Technically they are still well behind both Amazon and Google (which is shooting itself in its feet by dumbing down the infrastructure they offer to their clien

Technically they are still well behind both Amazon and Google (which is shooting itself in its feet by dumbing down the infrastructure they offer to their clients). The same that you stated for AI holds true for distributed systems - not that many top people around. MS is obviously leveraging their Win platform to get subscribers even if they can't match Amazon.