years.
Azure would not exist in the way it does today without significant investment under Ballmer.
#2 for a second mover (using "second" as "non-first", here) is not at all a loss. And threatening to overtake the first mover is a powerful position to be in.
I expect you'll disagree that any #2 position is worthwhile, or at least that seems to be your stance.
Regardless, I'd put the counts as:
Advantage: 4: OS, Enterprise software, cloud, consumer devices
Disadvantage: Search, E-commerce, Social
Competed: 6: OS, Enterprise software, cloud, consumer devices, search, social (questionable)
Success: 4/5: OS, Enterprise software, Cloud, Search, Social (social only by acquisition, mostly post-Ballmer, but they were in a position to make multi-billion dollar acquisitions, so Ballmer can't have ruined things)
Failure: 1/2: Consumer devices, Social (if you want to argue that only Satya's acquisitions count, and no credit toward Ballmer).
Did not compete: E-commerce
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/915085/global-server-sha...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...