The answer is well-documented in Merrill R. Chapman’s book “In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters” Terrible title but grea

The answer is well-documented in Merrill R. Chapman’s book “In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters” Terrible title but great book. Basically Microsoft dominated every software category by waiting for the #1 company to make a dumb mistake. They then swooped in and won. This book is an excellent but biased history of that era.