It was a dirty play
Actually, the dominance of M$ is due to its philosophy of get-embrace-destroy. If you remember, when Windows 3.1 touch the market there wasn't graphical office tools for Windows, only M$ had those tools and compatible with the competitors which give documentation to M$ to do the thing but not viceversa. Word star could have a graphical interface too late due to lack of time, and in technology, time to market is all. I think that was the reason because MS Office won the race, thanks of the M$ windows control. The same happened with .NET in the near future M$ will do all kind of software without real competence, because no-one can have the latest .NET technology and tis trend has already started (see visual dev tools, antivirus, integration software, etc.)
