Microsoft's gain here is that they hurt their competitors, and they have demonstrated that they are willing to spend virtually unlimited sums of money to do tha

Microsoft's gain here is that they hurt their competitors, and they have demonstrated that they are willing to spend virtually unlimited sums of money to do that in certain cases. When MS bought HoTMaiL, it was running on Unix. So, MS forced them to switch to Windows. And the service failed. So MS doubled the number of computers to throw at the problem, and forced them again. And failed again. And MS doubled the number of computers to through at the problem again, and finally HoTMaiL was now a turd but it wasn't completely totally dead. Which meant that MS won and Unix lost. It didn't matter how much it cost or who they hurt in the process, they made that dog talk. Same shit, different year.