&gt; ..Or MS would attack them and build competing product that was pre-installed.<p>This is a myth. A typical corporation was&#x2F;is so fragmented internally and have so many fires already burning that it is very difficult for them to copy something successfully - this of course applies to high stake products and not small feature sets.<p>Case in point from the era under discussion - Microsoft&#x27;s FrontPage acquisition.<p>Relevant excerpt from the excellent HBR book review of &#x27;High Stakes, No Prisoners&#x27; - the book written by founder of FrontPage and his experience around the acquisition..<p><i>FrontPage’s code was so impressive that Vermeer (FrontPage) hardly needed to sell any software before the big competitors came calling. Even a company like Microsoft, willing to commit substantial resources to win market share, may find a well-established proprietary standard difficult to dislodge. Rather than assign a team of programmers to invent a tool to compete with FrontPage, Microsoft found it expedient to pay a huge premium to acquire Vermeer directly.</i><p><i>Vermeer essentially beat Microsoft at its own game of lock-in. And without that aggressive software code, Ferguson admits, Vermeer wouldn’t have stood a chance. The start-up lacked even a minimally adequate distribution operation and sold only a few hundred copies of FrontPage before the acquisition.</i><p>‘Beating Microsoft at Its Own Game’ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2000&#x2F;01&#x2F;beating-microsoft-at-its-own-game" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2000&#x2F;01&#x2F;beating-microsoft-at-its-own-game</a>