I doubt MS was even aware of PHP 1.x when they released ASP back in 1996. Hardly anyone else was aware of PHP before 3.x either. By the time I found it, PHP 3.

I doubt MS was even aware of PHP 1.x when they released ASP back in 1996. Hardly anyone else was aware of PHP before 3.x either. By the time I found it, PHP 3.x/4.x was such an improvement over classic ASP / VBScript, that I think MS would've done a better job if it was positioned to challenge PHP :)