> ..Or MS would attack them and build competing product that was pre-installed. This is a myth. A typical corporation was/is so fragmented internally and have

> ..Or MS would attack them and build competing product that was pre-installed. This is a myth. A typical corporation was/is so fragmented internally and have so many fires already burning that it is very difficult for them to copy something successfully - this of course applies to high stake products and not small feature sets. Case in point from the era under discussion - Microsoft's FrontPage acquisition. Relevant excerpt from the excellent HBR book review of 'High Stakes, No Prisoners' - the book written by founder of FrontPage and his experience around the acquisition.. FrontPage’s code was so impressive that Vermeer (FrontPage) hardly needed to sell any software before the big competitors came calling. Even a company like Microsoft, willing to commit substantial resources to win market share, may find a well-established proprietary standard difficult to dislodge. Rather than assign a team of programmers to invent a tool to compete with FrontPage, Microsoft found it expedient to pay a huge premium to acquire Vermeer directly. Vermeer essentially beat Microsoft at its own game of lock-in. And without that aggressive software code, Ferguson admits, Vermeer wouldn’t have stood a chance. The start-up lacked even a minimally adequate distribution operation and sold only a few hundred copies of FrontPage before the acquisition. ‘Beating Microsoft at Its Own Game’ https://hbr.org/2000/01/beating-microsoft-at-its-own-game https://hbr.org/2000/01/beating-microsoft-at-its-own-game