I mean, I get what you're saying, but I don't think it's that controversial to point out that facing serious consequences from the US DOJ put a serious check on the actions of Microsoft and held them back from employing their embrace, extend, extinguish model on the web.
How so? Out of three of the areas where they were investigated - there is only one where they are not still dominant. They lost browser market share because Google was the most popular web destination.
MS lost the mobile market - but outside of Apple, “winning the mobile market” was a Pyrrhic victory for Google [1]. Apple won by selling hardware not by licensing.
But they are the second largest cloud provider and are making far more than Google is making on mobile. Microsoft also don’t have to pay the competition a reported $8 billion a year because their competitor has the most valuable customers.
They also successfully pushed their way into the console market. MS is still the 3rd most valuable company in the US. Down from #1 in 2002.
