Some of Borland's problems had nothing to do with Microsoft. A good example is Borland taking 6 months to rewrite Quattro in object-oriented code. They did this

Some of Borland's problems had nothing to do with Microsoft. A good example is Borland taking 6 months to rewrite Quattro in object-oriented code. They did this in the middle of a heated battle with Microsoft Excel, where both companies were releasing major new features every 6 months. As awesome as OOP is, it is not a user-visible feature. Being MIA for 6 months while engineers OOP'd the code may have cost them the battle. You can read some of this in this story (search for 'object oriented'): http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/29/business/the-executive-computer-in-a-battle-of-the-spreadsheet-borland-acts-the-barbarian.html http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/29/business/the-executive-com... Some of Borland's problems were indeed Microsoft's doing. OWL vs. MFC, for example. OWL was the first object-oriented library for Windows, but MFC eventually won because MFC was always first to support Windows features. OWL lagged behind because Borland did not have access to in-development versions of Windows. Borland applications such as Quattro Pro also suffered because Borland did not have access to in-development features of Windows such as OLE 2.0, and because of Microsoft bundling productivity applications into an Office "suite".