> There is a marketing lesson there somewhere.
Microsoft once had the IT world at its feet, because not only was its Windows 9x OSes ubiquitous everywhere, but it had many millions of programmers who had become experts at Visual Basic and Visual C++, so almost all corporates used programs written in these easy to learn, not too difficult to master, fun to program in (yay for Intellisense and Drag-n-drop ActiveX controls), and versatile despite some limitations. This was also the era where many corporates had complicated databases set up in MS Access or MS SQL Server, because they were easily accessible and usable from front-end applications written in VC or VC++.
Microsoft even evolved it all to adapt to and compete with new ideas from rivals, such as COM+ as alternative to CORBA, ASP.Net as alternative to JSP, etc.
Then Microsoft did the unthinkable. It inexplicably threw away all these IT dependencies away, that it had spent decades to build across the worlr.
Microsoft unleashed .Net on an unsuspecting IT world.
And M$ arrogantly expected the world to also throw all their years of efforts of building applications and databases revolving around VB/VC++.
To save their careers, millions of VB/VC++ programmers tried hard to scramble and learn these new technologies, but Microsoft just kept updating and upgrading the .Net landscape with increasing frequency and leading to more chaos and confusions. And as the learning curve steeper and the .Net scope became too hard for sane people to master in a short time, it became apparent that to the entire IT world (except Microsoft) that it had become too difficult and cumbersome to build applications for corporations using Microsoft's new-age tools. Thus, the interest and ambitions of the programmers and corporations quickly waned towards Microsoft tools, especially when they realised that .Net was a mess for installations, and it called expensive licenses to build and ship.
So programmers and SOHO/medium-scale companies, pivoted to alternatives to Microsoft imposed nightmares. Python, PHP, MySQL, Linux, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, JSP, etc. took centre stage, even as the IT world moved away from .Net.
The worldwide chaos caused by Windows Vista and Windows 8, did nothing to improve upon IT people's disdain for all things Microsoft.
And Microsoft's rivals pounced at such golden opportunities, and they slowly ate away at Microsoft's dominance in corporate world.
Yes, there is indeed some lessons for Micro$oft to be learnt from these debacles.
"Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started."
~ Mary Midgley
"And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias