Paul Allen has written a book, revealing some more candid details of the early life of Microsoft:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/30/microsoft-paul-allen-bi...
These are things people who worked in software always knew, but the world was blinded by the money and the marketing.
There were many years when it was hardly worth publishing software because you knew if you had a hit that Microsoft would stomp into your market and put you out of business - or if you were really lucky, wait for your value to drop and buy you out. It amounts to two decades of lost opportunities.
This is happening less these days. But only because Microsoft don't go after the little people any more - look at Bing, an evolution of MSN search. It's there only to kill Google. Xbox => Sony. They make huge losses but still they persist.
