What is said here holds true in 1995. Post 2000, interoperability was pretty evident. Microsoft is simply scared that if they made a simple enough format they w

What is said here holds true in 1995. Post 2000, interoperability was pretty evident. Microsoft is simply scared that if they made a simple enough format they would lose the hold they have on the Office software. Computers are faster and robust to handle I/O much better now. If they were by any means a little ethical, they would have created a simpler format and built on top of it instead of changing the entire spec every iteration of their software. Software does not evolve by retaining irrelevant code.