I like your post CommonMan, few people try to gauge the effects of one company's decisions and ventures, they only look at the surface. In reality, there's no real way to determine the answers to your hypothetical questions there, but it sure is fun to think about.
Every company makes mistakes, I've sure learned it's kind of silly to hold everything against a company for a few transgressions. They all share a common goal, maximize profits. I doubt there exists even a single multi-million dollar company in this world that doesn't act to that end. And because of that, you should praise MS's ability as a business, since they're so far ahead of almost all their competition (other than Apple and Google).
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/03/0326_bw50/44.htm
If you can't respect those numbers, that's just silly.







